Walking his white-legged horse thus, to the countinghouse of Dombey and Son one day, he was as unconscious of the observation of two pairs of women’s eyes, as of the fascinated orbs of Rob the Grinder, who, in waiting a street’s length from the appointed place, as a demonstration of punctuality, vainly touched and retouched his hat to attract attention, and trotted along on foot, by his master’s side, prepared to hold his stirrup when he should alight.
“See where he goes!” cried one of these two women, an old creature, who stretched out her shrivelled arm to point him out to her companion, a young woman, who stood close beside her, withdrawn like herself into a gateway.
Mrs. Brown’s daughter looked out, at this bidding on the part of Mrs. Brown; and there were wrath and vengeance in her face.
“I never thought to look at him again,” she said, in a low voice; “but it’s well I should, perhaps. I see. I see!”
“Not changed!” said the old woman, with a look of eager malice.
“He changed!” returned the other. “What for? What has he suffered? There is change enough for twenty in me. Isn’t that enough?”
“See where he goes!” muttered the old woman, watching her daughter with her red eyes; “so easy and so trim a-horseback, while we are in the mud—”
“And of it,” said her daughter impatiently. “We are mud, underneath his horse’s feet. What should we be?”
In the intentness with which she looked after him again, she made a hasty gesture with her hand when the old woman began to reply, as if her view could be obstructed by mere sound. Her mother watching her, and not him, remained silent; until her kindling glance subsided, and she drew a long breath, as if in the relief of his being gone.
“Deary!” said the old woman then. “Alice! Handsome gall Ally!” She gently shook her sleeve to arouse her attention. “Will you let him go like that, when you can wring money from him? Why, it’s a wickedness, my daughter.”
“Haven’t I told you, that I will not have money from him?” she returned. “And don’t you yet believe me? Did I take his sister’s money? Would I touch a penny, if I knew it, that had gone through his white hands—unless it was, indeed, that I could poison it, and send it back to him? Peace, mother, and come away.”
“And him so rich?” murmured the old woman. “And us so poor!”
“Poor in not being able to pay him any of the harm we owe him,” returned her daughter. “Let him give me that sort of riches, and I’ll take them from him, and use them. Come away. It’s no good looking at his horse. Come away, mother!”
But the old woman, for whom the spectacle of Rob the Grinder returning down the street, leading the riderless horse, appeared to have some extraneous interest that it did not possess in itself, surveyed that young man with the utmost earnestness; and seeming to have whatever doubts she entertained, resolved as he drew nearer, glanced at her daughter with brightened eyes and with her finger on her lip, and emerging from the gateway at the moment of his passing, touched him on the shoulder.
“Why, where’s my sprightly Rob been, all this time!” she said, as he turned round.
The sprightly Rob, whose sprightliness was very much diminished by the salutation, looked exceedingly dismayed, and said, with the water rising in his eyes:
“Oh! why can’t you leave a poor cove alone, Misses Brown, when he’s getting an honest livelihood and conducting himself respectable? What do you come and deprive a cove of his character for, by talking to him in the streets, when he’s taking his master’s horse to a honest stable—a horse you’d go and sell for cats’ and dogs’ meat if you had your way! Why, I thought,” said the Grinder, producing his concluding remark as if it were the climax of all his injuries, “that you was dead long ago!”
“This is the way,” cried the old woman, appealing to her daughter, “that he talks to me, who knew him weeks and months together, my deary, and have stood his friend many and many a time among the pigeon-fancying tramps and bird-catchers.”
“Let the birds be, will you, Misses Brown?” retorted Rob, in a tone of the acutest anguish. “I think a cove had better have to do with lions than them little creeturs, for they’re always flying back in your face when you least expect it. Well, how d’ye do and what do you want?” These polite inquiries the Grinder uttered, as it were under protest, and with great exasperation and vindictiveness.
“Hark how he speaks to an old friend, my deary!” said Mrs. Brown, again appealing to her daughter. “But there’s some of his old friends not so patient as me. If I was to tell some that he knows, and has spotted and cheated with, where to find him—”
“Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?” interrupted the miserable Grinder, glancing quickly round, as though he expected to see his master’s teeth shining at his elbow. “What do you take a pleasure in ruining a cove for? At your time of life too! when you ought to be thinking of a variety of things!”
“What a gallant horse!” said the old woman, patting the animal’s neck.
“Let him alone, will you, Misses Brown?” cried Rob, pushing away her hand. “You’re enough to drive a penitent cove mad!”
“Why, what hurt do I do him, child?” returned the old woman.
“Hurt?” said Rob. “He’s got a master that would find it out if he was touched with a straw.” And he blew upon the place where the old woman’s hand had rested for a moment, and smoothed it gently with his finger, as if he
