and breasting the window of his solitary cage when birds flew by, as if
he would have emulated them, and soared away!

CHAPTER 13. Shipping Intelligence and Office Business

Mr Dombey's offices were in a court where there was an old-established
stall of choice fruit at the corner: where perambulating merchants, of
both sexes, offered for sale at any time between the hours of ten and
five, slippers, pocket-books, sponges, dogs' collars, and Windsor soap;
and sometimes a pointer or an oil-painting.

The pointer always came that way, with a view to the Stock Exchange,
where a sporting taste (originating generally in bets of new hats)
is much in vogue. The other commodities were addressed to the general
public; but they were never offered by the vendors to Mr Dombey. When
he appeared, the dealers in those wares fell off respectfully. The
principal slipper and dogs' collar man--who considered himself a public
character, and whose portrait was screwed on to an artist's door in
Cheapside--threw up his forefinger to the brim of his hat as Mr Dombey
went by. The ticket-porter, if he were not absent on a job, always ran
officiously before, to open Mr Dombey's office door as wide as possible,
and hold it open, with his hat off, while he entered.

The clerks within were not a whit behind-hand in their demonstrations of
respect. A solemn hush prevailed, as Mr Dombey passed through the outer
office. The wit of the Counting-House became in a moment as mute as the
row of leathern fire-buckets hanging up behind him. Such vapid and flat
daylight as filtered through the ground-glass windows and skylights,
leaving a black sediment upon the panes, showed the books and papers,
and the figures bending over them, enveloped in a studious gloom, and as
much abstracted in appearance, from the world without, as if they were
assembled at the bottom of the sea; while a mouldy little strong room in
the obscure perspective, where a shaded lamp was always burning, might
have represented the cavern of some ocean monster, looking on with a red
eye at these mysteries of the deep.

When Perch the messenger, whose place was on a little bracket, like a
timepiece, saw Mr Dombey come in--or rather when he felt that he was
coming, for he had usually an instinctive sense of his approach--he
hurried into Mr Dombey's room, stirred the fire, carried fresh coals
from the bowels of the coal-box, hung the newspaper to air upon the
fender, put the chair ready