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 assistance. 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 work-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, light-headed 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?’
‘Ay,’ 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 t.’
‘I say, Uncle! You musn’t really, you know!’ urged Walter. ‘Don’t!’
Old Sol endeavoured to assume a cheery 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 in 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, cosy 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 cosy 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
