, and the screen in its place, and was
round upon his heel on the instant of Mr Dombey's entrance, to take his
great-coat and hat, and hang them up. Then Perch took the newspaper,
and gave it a turn or two in his hands before the fire, and laid it,
deferentially, at Mr Dombey's elbow. And so little objection had Perch
to being deferential in the last degree, that if he might have laid
himself at Mr Dombey's feet, or might have called him by some such title
as used to be bestowed upon the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, he would have
been all the better pleased.

As this honour would have been an innovation and an experiment, Perch
was fain to content himself by expressing as well as he could, in his
manner, You are the light of my Eyes. You are the Breath of my Soul. You
are the commander of the Faithful Perch! With this imperfect happiness
to cheer him, he would shut the door softly, walk away on tiptoe, and
leave his great chief to be stared at, through a dome-shaped window in
the leads, by ugly chimney-pots and backs of houses, and especially by
the bold window of a hair-cutting saloon on a first floor, where a waxen
effigy, bald as a Mussulman in the morning, and covered, after eleven
o'clock in the day, with luxuriant hair and whiskers in the latest
Christian fashion, showed him the wrong side of its head for ever.

Between Mr Dombey and the common world, as it was accessible through
the medium of the outer office--to which Mr Dombey's presence in his own
room may be said to have struck like damp, or cold air--there were two
degrees of descent. Mr Carker in his own office was the first step;
Mr Morfin, in his own office, was the second. Each of these gentlemen
occupied a little chamber like a bath-room, opening from the passage
outside Mr Dombey's door. Mr Carker, as Grand Vizier, inhabited the room
that was nearest to the Sultan. Mr Morfin, as an officer of inferior
state, inhabited the room that was nearest to the clerks.

The gentleman last mentioned was a cheerful-looking, hazel-eyed elderly
bachelor: gravely attired, as to his upper man, in black; and as to his
legs, in pepper-and-salt colour. His dark hair was just touched here and
there with specks of gray, as though the tread of Time had splashed
it; and his whiskers were already white. He had a mighty respect for Mr
Dombey, and rendered him due homage; but as he was of a genial temper
himself, and never wholly at his ease in that stately presence, he was
disqui