Page:Dombey and Son.djvu/624

Rh The wretched Grinder made a gasp, and a pause.

"Are you dumb?" said the old woman, angrily.

"Lord, Misses Brown, no! You expect a cove to be a flash of lightning. I wish I was the electric fluency," muttered the bewildered Grinder. "I’d have a shock at somebody, that would settle their business."

"What do you say?" asked the old woman, with a grin.

"I’m wishing my love to you, Misses Brown," returned the false Rob, seeking consolation in the glass. "Where did they go to first was it? Him and her, do you mean?"

"Ah!" said the old woman, eagerly. "Them two."

"Why, they didn’t go nowhere—not together, I mean," answered Rob.

The old woman looked at him, as though she had a strong impulse upon her to make another clutch at his head and throat, but was restrained by a certain dogged mystery in his face.

"That was the art of it," said the reluctant Grinder; "that’s the way nobody saw 'em go, or has been able to say how they did go. They went different ways, I tell you Misses Brown."

"Ay, ay, ay! To meet at an appointed place," chuckled the old woman, after a moment’s silent and keen scrutiny of his face.

"Why, if they weren’t a going to meet somewhere, I suppose they might as well have stayed at home, mightn’t they, Brown?" returned the unwilling Grinder.

"Well, Rob? Well?" said the old woman, drawing his arm yet tighter through her own, as if, in her eagerness, she were afraid of his slipping away.

"What, haven’t we talked enough yet, Misses Brown?" returned the Grinder, who, between his sense of injury, his sense of liquor, and his sense of being on the rack, had become so lachrymose, that at almost every answer he scooped his coats into one or other of his eyes, and uttered an unavailing whine of remonstrance. "Did she laugh that night, was it? Didn’t you ask if she laughed, Misses Brown?"

"Or cried?" added the old woman, nodding assent.

"Neither," said the Grinder. "She kept as steady when she and me—oh, I see you will have it out of me, Misses Brown! But take your solemn oath now, that you ’ll never tell anybody."

This Mrs. Brown very readily did: being naturally Jesuitical; and having no other intention in the matter than that her concealed visitor should hear for himself.

"She kept as steady, then, when she and me went down to Southampton," said the Grinder, "as a image. In the morning she was just the same, Misses Brown. And when she went away in the packet before daylight, by herself—me pretending to be her servant, and seeing her safe aboard—she was just the same. Now, are you contented, Misses Brown?"

"No, Rob. Not yet," answered Mrs. Brown, decisively.

"Oh, here’s a woman for you!" cried the unfortunate Rob, in an outburst of feeble lamentation over his own helplessness. "What did you wish to know next, Misses Brown?"