Page:Dombey and Son.djvu/56

26 put up the chronometer again. "Here’s dinner been ready, half an hour, and no Walter!"

Turning round upon his stool behind the counter, Mr. Gills looked out among the instruments in the window, to see if his nephew might be crossing the road. No. He was not among the bobbing umbrellas, and he certainly was not the newspaper boy in the oilskin cap who was slowly working his way along the piece of brass outside, writing his name over Mr. Gills’s name with his forefinger.

"If I didn’t know he was too fond of me to make a run of it, and go and enter himself aboard ship against my wishes, I should begin to be fidgetty," said Mr. Gills, tapping two or three weather glasses with his knuckles. "I really should. All in the Downs, eh! Lots of moisture! Well! it’s wanted."

"I believe," said Mr. Gills, blowing the dust off the glass top of a compass-case, "that you don’t point more direct and due to the back parlour than the boy’s inclination does after all. And the parlour couldn’t bear straighter either. Due north. Not the twentieth part of a point either way."

"Halloa, Uncle Sol!"

"Halloa, my boy!" cried the Instrument Maker, turning briskly round. "What! you are here, are you?"

A cheerful looking, merry boy, fresh with running home in the rain; fair-faced, bright-eyed, and curly-haired.

"Well, Uncle, how have you got on without me all day? Is dinner ready? I’m so hungry."

"As to getting on," said Solomon good-naturedly, "it would be odd if I couldn’t get on without a young dog like you a great deal better than with you. As to dinner being ready, it’s been ready this half hour and waiting for you. As to being hungry, I am!"

"Come along then, Uncle!" cried the boy. "Hurrah for the admiral!"

"Confound the admiral!" returned Solomon Gills. "You mean the Lord Mayor."

"No I don’t!’ cried the boy. "Hurrah for the admiral! Hurrah for the admiral! For-ward!"

At this word of command, the Welsh wig and its wearer were borne without resistance into the back parlour, as at the head of a boarding party of five hundred men; and Uncle Sol and his nephew were speedily engaged on a fried sole with a prospect of steak to follow.

"The Lord Mayor, Wally," said Solomon, "for ever! No more admirals. The Lord Mayor’s your admiral."

"Oh, is he though!" said the boy, shaking his head. "Why, the Sword Bearer’s better than him. He draws his sword sometimes."

"And a pretty figure he cuts with it for his pains," returned the Uncle. "Listen to me, Wally, listen to me. Look on the mantel-shelf."

"Why who has cocked my silver mug up there, on a nail?" exclaimed the boy.

"I have," said his Uncle. "No more mugs now. We must begin to drink out of glasses to-day, Walter. We are men of business. We belong to the City. We started in life this morning."

"Well, Uncle," said the boy, "I’ll drink out of anything you like, so