amily wailed the louder,
while its more infantine members, unable to control the transports of
emotion appertaining to their time of life, threw themselves on their
backs like young birds when terrified by a hawk, and kicked violently.
At length, poor Polly making herself audible, said, with quivering lips,
'Oh Rob, my poor boy, what have you done at last!'

'Nothing, mother,' cried Rob, in a piteous voice, 'ask the gentleman!'

'Don't be alarmed,' said Mr Carker, 'I want to do him good.'

At this announcement, Polly, who had not cried yet, began to do so. The
elder Toodles, who appeared to have been meditating a rescue, unclenched
their fists. The younger Toodles clustered round their mother's gown,
and peeped from under their own chubby arms at their desperado brother
and his unknown friend. Everybody blessed the gentleman with the
beautiful teeth, who wanted to do good.

'This fellow,' said Mr Carker to Polly, giving him a gentle shake, 'is
your son, eh, Ma'am?'

'Yes, Sir,' sobbed Polly, with a curtsey; 'yes, Sir.'

'A bad son, I am afraid?' said Mr Carker.

'Never a bad son to me, Sir,' returned Polly.

'To whom then?' demanded Mr Carker.

'He has been a little wild, Sir,' returned Polly, checking the baby, who
was making convulsive efforts with his arms and legs to launch himself
on Biler, through the ambient air, 'and has gone with wrong companions:
but I hope he has seen the misery of that, Sir, and will do well again.'

Mr Carker looked at Polly, and the clean room, and the clean children,
and the simple Toodle face, combined of father and mother, that was
reflected and repeated everywhere about him--and seemed to have achieved
the real purpose of his visit.

'Your husband, I take it, is not at home?' he said.

'No, Sir,' replied Polly. 'He's down the line at present.'

The prodigal Rob seemed very much relieved to hear it: though still in
the absorption of all his faculties in his patron, he hardly took his
eyes from Mr Carker's face, unless for a moment at a time to steal a
sorrowful glance at his mother.

'Then,' said Mr Carker, 'I'll tell you how I have stumbled on this boy
of yours, and who I am, and what I am going to do for him.'

This Mr Carker did, in his own way; saying that he at first intended to
have accumulated nameless terrors on his presumptuous head, for
coming to the whereabout of Dombey and Son. That he had relented, in
consideration of his youth, his professed contrition, an