she was
once more safely entrenched upstairs. Miss Nipper received that proof
of her confidence, as well as the prospect of their free association
for the future, rather coldly, and was anything but enthusiastic in her
demonstrations of joy.

'I thought you would have been pleased,' said Polly.

'Oh yes, Mrs Richards, I'm very well pleased, thank you,' returned
Susan, who had suddenly become so very upright that she seemed to have
put an additional bone in her stays.

'You don't show it,' said Polly.

'Oh! Being only a permanency I couldn't be expected to show it like a
temporary,' said Susan Nipper. 'Temporaries carries it all before 'em
here, I find, but though there's a excellent party-wall between this
house and the next, I mayn't exactly like to go to it, Mrs Richards,
notwithstanding!'

CHAPTER 4. In which some more First Appearances are made on the Stage of
these Adventures

Though the offices of Dombey and Son were within the liberties of the
City of London, and within hearing of Bow Bells, when their clashing
voices were not drowned by the uproar in the streets, yet were there
hints of adventurous and romantic story to be observed in some of the
adjacent objects. Gog and Magog held their state within ten minutes'
walk; the Royal Exchange was close at hand; the Bank of England, with
its vaults of gold and silver 'down among the dead men' underground, was
their magnificent neighbour. Just round the corner stood the rich East
India House, teeming with suggestions of precious stuffs and stones,
tigers, elephants, howdahs, hookahs, umbrellas, palm trees, palanquins,
and gorgeous princes of a brown complexion sitting on carpets, with
their slippers very much turned up at the toes. Anywhere in the
immediate vicinity there might be seen pictures of ships speeding away
full sail to all parts of the world; outfitting warehouses ready to pack
off anybody anywhere, fully equipped in half an hour; and little timber
midshipmen in obsolete naval uniforms, eternally employed outside the
shop doors of nautical Instrument-makers in taking observations of the
hackney carriages.

Sole master and proprietor of one of these effigies--of that which might
be called, familiarly, the woodenest--of that which thrust itself
out above the pavement, right leg foremost, with a suavity the least
endurable, and had the shoe buckles and flapped waistcoat the least
reconcileable to human reason, and bore at its right eye the most