It is half-past five o’clock, and an autumn afternoon, when the reader and Solomon Gills become acquainted. Solomon Gills is in the act of seeing what time it is by the unimpeachable chronometer. The usual daily clearance has been making in the City for an hour or more; and the human tide is still rolling westward. “The streets have thinned,” as Mr. Gills says, “very much.” It threatens to be wet tonight. All the weatherglasses in the shop are in low spirits, and the rain already shines upon the cocked hat of the wooden Midshipman.
“Where’s Walter, I wonder!” said Solomon Gills, after he had carefully 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 weatherglasses 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, “forever! 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 today, 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 long as I can drink to you. Here’s to you, Uncle Sol, and Hurrah for the—”
“Lord Mayor,” interrupted the old man.
“For the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Common Council, and Livery,” said the boy. “Long life to ’em!”
The uncle nodded his head with great satisfaction. “And now,” he said, “let’s hear something about the Firm.”
“Oh! there’s not much to be told about the Firm, Uncle,” said the boy, plying his knife and fork. “It’s a precious dark set of offices, and in the room where I sit, there’s a high fender, and an iron safe, and some cards about ships that are going to sail, and an almanac, and some desks and stools, and an inkbottle, and some books, and some boxes, and a lot of cobwebs, and in one of ’em, just over my head, a shrivelled-up bluebottle that looks as if it had hung there ever so long.”
“Nothing else?” said the Uncle.
“No, nothing else, except an old birdcage (I wonder how that ever came there!) and a coal-scuttle.”
“No bankers’ books, or cheque books, or bills, or such tokens of wealth rolling in from day to day?” said old Sol, looking wistfully at his nephew out of the fog that always seemed to hang about him, and laying an unctuous emphasis upon the words.
“Oh yes, plenty of that I suppose,” returned his nephew carelessly; “but all that sort of thing’s in Mr. Carker’s room, or Mr. Morfin’s, or Mr. Dombey’s.”
“Has Mr. Dombey been there today?” inquired the Uncle.
“Oh yes! In and out all day.”
“He didn’t take any notice of you, I suppose?”
“Yes he did. He walked up to my seat—I wish he wasn’t so solemn and stiff, Uncle—and said, ‘Oh! you are the son of Mr. Gills the Ships’ Instrument-maker.’ ‘Nephew, Sir,’ I said. ‘I said nephew, boy,’ said he. But I could take my oath he said son, Uncle.”
“You’re mistaken I daresay. It’s no matter.”
“No, it’s no matter, but he needn’t have been so sharp, I thought.
