As Rob took another cautious survey of the yard, the old woman made a secret motion to her daughter. It was momentary, but the daughter, with a slight look of intelligence, withdrew her eyes from the boy’s face, and sat folded in her cloak as before.
“Rob, lovey!” said the old woman, beckoning him to the other end of the bench. “You were always a pet and favourite of mine. Now, weren’t you? Don’t you know you were?”
“Yes, Misses Brown,” replied the Grinder, with a very bad grace.
“And you could leave me!” said the old woman, flinging her arms about his neck. “You could go away, and grow almost out of knowledge, and never come to tell your poor old friend how fortunate you were, proud lad! Oho, Oho!”
“Oh here’s a dreadful go for a cove that’s got a master wide awake in the neighbourhood!” exclaimed the wretched Grinder. “To be howled over like this here!”
“Won’t you come and see me, Robby?” cried Mrs. Brown. “Oho, won’t you ever come and see me?”
“Yes, I tell you! Yes, I will!” returned the Grinder.
“That’s my own Rob! That’s my lovey!” said Mrs. Brown, drying the tears upon her shrivelled face, and giving him a tender squeeze. “At the old place, Rob?”
“Yes,” replied the Grinder.
“Soon, Robby dear?” cried Mrs. Brown; “and often?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes,” replied Rob. “I will indeed, upon my soul and body.”
“And then,” said Mrs. Brown, with her arms uplifted towards the sky, and her head thrown back and shaking, “if he’s true to his word, I’ll never come a-near him though I know where he is, and never breathe a syllable about him! Never!”
This ejaculation seemed a drop of comfort to the miserable Grinder, who shook Mrs. Brown by the hand upon it, and implored her with tears in his eyes, to leave a cove and not destroy his prospects. Mrs. Brown, with another fond embrace, assented; but in the act of following her daughter, turned back, with her finger stealthily raised, and asked in a hoarse whisper for some money.
“A shilling, dear!” she said, with her eager avaricious face, “or sixpence! For old acquaintance sake. I’m so poor. And my handsome gal”—looking over her shoulder—“she’s my gal, Rob—half starves me.”
But as the reluctant Grinder put it in her hand, her daughter, coming quietly back, caught the hand in hers, and twisted out the coin.
“What,” she said, “mother! always money! money from the first, and to the last. Do you mind so little what I said but now? Here. Take it!”
The old woman uttered a moan as the money was restored, but without in any other way opposing its restoration, hobbled at her daughter’s side out of the yard, and along the by-street upon which it opened. The astonished and dismayed Rob staring after them, saw that they stopped, and fell to earnest conversation very soon; and more than once observed a darkly threatening action of the younger woman’s hand (obviously having reference to someone of whom they spoke), and a crooning feeble imitation of it on the part of Mrs. Brown, that made him earnestly hope he might not be the subject of their discourse.
With the present consolation that they were gone, and with the prospective comfort that Mrs. Brown could not live forever, and was not likely to live long to trouble him, the Grinder, not otherwise regretting his misdeeds than as they were attended with such disagreeable incidental consequences, composed his ruffled features to a more serene expression by thinking of the admirable manner in which he had disposed of Captain Cuttle (a reflection that seldom failed to put him in a flow of spirits), and went to the Dombey Counting House to receive his master’s orders.
There his master, so subtle and vigilant of eye, that Rob quaked before him, more than half expecting to be taxed with Mrs. Brown, gave him the usual morning’s box of papers for Mr. Dombey, and a note for Mrs. Dombey: merely nodding his head as an enjoinder to be careful, and to use dispatch—a mysterious admonition, fraught in the Grinder’s imagination with dismal warnings and threats; and more powerful with him than any words.
Alone again, in his own room, Mr. Carker applied himself to work, and worked all day. He saw many visitors; overlooked a number of documents; went in and out, to and from, sundry places of mercantile resort; and indulged in no more abstraction until the day’s business was done. But, when the usual clearance of papers from his table was made at last, he fell into his thoughtful mood once more.
He was standing in his accustomed place and attitude, with his eyes intently fixed upon the ground, when his brother entered to bring back some letters that had been taken out in the course of the day. He put them quietly on the table, and was going immediately, when Mr. Carker the Manager, whose eyes had rested on him, on his entrance, as if they had all this time had him for the subject of their contemplation, instead of the office-floor, said:
“Well, John Carker, and what brings you here?”
His brother pointed to the letters, and was again withdrawing.
“I wonder,” said the Manager, “that you can come and go, without inquiring how our master is.”
“We had word this morning in the Counting House, that Mr. Dombey was doing well,” replied his brother.
“You are such a meek fellow,” said the Manager, with a smile—“but you have grown so, in the course of years—that if any harm came to him, you’d be miserable, I dare swear now.”
“I should be truly sorry, James,” returned the other.
“He would be sorry!” said the Manager, pointing at him, as if there were some other person present to whom he was appealing. “He would be truly sorry! This brother of mine! This junior of the place, this slighted piece of lumber, pushed aside
