“What! father’s been a saying something more again me, has he?” cried the injured innocent. “Oh, what a hard thing it is that when a cove has once gone a little wrong, a cove’s own father should be always a throwing it in his face behind his back! It’s enough,” cried Rob, resorting to his coat-cuff in anguish of spirit, “to make a cove go and do something, out of spite!”
“My poor boy!” cried Polly, “father didn’t mean anything.”
“If father didn’t mean anything,” blubbered the injured Grinder, “why did he go and say anything, mother? Nobody thinks half so bad of me as my own father does. What a unnatural thing! I wish somebody’d take and chop my head off. Father wouldn’t mind doing it, I believe, and I’d much rather he did that than t’other.”
At these desperate words all the young Toodles shrieked; a pathetic effect, which the Grinder improved by ironically adjuring them not to cry for him, for they ought to hate him, they ought, if they was good boys and girls; and this so touched the youngest Toodle but one, who was easily moved, that it touched him not only in his spirit but in his wind too; making him so purple that Mr. Toodle in consternation carried him out to the water-butt, and would have put him under the tap, but for his being recovered by the sight of that instrument.
Matters having reached this point, Mr. Toodle explained, and the virtuous feelings of his son being thereby calmed, they shook hands, and harmony reigned again.
“Will you do as I do, Biler, my boy?” inquired his father, returning to his tea with new strength.
“No, thank’ee, father. Master and I had tea together.”
“And how is master, Rob?” said Polly.
“Well, I don’t know, mother; not much to boast on. There ain’t no bis’ness done, you see. He don’t know anything about it—the Cap’en don’t. There was a man come into the shop this very day, and says, ‘I want a so-and-so,’ he says—some hard name or another. ‘A which?’ says the Cap’en. ‘A so-and-so,’ says the man. ‘Brother,’ says the Cap’en, ‘will you take a observation round the shop.’ ‘Well,’ says the man, ‘I’ve done it.’ ‘Do you see wot you want?’ says the Cap’en ‘No, I don’t,’ says the man. ‘Do you know it wen you do see it?’ says the Cap’en. ‘No, I don’t,’ says the man. ‘Why, then I tell you wot, my lad,’ says the Cap’en, ‘you’d better go back and ask wot it’s like, outside, for no more don’t I!’ ”
“That ain’t the way to make money, though, is it?” said Polly.
“Money, mother! He’ll never make money. He has such ways as I never see. He ain’t a bad master though, I’ll say that for him. But that ain’t much to me, for I don’t think I shall stop with him long.”
“Not stop in your place, Rob!” cried his mother; while Mr. Toodle opened his eyes.
“Not in that place, p’raps,” returned the Grinder, with a wink. “I shouldn’t wonder—friends at court you know—but never you mind, mother, just now; I’m all right, that’s all.”
The indisputable proof afforded in these hints, and in the Grinder’s mysterious manner, of his not being subject to that failing which Mr. Toodle had, by implication, attributed to him, might have led to a renewal of his wrongs, and of the sensation in the family, but for the opportune arrival of another visitor, who, to Polly’s great surprise, appeared at the door, smiling patronage and friendship on all there.
“How do you do, Mrs. Richards?” said Miss Tox. “I have come to see you. May I come in?”
The cheery face of Mrs. Richards shone with a hospitable reply, and Miss Tox, accepting the proffered chair, and gracefully recognising Mr. Toodle on her way to it, untied her bonnet strings, and said that in the first place she must beg the dear children, one and all, to come and kiss her.
The ill-starred youngest Toodle but one, who would appear, from the frequency of his domestic troubles, to have been born under an unlucky planet, was prevented from performing his part in this general salutation by having fixed the sou’wester hat (with which he had been previously trifling) deep on his head, hind side before, and being unable to get it off again; which accident presenting to his terrified imagination a dismal picture of his passing the rest of his days in darkness, and in hopeless seclusion from his friends and family, caused him to struggle with great violence, and to utter suffocating cries. Being released, his face was discovered to be very hot, and red, and damp; and Miss Tox took him on her lap, much exhausted.
“You have almost forgotten me, Sir, I daresay,” said Miss Tox to Mr. Toodle.
“No, Ma’am, no,” said Toodle. “But we’ve all on us got a little older since then.”
“And how do you find yourself, Sir?” inquired Miss Tox, blandly.
“Hearty, Ma’am, thank’ee,” replied Toodle. “How do you find yourself, Ma’am? Do the rheumaticks keep off pretty well, Ma’am? We must all expect to grow into ’em, as we gets on.”
“Thank you,” said Miss Tox. “I have not felt any inconvenience from that disorder yet.”
“You’re wery fortunate, Ma’am,” returned Mr. Toodle. “Many people at your time of life, Ma’am, is martyrs to it. There was my mother—” But catching his wife’s eye here, Mr. Toodle judiciously buried the rest in another mug of tea.
“You never mean to say, Mrs. Richards,” cried Miss Tox, looking at Rob, “that that is your—”
“Eldest, Ma’am,” said Polly. “Yes, indeed, it is. That’s the little fellow, Ma’am, that was the innocent cause of so much.”
“This here, Ma’am,” said Toodle, “is him with the short legs—and they was,” said Mr. Toodle, with a touch of poetry in his tone, “unusual short for leathers—as Mr. Dombey made a Grinder on.”
The recollection almost overpowered Miss Tox. The subject of it had a peculiar interest for her directly. She asked him to shake hands, and congratulated
