e of
his stories. At length, however, this man stepped before them as they
turned round, and pulling his hat off, and keeping it off, ducked his
head to Mr Dombey.

'Beg your pardon, Sir,' said the man, 'but I hope you're a doin' pretty
well, Sir.'

He was dressed in a canvas suit abundantly besmeared with coal-dust and
oil, and had cinders in his whiskers, and a smell of half-slaked ashes
all over him. He was not a bad-looking fellow, nor even what could be
fairly called a dirty-looking fellow, in spite of this; and, in short,
he was Mr Toodle, professionally clothed.

'I shall have the honour of stokin' of you down, Sir,' said Mr Toodle.
'Beg your pardon, Sir.--I hope you find yourself a coming round?'

Mr Dombey looked at him, in return for his tone of interest, as if a man
like that would make his very eyesight dirty.

''Scuse the liberty, Sir,' said Toodle, seeing he was not clearly
remembered, 'but my wife Polly, as was called Richards in your family--'

A change in Mr Dombey's face, which seemed to express recollection of
him, and so it did, but it expressed in a much stronger degree an angry
sense of humiliation, stopped Mr Toodle short.

'Your wife wants money, I suppose,' said Mr Dombey, putting his hand in
his pocket, and speaking (but that he always did) haughtily.

'No thank'ee, Sir,' returned Toodle, 'I can't say she does. I don't.'

Mr Dombey was stopped short now in his turn: and awkwardly: with his
hand in his pocket.

'No, Sir,' said Toodle, turning his oilskin cap round and round; 'we're
a doin' pretty well, Sir; we haven't no cause to complain in the worldly
way, Sir. We've had four more since then, Sir, but we rubs on.'

Mr Dombey would have rubbed on to his own carriage, though in so doing
he had rubbed the stoker underneath the wheels; but his attention was
arrested by something in connexion with the cap still going slowly round
and round in the man's hand.

'We lost one babby,' observed Toodle, 'there's no denyin'.'

'Lately,' added Mr Dombey, looking at the cap.

'No, Sir, up'ard of three years ago, but all the rest is hearty. And in
the matter o readin', Sir,' said Toodle, ducking again, as if to remind
Mr Dombey of what had passed between them on that subject long ago,
'them boys o' mine, they learned me, among 'em, arter all. They've made
a wery tolerable scholar of me, Sir, them boys.'

'Come, Major!' said Mr Dombey.

'Beg your pardon, Sir,' resumed Toodle, taking a step b