In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble
THAT spice of romance and love of the marvellous, of which there was a pretty
strong infusion in the nature of young Walter Gay, and which the guardianship of
his uncle, old Solomon Gills, had not very much weakened by the waters of stern
practical experience, was the occasion of his attaching an uncommon and
delightful interest to the adventure of Florence with good Mrs. Brown. He
pampered and cherished it in his memory, especially that part of it with which
he had been associated: until it became the spoiled child of his fancy, and took
its own way, and did what it liked with it.
The recollection of those incidents, and his own share in them, may have been
made the more captivating, perhaps, by the weekly dreamings of old Sol and
Captain Cuttle on Sundays. Hardly a Sunday passed, without mysterious references
being made by one or other of those worthy chums to Richard Whittington; and the
latter gentleman had even gone so far as to purchase a ballad of considerable
antiquity, that had long fluttered among many others, chiefly expressive of
maritime sentiments, on a dead wall in the Commercial Roads: which poetical
performances set forth the courtship and nuptials of a promising young coal-whipper
with a certain `lovely Peg,' the accomplished daughter of the master and
part-owner of a Newcastle collier. In this stirring legend, Captain Cuttle
descried a profound metaphysical bearing on the case of Walter and Florence; and
it excited him so much, that on very festive occasions, as birthdays and few
other non-Dominical holidays, he would roar through the whole song in the little
back parlour; making an amazing shake on the word Pe--e--eg, with which every
verse concluded, in compliment to the heroine of the piece.
But a frank, free-spirited, open-hearted boy, is not much given to analysing
the nature of his own feelings, however strong their hold upon him: and Walter
would have found it difficult to decide this point. He had a great affection for
the wharf where he had encountered Florence, and for the streets (albeit not
enchanting in themselves) by which they had come home. The shoes that had so
often tumbled off by way, he preserved in his own room; and, sitting in the
little back parlour of an evening, he had drawn a whole gallery of fancy
portraits of good Mrs. Brown. It may be that he became a little smarter in his
dress after that memorable occasion; and he certainly liked in his leisure time
to walk towards that quarter of the town where Mr. Dombey's house was situated,
on the vague chance of passing little Florence in the street. But the sentiment
of all this was as boyish and innocent as could be. Florence was very pretty,
and it is pleasant to admire a pretty face. Florence was defenceless and weak,
and it was a proud thought that he had been able to render her any protection
and assistantce. Florence was the most grateful little creature in the world,
and it was delightful to see her bright gratitude beaming in her face. Florence
was neglected and coldly looked upon, and his breast was full of youthful
interest for the slighted child in her dull, stately home.
Thus it came about that, perhaps some half-a-dozen times in the course of the
year, Walter pulled off his hat to Florence in the street, and Florence would
stop to shake hands. Mrs. Wickam (who, with a characteristic alteration of his
name, invariably spoke of him as `Young Graves') was so well used to this,
knowing the story of their acquaintance, that she took no heed of it at all.
Miss Nipper, on the other hand, rather looked out for these occasions: her
sensitive young heart being secretly propitiated by Walter's good looks, and
inclining to the belief that its sentiments were responded to.
In this way, Walter, so far from forgetting or losing sight of his
acquaintance with Florence, only remembered it better and better. As to its
adventurous beginning, and all those little circumstances which gave it a
distinctive character and relish, he took them into account, more as a pleasant
story very agreeable to his imagination, and not to be dismissed from it, than
as a part of any matter of fact with which he was concerned. They set off
Florence very much, to his fancy; but not himself. Sometimes he thought (and
then he walked very fast) what a grand thing it would have been for him to have
been going to sea on the day after that first meeting, and to have gone, and to
have done wonders there, and to have stopped away a long time, and to have come
back an Admiral of all the colours of the dolphin, or at least a Post-Captain
with epaulettes of insupportable brightness, and have married Florence (then a
beautiful young woman) in spite of Mr. Dombey's teeth, cravat, and watch-chain,
and borne her away to the blue shores of somewhere or other, triumphantly. But
these flights of fancy seldom burnished the brass plate of Dombey and Son's
Offices into a tablet of golden hope, or shed a brilliant lustre on their dirty
skylights; and when the Captain and Uncle Sol talked about Richard Whittington
and masters' daughters, Walter felt that he understood his true position at
Dombey and Son's much better than they did.
