.
They tell me he never leaves his room.'

'Is he said to be ill?' inquires Miss Tox.

'No, Ma'am, not that I know of,' returns Polly, 'except in his mind. He
must be very bad there, poor gentleman!'

Miss Tox's sympathy is such that she can scarcely speak. She is no
chicken, but she has not grown tough with age and celibacy. Her heart is
very tender, her compassion very genuine, her homage very real. Beneath
the locket with the fishy eye in it, Miss Tox bears better qualities
than many a less whimsical outside; such qualities as will outlive, by
many courses of the sun, the best outsides and brightest husks that fall
in the harvest of the great reaper.

It is long before Miss Tox goes away, and before Polly, with a candle
flaring on the blank stairs, looks after her, for company, down the
street, and feels unwilling to go back into the dreary house, and jar
its emptiness with the heavy fastenings of the door, and glide away to
bed. But all this Polly does; and in the morning sets in one of those
darkened rooms such matters as she has been advised to prepare, and then
retires and enters them no more until next morning at the same hour.
There are bells there, but they never ring; and though she can sometimes
hear a footfall going to and fro, it never comes out.

Miss Tox returns early in the day. It then begins to be Miss Tox's
occupation to prepare little dainties--or what are such to her--to be
carried into these rooms next morning. She derives so much satisfaction
from the pursuit, that she enters on it regularly from that time; and
brings daily in her little basket, various choice condiments selected
from the scanty stores of the deceased owner of the powdered head and
pigtail. She likewise brings, in sheets of curl-paper, morsels of
cold meats, tongues of sheep, halves of fowls, for her own dinner; and
sharing these collations with Polly, passes the greater part of her time
in the ruined house that the rats have fled from: hiding, in a fright
at every sound, stealing in and out like a criminal; only desiring to be
true to the fallen object of her admiration, unknown to him, unknown to
all the world but one poor simple woman.

The Major knows it; but no one is the wiser for that, though the Major
is much the merrier. The Major, in a fit of curiosity, has charged
the Native to watch the house sometimes, and find out what becomes of
Dombey. The Native has reported Miss Tox's fidelity, and the Major has
nearly ch