The old woman looking back to mumble and mouth at her daughter, who followed, kept close to Rob’s heels as he walked on with the bridle in his hand; and pursued the conversation.
“A good place, Rob, eh?” said she. “You’re in luck, my child.”
“Oh don’t talk about luck, Misses Brown,” returned the wretched Grinder, facing round and stopping. “If you’d never come, or if you’d go away, then indeed a cove might be considered tolerable lucky. Can’t you go along, Misses Brown, and not foller me!” blubbered Rob, with sudden defiance. “If the young woman’s a friend of yours, why don’t she take you away, instead of letting you make yourself so disgraceful!”
“What!” croaked the old woman, putting her face close to his, with a malevolent grin upon it that puckered up the loose skin down in her very throat. “Do you deny your old chum! Have you lurked to my house fifty times, and slept sound in a corner when you had no other bed but the paving-stones, and do you talk to me like this! Have I bought and sold with you, and helped you in my way of business, schoolboy, sneak, and whatnot, and do you tell me to go along? Could I raise a crowd of old company about you tomorrow morning, that would follow you to ruin like copies of your own shadow, and do you turn on me with your bold looks! I’ll go. Come, Alice.”
“Stop, Misses Brown!” cried the distracted Grinder. “What are you doing of? Don’t put yourself in a passion! Don’t let her go, if you please. I haven’t meant any offence. I said ‘how d’ye do,’ at first, didn’t I? But you wouldn’t answer. How do you do? Besides,” said Rob piteously, “look here! How can a cove stand talking in the street with his master’s prad a-wanting to be took to be rubbed down, and his master up to every individgle thing that happens!”
The old woman made a show of being partially appeased, but shook her head, and mouthed and muttered still.
“Come along to the stables, and have a glass of something that’s good for you, Misses Brown, can’t you?” said Rob, “instead of going on, like that, which is no good to you, nor anybody else. Come along with her, will you be so kind?” said Rob. “I’m sure I’m delighted to see her, if it wasn’t for the horse!”
With this apology, Rob turned away, a rueful picture of despair, and walked his charge down a bye street. The old woman, mouthing at her daughter, followed close upon him. The daughter followed.
Turning into a silent little square or courtyard that had a great church tower rising above it, and a packer’s warehouse, and a bottle-maker’s warehouse, for its places of business, Rob the Grinder delivered the white-legged horse to the hostler of a quaint stable at the corner; and inviting Mrs. Brown and her daughter to seat themselves upon a stone bench at the gate of that establishment, soon reappeared from a neighbouring public-house with a pewter measure and a glass.
“Here’s master—Mr. Carker, child!” said the old woman, slowly, as her sentiment before drinking. “Lord bless him!”
“Why, I didn’t tell you who he was,” observed Rob, with staring eyes.
“We know him by sight,” said Mrs. Brown, whose working mouth and nodding head stopped for the moment, in the fixedness of her attention. “We saw him pass this morning, afore he got off his horse; when you were ready to take it.”
“Ay, ay,” returned Rob, appearing to wish that his readiness had carried him to any other place.—“What’s the matter with her? Won’t she drink?”
This inquiry had reference to Alice, who, folded in her cloak, sat a little apart, profoundly inattentive to his offer of the replenished glass.
The old woman shook her head. “Don’t mind her,” she said; “she’s a strange creetur, if you know’d her, Rob. But Mr. Carker—”
“Hush!” said Rob, glancing cautiously up at the packer’s, and at the bottle-maker’s, as if, from any one of the tiers of warehouses, Mr. Carker might be looking down. “Softly.”
“Why, he ain’t here!” cried Mrs. Brown.
“I don’t know that,” muttered Rob, whose glance even wandered to the church tower, as if he might be there, with a supernatural power of hearing.
“Good master?” inquired Mrs. Brown.
Rob nodded; and added, in a low voice, “precious sharp.”
“Lives out of town, don’t he, lovey?” said the old woman.
“When he’s at home,” returned Rob; “but we don’t live at home just now.”
“Where then?” asked the old woman.
“Lodgings; up near Mr. Dombey’s,” returned Rob.
The younger woman fixed her eyes so searchingly upon him, and so suddenly, that Rob was quite confounded, and offered the glass again, but with no more effect upon her than before.
“Mr. Dombey—you and I used to talk about him, sometimes, you know,” said Rob to Mrs. Brown. “You used to get me to talk about him.”
The old woman nodded.
“Well, Mr. Dombey, he’s had a fall from his horse,” said Rob, unwillingly; “and my master has to be up there, more than usual, either with him, or Mrs. Dombey, or some of ’em; and so we’ve come to town.”
“Are they good friends, lovey?” asked the old woman.
“Who?” retorted Rob.
“He and she?”
“What, Mr. and Mrs. Dombey?” said Rob. “How should I know!”
“Not them—Master and Mrs. Dombey, chick,” replied the old woman, coaxingly.
“I don’t know,” said Rob, looking round him again. “I suppose so. How curious you are, Misses Brown! Least said, soonest mended.”
“Why there’s no harm in it!” exclaimed the old woman, with a laugh, and a clap of her hands. “Sprightly Rob has grown tame since he has been well off! There’s no harm in it.”
“No, there’s no harm in it, I know,” returned Rob, with the same distrustful glance at the packer’s and the bottle-maker’s, and the church; “but blabbing, if it’s only about the number of buttons on my master’s coat, won’t do. I tell you it won’t do with him. A cove had better drown himself.