So it was that he went on doing what he had to do from day to day, in a
cheerful, pains-taking, merry spirit; and saw through the sanguine complexion of
Uncle Sol and Captain Cuttle; and yet entertained a thousand indistinct and
visionary fancies of his own, to which theirs were word-a-day probabilities.
Such was his condition at the Pipchin period, when he looked a little older than
of yore, but not much; and was the same light-footed, light-hearted, lightheaded
lad, as when he charged into the parlour at the head of Uncle Sol and the
imaginary boarders, and lighted him to bring up the Madeira.
`Uncle Sol', said Walter, `I don't think you're well. You haven't eaten any
breakfast. I shall bring a doctor to you, if you go on like this.'
`He can't give me what I want, my boy,' said Uncle Sol. `At least he is in
good practice if he can--and then he wouldn't.'
`What is it, Uncle? Customers?'
`Aye,' returned Solomon, with a sigh. `Customers would do.'
`Confound it, Uncle!' said Walter, putting down his breakfast cup with a
clatter, and striking his hand on the table: `when I see the people going up and
down the street in shoals all day, and passing and re-passing the shop every
minute, by scores, I feel half tempted to rush out, collar somebody, bring him
in, and make him buy fifty pounds' worth of instruments for ready money. What
are you looking in at the door for?--' continued Walter, apostrophizing an old
gentleman with a powdered head (inaudibly to him of course), who was staring at
a ship's telescope with all his might and main. `That's no use. I could do that.
Come in and buy it!'
The old gentleman, however, having satiated his curiosity, walked calmly
away.
`There he goes!' said Walter. `That's the way with'em all. But, Uncle--I say,
uncle Sol'--for the old man was meditating, and had not responded to his first
appeal. `Don't be cast down. Don't be out of spirits, Uncle. When orders do
come, they'll come in such a crowd, you won't be able to execute 'em.'
`I shall be past executing 'em, whenever they come, my boy,' returned Solomon
Gills. `They'll never come to this shop again, till I am out of it.'
`I say, Uncle! You musn't really, you know! urged Walter. `Don't!'
Old Sol endeavoured to assume a cherry look, and smiled across the little
table at him as pleasantly as he could.
`There's nothing more than usual the matter; is there, Uncle?' said Walter,
leaning his elbows on the tea tray and bending over, to speak the more
confidentially and kindly. `Be open with me, Uncle, if there is, and tell me all
about it.'
`No, no, no,' returned Old Sol. `More than usual? No, no. what should there
be the matter more than usual?'
Walter answered with an incredulous shake of his head. `That's what I want to
know,' he said, `and you ask me! I'll tell you what, Uncle, when I see you like
this, I am quite sorry that I live with you.'
Old Sol opened his eyes involuntarily.
`Yes. Though nobody ever was happier than I am and always have been with you,
I am quite sorry that I live with you, when I see you with anything on your
mind.'
`I am a little dull at such times, I know,' observed Solomon, meekly rubbing
his hands.
`What I mean, Uncle Sol,' pursued Walter, bending over a little more to pat
him on the shoulder, `is, that then I feel you ought to have, sitting here and
pouring out the tea instead of me, a nice little dumpling of a wife, you
know,--a comfortable, capital, cosey old lady, who was just a match for you, and
knew how to manage you, and keep you in good heart. Here am I, as loving a
nephew as ever was (I am sure I ought to be!) but I am only a nephew, and I
can't be such a companion to you when you're low and out of sorts as she would
have made herself, years ago, though I'm sure I'd give any money if I could
cheer you up. And so I say, when I see you with anything on your mind, that I
feel quite sorry you haven't got somebody better about you than a blundering
young rough-and-tough boy like me, who has got the will to console you, Uncle,
but hasn't got the way--hasn't got the way,' repeated Walter, reaching over
further yet, to shake his uncle by the hand.
