e-faced man was understood to growl, 'Flat iron.

'I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Miss Tox, 'did you?

'Flat iron,' he repeated.

'Oh yes,' said Miss Tox. 'Yes! quite true. I forgot. The little
creature, in his mother's absence, smelt a warm flat iron. You're quite
right, Sir. You were going to have the goodness to inform me, when we
arrived at the door that you were by trade a--'

'Stoker,' said the man.

'A choker!' said Miss Tox, quite aghast.

'Stoker,' said the man. 'Steam ingine.'

'Oh-h! Yes!' returned Miss Tox, looking thoughtfully at him, and seeming
still to have but a very imperfect understanding of his meaning.

'And how do you like it, Sir?'

'Which, Mum?' said the man.

'That,' replied Miss Tox. 'Your trade.'

'Oh! Pretty well, Mum. The ashes sometimes gets in here;' touching his
chest: 'and makes a man speak gruff, as at the present time. But it is
ashes, Mum, not crustiness.'

Miss Tox seemed to be so little enlightened by this reply, as to find
a difficulty in pursuing the subject. But Mrs Chick relieved her, by
entering into a close private examination of Polly, her children, her
marriage certificate, testimonials, and so forth. Polly coming out
unscathed from this ordeal, Mrs Chick withdrew with her report to her
brother's room, and as an emphatic comment on it, and corroboration of
it, carried the two rosiest little Toodles with her. Toodle being the
family name of the apple-faced family.

Mr Dombey had remained in his own apartment since the death of his wife,
absorbed in visions of the youth, education, and destination of his baby
son. Something lay at the bottom of his cool heart, colder and heavier
than its ordinary load; but it was more a sense of the child's loss than
his own, awakening within him an almost angry sorrow. That the life
and progress on which he built such hopes, should be endangered in the
outset by so mean a want; that Dombey and Son should be tottering for
a nurse, was a sore humiliation. And yet in his pride and jealousy, he
viewed with so much bitterness the thought of being dependent for the
very first step towards the accomplishment of his soul's desire, on a
hired serving-woman who would be to the child, for the time, all that
even his alliance could have made his own wife, that in every new
rejection of a candidate he felt a secret pleasure. The time had now
come, however, when he could no longer be divided between these two sets
of feelings. The less so, a