Page:Dombey and Son.djvu/66

36 "How sound she sleeps!" said Miss Tox.

"Why, you know, my dear, she takes a great deal of exercise in the course of the day," returned Mrs Chick, "playing about little Paul so much."

"She is a curious child," said Miss Tox.

"My dear," retorted Mrs Chick, in a low voice: "Her Mama, all over!"

"In-deed!" said Miss Tox. "Ah dear me!"

A tone of most extraordinary compassion Miss Tox said it in, though she had no distinct idea why, except that it was expected of her.

"Florence will never, never, never be a Dombey," said Mrs Chick, "not if she lives to be a thousand years old."

Miss Tox elevated her eyebrows, and was again full of commiseration.

"I quite fret and worry myself about her," said Mrs Chick, with a sigh of modest merit. "I really don’t see what is to become of her when she grows older, or what position she is to take. She don’t gain on her Papa in the least. How can one expect she should, when she is so very unlike a Dombey?"

Miss Tox looked as if she saw no way out of such a cogent argument as that, at all.

"And the child, you see," said Mrs Chick, in deep confidence, "has poor dear Fanny’s nature. She’ll never make an effort in after-life, I’ll venture to say. Never! She’ll never wind and twine herself about her Papa’s heart like—"

"Like the ivy?" suggested Miss Tox.

"Like the ivy," Mrs Chick assented. "Never! She’ll never glide and nestle into the bosom of her Papa’s affections like—the—"

"Startled fawn?" suggested Miss Tox.

"Like the startled fawn," said Mrs Chick. "Never! Poor Fanny! Yet, how I loved her!"

"You must not distress yourself, my dear," said Miss Tox, in a soothing voice. "Now really! You have too much feeling."

"We have all our faults," said Mrs Chick, weeping and shaking her head. "I dare say we have. I never was blind to hers. I never said I was. Far from it. Yet how I loved her!"

What a satisfaction it was to Mrs Chick—a common-place piece of folly enough, compared with whom her sister-in-law had been a very angel of womanly intelligence and gentleness—to patronise and be tender to the memory of that lady: in exact pursuance of her conduct to her in her lifetime: and to thoroughly believe herself, and take herself in, and make herself uncommonly comfortable on the strength of her toleration! What a mighty pleasant virtue toleration should be when we are right, to be so very pleasant when we are wrong, and quite unable to demonstrate how we come to be invested with the privilege of exercising it!

Mrs Chick was yet drying her eyes and shaking her head, when Richards made bold to caution her that Miss Florence was awake and sitting in her bed. She had risen, as the nurse said, and the lashes of her eyes were wet with tears. But no one saw them glistening save Polly. No one else leant over her, and whispered soothing words to her, or was near enough to hear the flutter of her beating heart.