`Wally, my dear boy,' said Solomon, `if the cosey little old lady had taken
her place in this parlour five and forty years ago, I never could have been
fonder of her than I am of you.'
`I know that, Uncle Sol,' returned Walter. `Lord bless you, I know that. But
you wouldn't have had the whole weight of any uncomfortable secrets if she had
been with you, because she would have known how to relieve you of'em, and I
don't.'
`Yes, yes, you do,' returned the instrument-maker.
`Well then, what's the matter, Uncle Sol?' said Walter, coaxingly. `Come!
What's the matter?'
Solomon Gills persisted that there was nothing the matter; and maintained it
so resolutely, that his nephew had no resource but to make a very indifferent
imitation of believing him.
`All I can say is, Uncle Sol, that if there is'
`But there isn't' said Solomon.
`Very well,' said Walter. `Then I've no more to say; and that's lucky, for my
time's up for going to business. I shall look in by-and-by when I'm out, to see
how you get on, Uncle. And mind, Uncle! I'll never believe you again, and never
tell you anything more about Mr. Carker the Junior, if I find out that you have
been deceiving me!'
Solomon Gills laughingly defied him to find out anything of the kind; and
Walter, revolving in his thoughts all sorts of impracticable ways of making
fortunes and placing the wooden midshipman in a position of independence, betook
himself to the offices of Dombey and Son with a heavier countenance than he
usually carried there.
There lived in those days, round the corner--in Bishopsgate Street
Without--one Brogley, sworn broker and appraiser, who kept a shop where every
description of second-hand furniture was exhibited in the most uncomfortable
aspect, and under circumstances and in combinations the most completely foreign
to its purpose. Dozens of chairs hooked on to washing-stands, which with
difficulty poised themselves on the shoulders of sideboards, which in their turn
stood upon the wrong side of dining-tables, gymnastic with their legs upward on
the tops of other dining-tables, were among its most reasonable arrangements. A
banquet array of dish-covers, wine-glasses, and decanters was generally to be
seen, spread forth upon the bosom of a four-post bedstead, for the entertainment
of such genial company as half-a-dozen pokers, and a hall lamp. A set of window
curtains with no windows belonging to them, would be seen gracefully draping a
barricade of chests of drawers, loaded with little jars from chemists' shops;
while a homeless hearthrug severed from its natural companion the fireside,
braved the shrewd east wind in its adversity, and trembled in melancholy accord
with the shrill complainings of a cabinet piano, wasting away, a string a day,
and faintly resounding to the noises of the street in its jangling and
distracted brain. Of motionless clocks that never stirred a finger, and seemed
as incapable of being successfully wound up, as the pecuniary affairs of their
former owners, there was always great choice in Mr. Brogley's shop; and various
looking-glasses, accidentally placed at compound interest of reflection and
refraction, presented to the eye an eternal perspective of bankruptcy and ruin.
Mr. Brogley himself was a moist-eyed, pink-complexioned, crisp-haired man, of
a bulky figure and an easy temper--for that class of Caius Marius who sits upon
the ruins of other people's Carthages, can keep up his spirits well enough. He
had looked in at Solomon's shop sometimes to ask a question about articles in
Solomon's way of business; and Walter knew him sufficiently to give him good day
when they met in the street, but as that was the extent of the broker's
acquaintance with Solomon Gills also, Walter was not a little surprised when he
came back in the course of the forenoon, agreeably to his promise, to find Mr.
Brogley sitting in the back parlour with his hands in his pockets, and his hat
hanging up behind the door.
`Well, Uncle Sol!' said Walter. The old man was sitting ruefully on the
opposite side of the table, with his spectacles over his eyes, for a wonder,
instead on his forehead. `How are you now?'
