Tox improves an Old Acquaintance
39. Further Adventures of Captain Edward Cuttle, Mariner
40. Domestic Relations
41. New Voices in the Waves
42. Confidential and Accidental
43. The Watches of the Night
44. A Separation
45. The Trusty Agent
46. Recognizant and Reflective
47. The Thunderbolt
48. The Flight of Florence
49. The Midshipman makes a Discovery
50. Mr Toots's Complaint
51. Mr Dombey and the World
52. Secret Intelligence
53. More Intelligence
54. The Fugitives
55. Rob the Grinder loses his Place
56. Several People delighted, and the Game Chicken disgusted
57. Another Wedding
58. After a Lapse
59. Retribution
60. Chiefly Matrimonial
61. Relenting
62. Final

CHAPTER 1. Dombey and Son

Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great arm-chair
by the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead,
carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and
close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin,
and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new.

Dombey was about eight-and-forty years of age. Son about eight-and-forty
minutes. Dombey was rather bald, rather red, and though a handsome
well-made man, too stern and pompous in appearance, to be prepossessing.
Son was very bald, and very red, and though (of course) an undeniably
fine infant, somewhat crushed and spotty in his general effect, as yet.
On the brow of Dombey, Time and his brother Care had set some marks, as
on a tree that was to come down in good time--remorseless twins they are
for striding through their human forests, notching as they go--while the
countenance of Son was crossed with a thousand little creases, which the
same deceitful Time would take delight in smoothing out and wearing away
with the flat part of his scythe, as a preparation of the surface for
his deeper operations.

Dombey, exulting in the long-looked-for event, jingled and jingled the
heavy gold watch-chain that depended from below his trim blue coat,
whereof the buttons sparkled phosphorescently in the feeble rays of the
distant fire. Son, with his little fists curled up and clenched, seemed,
in his feeble way, to be squaring at existence for having come upon him
so unexpectedly.

'The House will once again, Mrs Dombey,' said Mr Dombey, 'be not only in
name but in fact Dombey and Son;' and he added, in a tone