re to
offer a suggestion which he thinks will meet the position in which
they find themselves. The refreshment being produced, and very heartily
partaken of, Mr Towlinson's suggestion is, in effect, that Cook is
going, and that if we are not true to ourselves, nobody will be true
to us. That they have lived in that house a long time, and exerted
themselves very much to be sociable together. (At this, Cook says, with
emotion, 'Hear, hear!' and Mrs Perch, who is there again, and full to
the throat, sheds tears.) And that he thinks, at the present time, the
feeling ought to be 'Go one, go all!' The housemaid is much affected by
this generous sentiment, and warmly seconds it. Cook says she feels it's
right, and only hopes it's not done as a compliment to her, but from a
sense of duty. Mr Towlinson replies, from a sense of duty; and that now
he is driven to express his opinions, he will openly say, that he does
not think it over-respectable to remain in a house where Sales and
such-like are carrying forwards. The housemaid is sure of it; and
relates, in confirmation, that a strange man, in a carpet cap, offered,
this very morning, to kiss her on the stairs. Hereupon, Mr Towlinson is
starting from his chair, to seek and 'smash' the offender; when he is
laid hold on by the ladies, who beseech him to calm himself, and
to reflect that it is easier and wiser to leave the scene of such
indecencies at once. Mrs Perch, presenting the case in a new light,
even shows that delicacy towards Mr Dombey, shut up in his own rooms,
imperatively demands precipitate retreat. 'For what,' says the good
woman, 'must his feelings be, if he was to come upon any of the poor
servants that he once deceived into thinking him immensely rich!' Cook
is so struck by this moral consideration, that Mrs Perch improves it
with several pious axioms, original and selected. It becomes a clear
case that they must all go. Boxes are packed, cabs fetched, and at dusk
that evening there is not one member of the party left.

The house stands, large and weather-proof, in the long dull street; but
it is a ruin, and the rats fly from it.

The men in the carpet caps go on tumbling the furniture about; and the
gentlemen with the pens and ink make out inventories of it, and sit upon
pieces of furniture never made to be sat upon, and eat bread and cheese
from the public-house on other pieces of furniture never made to be
eaten on, and seem to have a delight in appropriating