Solomon shook his head, and waved one hand towards the broker as, introducing
him.
`Is there anything the matter?' asked Walter, with a catching in his breath.
`No, no. There's nothing the matter,' said Mr. Brogley. `Don't let it put you
out of the way.'
Walter looked from the broker to his uncle in mute amazement.
`The fact is,' said Mr. Brogley, `there's a little payment on a bond
debt--three hundred and seventy odd, over due: and I'm in possession.'
`In possession!' cried Walter, looking round at the shop.
`Ah!' said Mr. Brogley, in confidential assent, and nodding his head as if he
would urge the advisability of their all being comfortable together. `It's an
execution. That's what it is. Don't let it put you out of the way. I come
myself, because of keeping it quiet and sociable. You know me. It's quite
private.'
`Uncle Sol!' faltered Walter.
`Wally, my boy,' returned his uncle. `It's the first time. Such a calamity
never happened to me before. I'm an old man to begin.' Pushing up his spectacles
again (for they were useless any longer to conceal his emotion), he covered his
face with his hand, and sobbed aloud, and his tears fell down upon his coffee-coloured
waistcoat.
`Uncle Sol! Pray! oh don't!' exclaimed Walter, who really felt a thrill of
terror in seeing the old man weep. `For God's sake don't do that. Mr. Brogley,
what shall I do?'
`I should recommend you looking up a friend or so,' said Mr. Brogley, `and
talking it over.'
`To be sure!' cried Walter, catching at anything. `Certainly! Thankee.
Captain Cuttle's the man, Uncle. Wait till I run to Captain Cuttle. Keep your
eye upon my Uncle, will you, Mr. Brogley, and make him as comfortable as you can
while I am gone? Don't despair, Uncle Sol. Try and keep a good heart, there's a
dear fellow!'
Saying this with great fervour, and disregarding the old man's broken
remonstrances, Walter dashed out of the shop again as hard as he could go; and
having hurried round to the office to excuse himself on the plea of his uncle's
sudden illness, set off, full speed, for Captain Cuttle's residence.
Everything seemed altered as he ran along the streets. There were the usual
entanglement and noise of carts, drays, omni-buses, waggons, and foot
passengers, but the misfortune that had fallen on the wooden midshipman made it
strange and new. Houses and shops were different from what they used to be, and
bore Mr. Brogley's warrant on their fronts in large character. The broker seemed
to have got hold of the very churches; for their spires rose into the sky with
an unwonted air. Even the sky itself was changed, and had an execution in it
plainly.
Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little canal near the India Docks,
where there was a swivel bridge which opened now and then to let some wandering
monster of a ship come roaming up the street like a stranded leviathan. The
gradual change from land to water, on the approach to Captain Cuttle's lodgings,
was curious. It began with the erection of flag-staffs, as appurtenances to
public-houses; then came slop-sellers' shops, with Guernsey shirts, sou'wester
hats, and canvas pantaloons, at once the tightest and the loosest of their
order, hanging up outside. These were succeeded by anchor and chain-cable
forges, where sledge-hammers were dinging upon iron all day long. Then came rows
of houses, with little vanesurmounted masts uprearing themselves from among the
scarlet beans. Then ditches. Then pollard willows. Then more ditches. Then
unaccountable patches of dirty water, hardly to be descried, for the ships that
covered them. Then, the air was perfumed with chips; and all other trades were
swallowed up in mast, oar, and block-making, and boat-building. Then, the ground
grew marshy and unsettled. Then, there was nothing to be smelt but rum and
sugar. Then, Captain Cuttle's lodgings--at once a first floor and a top story,
in Brig Place--were close before you.
The captain was one of those timber-looking men, suits of oak as well as
hearts, whom it is almost impossible for the liveliest imagination to separate
from any part of their dress, however insignificant. Accordingly, when Walter
knocked at the door, and the Captain instantly poked his head out of one of his
little front windows, and hailed him, with the hard glazed hat already on it,
and the shirt-collar like a sail, and the wide suite of blue, all standing as
usual, Walter was as fully persuaded that he was always in that state, as if the
Captain had been a bird and those had been his feathers.
