s is a going to learn me,
when he's old enough, and been to school himself.'

'Well,' said Mr Dombey, after looking at him attentively, and with no
great favour, as he stood gazing round the room (principally round the
ceiling) and still drawing his hand across and across his mouth. 'You
heard what I said to your wife just now?'

'Polly heerd it,' said Toodle, jerking his hat over his shoulder in the
direction of the door, with an air of perfect confidence in his better
half. 'It's all right.'

'But I ask you if you heard it. You did, I suppose, and understood it?'
pursued Mr Dombey.

'I heerd it,' said Toodle, 'but I don't know as I understood it rightly
Sir, 'account of being no scholar, and the words being--ask your
pardon--rayther high. But Polly heerd it. It's all right.'

'As you appear to leave everything to her,' said Mr Dombey, frustrated
in his intention of impressing his views still more distinctly on the
husband, as the stronger character, 'I suppose it is of no use my saying
anything to you.'

'Not a bit,' said Toodle. 'Polly heerd it. She's awake, Sir.'

'I won't detain you any longer then,' returned Mr Dombey, disappointed.
'Where have you worked all your life?'

'Mostly underground, Sir, 'till I got married. I come to the level then.
I'm a going on one of these here railroads when they comes into full
play.'

As he added in one of his hoarse whispers, 'We means to bring up little
Biler to that line,' Mr Dombey inquired haughtily who little Biler was.

'The eldest on 'em, Sir,' said Toodle, with a smile. 'It ain't a common
name. Sermuchser that when he was took to church the gen'lm'n said, it
wam't a chris'en one, and he couldn't give it. But we always calls him
Biler just the same. For we don't mean no harm. Not we.

'Do you mean to say, Man,' inquired Mr Dombey; looking at him with
marked displeasure, 'that you have called a child after a boiler?'

'No, no, Sir,' returned Toodle, with a tender consideration for his
mistake. 'I should hope not! No, Sir. Arter a BILER Sir. The Steamingine
was a'most as good as a godfather to him, and so we called him Biler,
don't you see!'

As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of
information crushed the sinking spirits of Mr Dombey. He motioned his
child's foster-father to the door, who departed by no means unwillingly:
and then turning the key, paced up and down the room in solitary
wretchedness.

It would be harsh, and perhaps no