s face
immediately, and she neither moved nor answered.

'Her insensibility is as proof against a brother as against every thing
else,' said Mr Dombey to himself He seemed so confirmed in a previous
opinion by the discovery, as to be quite glad of it.'

Next moment, the lady had opened her eyes and seen the child; and the
child had run towards her; and, standing on tiptoe, the better to hide
her face in her embrace, had clung about her with a desperate affection
very much at variance with her years.

'Oh Lord bless me!' said Mr Dombey, rising testily. 'A very illadvised
and feverish proceeding this, I am sure. Please to ring there for Miss
Florence's nurse. Really the person should be more care-'

'Wait! I--had better ask Doctor Peps if he'll have the goodness to step
upstairs again perhaps. I'll go down. I'll go down. I needn't beg you,'
he added, pausing for a moment at the settee before the fire, 'to take
particular care of this young gentleman, Mrs ----'

'Blockitt, Sir?' suggested the nurse, a simpering piece of faded
gentility, who did not presume to state her name as a fact, but merely
offered it as a mild suggestion.

'Of this young gentleman, Mrs Blockitt.'

'No, Sir, indeed. I remember when Miss Florence was born--'

'Ay, ay, ay,' said Mr Dombey, bending over the basket bedstead, and
slightly bending his brows at the same time. 'Miss Florence was all very
well, but this is another matter. This young gentleman has to accomplish
a destiny. A destiny, little fellow!' As he thus apostrophised the
infant he raised one of his hands to his lips, and kissed it; then,
seeming to fear that the action involved some compromise of his dignity,
went, awkwardly enough, away.

Doctor Parker Peps, one of the Court Physicians, and a man of immense
reputation for assisting at the increase of great families, was
walking up and down the drawing-room with his hands behind him, to the
unspeakable admiration of the family Surgeon, who had regularly puffed
the case for the last six weeks, among all his patients, friends, and
acquaintances, as one to which he was in hourly expectation day and
night of being summoned, in conjunction with Doctor Parker Pep.

'Well, Sir,' said Doctor Parker Peps in a round, deep, sonorous voice,
muffled for the occasion, like the knocker; 'do you find that your dear
lady is at all roused by your visit?'

'Stimulated as it were?' said the family practitioner faintly: bowing at
the same time to