`Wal'r, my lad!' said Captain Cuttle. `Stand by and knock again. Hard! It's
washing day.'
Walter, in his impatience, gave a prodigious thump with the knocker.
`Hard it is!' said Captain Cuttle, and immediately drew in his head, as if he
expected a squall.
Nor was he mistaken: for a widow lady, with her sleeves rolled up to her
shoulders, and her arms frothy with soap-suds and smoking with hot water,
replied to the summons with startling rapidity. Before she looked at Walter she
looked at the knocker, and then, measuring him with her eyes from head to foot,
said she wondered he had left any of it.
`Captain Cuttle's at home, I know,' said Walter with a conciliatory smile.
`Is he?' replied the widow lady. `In-deed!'
`He has just been speaking to me,' said Walter, in breathless explanation.
`Has he?' replied the widow lady. `Then p'raps you'll give him Mrs.
MacStinger's respects, and say that the next time he lowers himself and his
lodgings by talking out of winder she'll thank him to come down and open the
door too.' Mrs. MacStinger spoke loud, and listened for any observations that
might be offered from the first floor.
`I'll mention it,' said Walter, `if you'll have the goodness to let me in,
ma'am.'
For he was repelled by a wooden fortification extending across the doorway,
and put there to prevent the little Mac Stingers in their moments of recreation
from tumbling down the steps.
`A boy that can knock my door down,' said Mrs. MacStinger, contemptuously,
`can get over that, I should hope!' But Walter, taking this as a permission to
enter, and getting over it, Mrs. MacStinger immediately demanded whether an
Englishwoman's house was her castle or not; and whether she was to be broke in
upon by `raff.' On these subjects her thirst for information was still very
importunate, when Walter, having made his way up the little staircase through an
artificial fog occasioned by the washing, which covered the banisters with a
clammy perspiration, entered Captain Cuttle's room, and found that gentleman in
ambush behind the door.
`Never owed her a penny, Wal'r,' said Captain Cuttle, in a low voice, and
with visible marks of trepidation on his countenance. `Done her a world of good
turns, and the children too. Vixen at times, though. Whew!'
`I should go away, Captain Cuttle,' said Walter.
`Dursn't do it, Wal'r,' returned the Captain. `She'd find me out, wherever I
went. Sit down. How's Gills?'
The Captain was dining (in his hat) off cold loin of mutton, porter, and some
smoking hot potatoes, which he had cooked himself, and took out of a little
saucepan before the fire as he wanted them. He unscrewed his hook at dinnertime,
and screwed a knife into its wooden socket instead, with which he had already
begun to peel one of these potatoes for Walter. His rooms were very small, and
strongly impregnated with tobacco-smoke, but snug enough: everything being
stowed away, as if there were an earthquake regularly every half-hour.
`How's Gills?' inquired the Captain.
Walter, who had by this time recovered his breath, and lost his spirits--or
such temporary spirits as his rapid journey had given him--looked at his
questioner for a moment, said `Oh, Captain Cuttle!' and burst into tears.
No words can describe the Captain's consternation at this sight. Mrs.
MacStinger faded into nothing before it. He dropped the potato and the fork--and
would have dropped the knife too if he could--and sat gazing at the boy, as if
he expected to hear next moment that a gulf had opened in the City, which had
swallowed up his old friend, coffee-coloured suit, buttons, chronometer,
spectacles and all.
But when Walter told him what was really the matter, Captain Cuttle, after a
moment's reflection, started up into full activity. He emptied out of a little
tin canister on the top shelf of the cupboard, his whole stock of ready money
(amounting to thirteen pounds and half-a-crown), which he transferred to one of
the pockets of his square blue coat; further enriched that repository with the
contents of his plate chest, consisting of two withered atomies of tea-spoons,
and an obsolete pair of knock-knee'd sugar-tongs; pulled up his immense
doublecased silver watch from the depths in which it reposed, to assure himself
that that valuable was sound and whole; re-attached the hook to his right wrist;
and seizing the stick covered over with knobs, bade Walter come along.
