o not a word spake
Captain Cuttle. But when he felt his arm clasped closer, and when he
felt the lonely head come nearer to it, and lay itself against his
homely coarse blue sleeve, he pressed it gently with his rugged hand,
and understood it, and was understood.

'Better now, my pretty!' said the Captain. 'Cheerily, cheerily, I'll go
down below, and get some dinner ready. Will you come down of your own
self, arterwards, pretty, or shall Ed'ard Cuttle come and fetch you?'

As Florence assured him that she was quite able to walk downstairs, the
Captain, though evidently doubtful of his own hospitality in permitting
it, left her to do so, and immediately set about roasting a fowl at
the fire in the little parlour. To achieve his cookery with the greater
skill, he pulled off his coat, tucked up his wristbands, and put on his
glazed hat, without which assistant he never applied himself to any nice
or difficult undertaking.

After cooling her aching head and burning face in the fresh water which
the Captain's care had provided for her while she slept, Florence went
to the little mirror to bind up her disordered hair. Then she knew--in
a moment, for she shunned it instantly, that on her breast there was the
darkening mark of an angry hand.

Her tears burst forth afresh at the sight; she was ashamed and afraid of
it; but it moved her to no anger against him. Homeless and fatherless,
she forgave him everything; hardly thought that she had need to forgive
him, or that she did; but she fled from the idea of him as she had fled
from the reality, and he was utterly gone and lost. There was no such
Being in the world.

What to do, or where to live, Florence--poor, inexperienced girl!--could
not yet consider. She had indistinct dreams of finding, a long way off,
some little sisters to instruct, who would be gentle with her, and to
whom, under some feigned name, she might attach herself, and who
would grow up in their happy home, and marry, and be good to their old
governess, and perhaps entrust her, in time, with the education of their
own daughters. And she thought how strange and sorrowful it would be,
thus to become a grey-haired woman, carrying her secret to the grave,
when Florence Dombey was forgotten. But it was all dim and clouded to
her now. She only knew that she had no Father upon earth, and she said
so, many times, with her suppliant head hidden from all, but her Father
who was in Heaven.

Her little stock of money