he usually seeks consolation in the society of Mrs
Perch at Balls Pond; and Mrs Perch frets a good deal, for she fears his
confidence in woman is shaken now, and that he half expects on coming
home at night to find her gone off with some Viscount--'which,' as she
observes to an intimate female friend, 'is what these wretches in the
form of woman have to answer for, Mrs P. It ain't the harm they do
themselves so much as what they reflect upon us, Ma'am; and I see it in
Perch's eye.

Mr Dombey's servants are becoming, at the same time, quite dissipated,
and unfit for other service. They have hot suppers every night, and
'talk it over' with smoking drinks upon the board. Mr Towlinson is
always maudlin after half-past ten, and frequently begs to know whether
he didn't say that no good would ever come of living in a corner house?
They whisper about Miss Florence, and wonder where she is; but agree
that if Mr Dombey don't know, Mrs Dombey does. This brings them to the
latter, of whom Cook says, She had a stately way though, hadn't she?
But she was too high! They all agree that she was too high, and Mr
Towlinson's old flame, the housemaid (who is very virtuous), entreats
that you will never talk to her any more about people who hold their
heads up, as if the ground wasn't good enough for 'em.

Everything that is said and done about it, except by Mr Dombey, is done
in chorus. Mr Dombey and the world are alone together.

CHAPTER 52. Secret Intelligence

Good Mrs Brown and her daughter Alice kept silent company together, in
their own dwelling. It was early in the evening, and late in the spring.
But a few days had elapsed since Mr Dombey had told Major Bagstock of
his singular intelligence, singularly obtained, which might turn out
to be valueless, and might turn out to be true; and the world was not
satisfied yet.

The mother and daughter sat for a long time without interchanging a
word: almost without motion. The old woman's face was shrewdly anxious
and expectant; that of her daughter was expectant too, but in a
less sharp degree, and sometimes it darkened, as if with gathering
disappointment and incredulity. The old woman, without heeding these
changes in its expression, though her eyes were often turned towards it,
sat mumbling and munching, and listening confidently.

Their abode, though poor and miserable, was not so utterly wretched as
in the days when only Good Mrs Brown inhabited it. Some few attempts at
c