eary windows, pressed the little fellow
closer to her breast, the withered leaves came showering down.

CHAPTER 6. Paul's Second Deprivation

Polly was beset by so many misgivings in the morning, that but for
the incessant promptings of her black-eyed companion, she would have
abandoned all thoughts of the expedition, and formally petitioned for
leave to see number one hundred and forty-seven, under the awful shadow
of Mr Dombey's roof. But Susan who was personally disposed in favour
of the excursion, and who (like Tony Lumpkin), if she could bear the
disappointments of other people with tolerable fortitude, could not
abide to disappoint herself, threw so many ingenious doubts in the way
of this second thought, and stimulated the original intention with so
many ingenious arguments, that almost as soon as Mr Dombey's stately
back was turned, and that gentleman was pursuing his daily road towards
the City, his unconscious son was on his way to Staggs's Gardens.

This euphonious locality was situated in a suburb, known by the
inhabitants of Staggs's Gardens by the name of Camberling Town; a
designation which the Strangers' Map of London, as printed (with a
view to pleasant and commodious reference) on pocket handkerchiefs,
condenses, with some show of reason, into Camden Town. Hither the two
nurses bent their steps, accompanied by their charges; Richards carrying
Paul, of course, and Susan leading little Florence by the hand, and
giving her such jerks and pokes from time to time, as she considered it
wholesome to administer.

The first shock of a great earthquake had, just at that period, rent the
whole neighbourhood to its centre. Traces of its course were visible
on every side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and
stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of
earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking,
propped by great beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown and
jumbled together, lay topsy-turvy at the bottom of a steep unnatural
hill; there, confused treasures of iron soaked and rusted in something
that had accidentally become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that led
nowhere; thoroughfares that were wholly impassable; Babel towers
of chimneys, wanting half their height; temporary wooden houses
and enclosures, in the most unlikely situations; carcases of ragged
tenements, and fragments of unfinished walls and arches, and piles of
scaffol