Remembering, however, in the midst of his virtuous excitement, that Mrs.
MacStinger might be lying in wait below, Captain Cuttle hesitated at last, not
without glancing at the window, as if he had some thoughts of escaping by that
unusual means of egress, rather than encounter his terrible enemy. He decided,
however, in favour of stratagem.
`Wal'r,' said the Captain, with a timid wink, `go afore, my lad. Sing out,
`good-bye, Captain Cuttle,' when you're in the passage, and shut the door. Then
wait at the corner of the street 'till you see me.'
These directions were not issued without a previous knowledge of the enemy's
tactics, for when Walter got down stairs, Mrs. MacStinger glided out of the
little back kitchen, like an avenging spirit. But not gliding out upon the
Captain, as she had expected, she merely made a further allusion to the knocker,
and glided in again.
Some five minutes elapsed before Captain Cuttle could summon courage to
attempt his escape; for Walter waited so long at the street corner, looking back
at the house, before there were any symptoms of the hard glazed hat. At length
the Captain burst out of the door with the suddenness of an explosion, and
coming towards him at a great pace, and never once looking over his shoulder,
pretended, as soon as they were well out of the street, to whistle a tune.
`Uncle much hove down, Wal'r?' inquired the Captain, as they were walking
along.
`I am afraid so. If you had seen him this morning, you would never have
forgotten it.'
`Walk fast, Wal'r, my lad,' returned the Captain, mending his pace; `and walk
the same all the days of your life. Over-haul the catechism for that advice, and
keep it!'
The Captain was too busy with his own thoughts of Solomon Gills, mingled
perhaps with some reflections on his late escape from Mrs. MacStinger, to offer
any further quotations on the way for Walter's moral improvement. They
interchanged no other word until they arrived at old Sol's door, where the
unfortunate wooden midshipman, with his instrument at his eye, seemed to be
surveying the whole horizon in search of some friend to help him out of his
difficulty.
`Gills!' said the Captain, hurrying into the back parlour, and taking him by
the hand quite tenderly. `Lay your head well to the wind, and we'll fight
through it. All you've got to do,' said the Captain, with the solemnity of a man
who was delivering himself of one of the most precious practical tenets ever
discovered by human wisdom, `is to lay your head well to the wind, and we'll
fight through it!'
Old Sol returned the pressure of his hand, and thanked him.
Captain Cuttle, then, with a gravity suitable to the nature of the occasion,
put down upon the table the two tea-spoons and the sugar-tongs, the silver
watch, and the ready money; and asked Mr. Brogley, the broker, what the damage
was.
`Come! What do you make of it?' said Captain Cuttle.
`Why, Lord help you!' returned the broker; `you don't suppose that property's
of any use, do you?'
`Why not?' inquired the Captain.
`Why? The amount's three hundred and seventy, odd,' replied the broker.
`Never mind,' returned the Captain, though he was evidently dismayed by the
figures: `all's fish that comes to your net, I suppose?'
`Certainly,' said Mr. Brogley. `But sprats an't whales, you know.'
The philosophy of this observation seemed to strike the Captain. He ruminated
for a minute; eyeing the broker, meanwhile, as a deep genius; and then called
the instrument-maker aside.
`Gills,' said Captain Cuttle, `what's the bearings of this business? Who's
the creditor?'
`Hush!' returned the old man. `Come away. Don't speak before Wally. It's a
matter of security for Wally's father--an old bond. I've paid a good deal of it,
Ned, but the times are so bad with me that I can't do more just now. I've
foreseen it, but I couldn't help it. Not a word before Wally, for all the
world.'
`You've got some money, haven't you?' whispered the Captain.
