the Major, 'makes havoc in the heart of old
Josh.'

Mr Dombey signified that he didn't wonder at it.

'You perfidious goblin,' said the lady in the chair, 'have done! How
long have you been here, bad man?'

'One day,' replied the Major.

'And can you be a day, or even a minute,' returned the lady, slightly
settling her false curls and false eyebrows with her fan, and showing
her false teeth, set off by her false complexion, 'in the garden of
what's-its-name.'

'Eden, I suppose, Mama,' interrupted the younger lady, scornfully.

'My dear Edith,' said the other, 'I cannot help it. I never can remember
those frightful names--without having your whole Soul and Being inspired
by the sight of Nature; by the perfume,' said Mrs Skewton, rustling a
handkerchief that was faint and sickly with essences, 'of her artless
breath, you creature!'

The discrepancy between Mrs Skewton's fresh enthusiasm of words, and
forlornly faded manner, was hardly less observable than that between
her age, which was about seventy, and her dress, which would have been
youthful for twenty-seven. Her attitude in the wheeled chair (which she
never varied) was one in which she had been taken in a barouche, some
fifty years before, by a then fashionable artist who had appended to his
published sketch the name of Cleopatra: in consequence of a discovery
made by the critics of the time, that it bore an exact resemblance to
that Princess as she reclined on board her galley. Mrs Skewton was a
beauty then, and bucks threw wine-glasses over their heads by dozens in
her honour. The beauty and the barouche had both passed away, but she
still preserved the attitude, and for this reason expressly, maintained
the wheeled chair and the butting page: there being nothing whatever,
except the attitude, to prevent her from walking.

'Mr Dombey is devoted to Nature, I trust?' said Mrs Skewton, settling
her diamond brooch. And by the way, she chiefly lived upon the
reputation of some diamonds, and her family connexions.

'My friend Dombey, Ma'am,' returned the Major, 'may be devoted to her
in secret, but a man who is paramount in the greatest city in the
universe--

'No one can be a stranger,' said Mrs Skewton, 'to Mr Dombey's immense
influence.'

As Mr Dombey acknowledged the compliment with a bend of his head, the
younger lady glancing at him, met his eyes.

'You reside here, Madam?' said Mr Dombey, addressing her.

'No, we have been to a great many place