lips the tips of the fingers
that were disposed on the ledge of the wheeled chair with careful
carelessness, after the Cleopatra model: and Mr Dombey bowed. The elder
lady honoured them both with a very gracious smile and a girlish wave
of her hand; the younger lady with the very slightest inclination of her
head that common courtesy allowed.

The last glimpse of the wrinkled face of the mother, with that patched
colour on it which the sun made infinitely more haggard and dismal
than any want of colour could have been, and of the proud beauty of the
daughter with her graceful figure and erect deportment, engendered such
an involuntary disposition on the part of both the Major and Mr Dombey
to look after them, that they both turned at the same moment. The Page,
nearly as much aslant as his own shadow, was toiling after the chair,
uphill, like a slow battering-ram; the top of Cleopatra's bonnet was
fluttering in exactly the same corner to the inch as before; and the
Beauty, loitering by herself a little in advance, expressed in all
her elegant form, from head to foot, the same supreme disregard of
everything and everybody.

'I tell you what, Sir,' said the Major, as they resumed their walk
again. 'If Joe Bagstock were a younger man, there's not a woman in the
world whom he'd prefer for Mrs Bagstock to that woman. By George, Sir!'
said the Major, 'she's superb!'

'Do you mean the daughter?' inquired Mr Dombey.

'Is Joey B. a turnip, Dombey,' said the Major, 'that he should mean the
mother?'

'You were complimentary to the mother,' returned Mr Dombey.

'An ancient flame, Sir,' chuckled Major Bagstock. 'Devilish ancient. I
humour her.'

'She impresses me as being perfectly genteel,' said Mr Dombey.

'Genteel, Sir,' said the Major, stopping short, and staring in his
companion's face. 'The Honourable Mrs Skewton, Sir, is sister to the
late Lord Feenix, and aunt to the present Lord. The family are not
wealthy--they're poor, indeed--and she lives upon a small jointure; but
if you come to blood, Sir!' The Major gave a flourish with his stick and
walked on again, in despair of being able to say what you came to, if
you came to that.

'You addressed the daughter, I observed,' said Mr Dombey, after a short
pause, 'as Mrs Granger.'

'Edith Skewton, Sir,' returned the Major, stopping short again, and
punching a mark in the ground with his cane, to represent her, 'married
(at eighteen) Granger of Ours;' whom the Major indi