`Yes, yes--oh yes--I've got some,' returned old Sol, first putting his hands
into his empty pockets, and then squeezing his Welsh wig between them, as if he
thought he might wring some gold out of it; `but I--the little I have got, isn't
convertible, Ned; it can't be got at. I have been trying to do something with it
for Wally, and I'm old fashioned, and behind the time. It's here and there,
and--and, in short, it's as good as nowhere,' said the old man, looking in
bewilderment about him.
He had so much the air of a half-witted person who had been hiding his money
in a variety of places, and had forgotten where, that the Captain followed his
eyes, not without a faint hope that he might remember some few hundred pounds
concealed up the chimney, or down in the cellar. But Solomon Gills knew better
than that.
`I'm behind the time altogether, my dear Ned,' said Sol, in resigned despair,
`a long way. It's no use my lagging on so far behind it. The stock had better be
sold--it's worth more than this debt--and I had better go and die somewhere, on
the balance. I haven't any energy left. I don't understand things. This had
better be the end of it. Let'em sell the stock and take him down,' said the old
man, pointing feebly to the wooden midshipman, `and let us both be broken up
together.'
`And what d'ye mean to do with Wal'r?' said the Captain. `There, there! Sit
ye down, Gills, sit ye down, and let me think o' this. If I warn't a man on a
small annuity, that was large enough till to-day, I hadn't need to think of it.
But you only lay your head well to the wind,' said the Captain, again
administering that unanswerable piece of consolation, `and you're all right!'
Old Sol thanked him from his heart, and went and laid it against the back
parlour fire-place instead.
Captain Cuttle walked up and down the shop for some time, cogitating
profoundly, and bringing his bushy black eyebrows to bear so heavily on his
nose, like clouds setting on a mountain, that Walter was afraid to offer any
interruption to the current of his reflections. Mr. Brogley, who was averse to
being any constraint upon the party, and who had an ingenious cast of mind,
went, softly whistling, among, the stock; rattling weather-glasses, shaking
compasses as if they were physic, catching up keys with loadstones, looking
through telescopes, endeavouring to make himself acquainted with the use of the
globes setting parallel rulers astride on to his nose, and amusing himself with
other philosophical transactions.
`Wal'r?' said the Captain at last. `I've got it.'
`Have you, Captain Cuttle?' cried Walter, with great animation.
`Come this way, my lad,' said the Captain. `The Stock's one security. I'm
another. Your governor's the man to advance the money.'
`Mr. Dombey!' faltered Walter.
The Captain nodded gravely. `Look at him,' he said, `Look at Gills. If they
was to sell of these things now, he'd die of it. You know, he would. We mustn't
leave a stone unturned--and there's a stone for you.'
`A stone!--Mr. Dombey! faltered Walter.
`You run round to the office, first of all, and see if he's there,' said
Captain Cuttle, clapping him on the back. `Quick!'
Walter felt he must not dispute the command--a glance at his uncle would have
determined him if he had felt otherwise--and disappeared to execute it. He soon
returned, out of breath, to say that Mr. Dombey was not there. It was Saturday,
and he had gone to Brighton.
`I tell you what, Wal'r!' said the Captain, who seemed to have prepared
himself for this contingency in his absence. `We'll go to Brighton. I'll back
you, my boy. I'll back you, Wal'r. We'll go to Brighton by the afternoon's
coach.'
If the application must be made to Mr. Dombey at all, which was awful to
think of, Walter felt that he would rather prefer it alone and unassisted, than
backed by the personal influence of Captain Cuttle, to which he hardly thought
Mr. Dombey would attach much weight. But as the Captain appeared to be of quite
another opinion, and was bent upon it, and as his friendship was too zealous and
serious to be trifled with by one so much younger than himself, he forbore to
hint the least objection. Cuttle, therefore, taking a hurried leave of Solomon
Gills, and returning the ready money, the tea-spoons, the sugar-tongs, and the
silver watch, to his pocket--with a view, as Walter thought, with horror, to
making a gorgeous impression on Mr. Dombey--bore him off to the coach-office,
without a minute's delay, and repeatedly assured him, on the road, that he would
stick by him to the last.
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