airs to learn what
that fashionable physician, Dr. Parker Peps, had to say, for Mrs. Dombey
lay very weak and still.

"Dombey and Son"--those three words conveyed the idea of Mr. Dombey's
life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and
moon were made to give them light.

He had risen, as his father had before him, in the course of life and
death, from Son to Dombey, and for nearly twenty years had been the sole
representative of the firm. Of those years he had been married
ten--married, as some said, to a lady with no heart to give him. But
such idle talk never reached the ears of Mr. Dombey. Dombey and Son
often dealt in hides, never in hearts. Mr. Dombey would have reasoned
that a matrimonial alliance with himself _must_, in the nature of
things, be gratifying and honourable to any woman of commonsense.

One drawback only could be admitted. Until the present day there had
been no issue--to speak of. There had been a girl some six years before,
a child who now crouched by her mother's bed, unobserved. But what was
that girl to Dombey and Son?

"Nature must be called upon to make a vigorous effort in this instance!"
said Doctor Parker Peps, referring to Mrs. Dombey.

Mrs. Chick, Mr. Dombey's married sister, emphasised this opinion.

"Now my dear Paul," said Mrs. Chick, "you may rest assured that there is
nothing wanting but an effort on Fanny's part."

They returned to the sick-room and its stillness. In vain Mrs. Chick
exhorted her sister-in-law to make an effort; no sound came in answer
but the loud ticking of Mr. Dombey's watch and Dr. Parker Pep's watch,
which seemed in the silence to be running a race.

"Fanny!" said Mrs. Chick, "Only look at me. Only open your eyes to show
me that you hear and understand me."

Still no answer. Mrs. Dombey lay motionless, clasping her little
daughter to her breast.

"Mamma!" cried the child, sobbing aloud. "Oh, dear mamma!"

Thus clinging fast to that slight spar within her arms, the mother
drifted out upon the dark and unknown sea that rolls round all the
world.

Mr. Dombey, in the days to come, could not forget that closing scene--
that he had had no part in it; that he had stood a mere spectator while
those two figures lay clasped in each other's arms. His previous
feelings of indifference towards his little daughter Florence changed
into an uneasiness of an extraordinary kind. He had never conceived an
aversion to her; it had not been wor