and at
whist on the part of the servant.

Mr Toots, likewise, with the bold and happy idea of preventing the
family from forgetting him (but there is reason to suppose that
this expedient originated in the teeming brain of the Chicken), had
established a six-oared cutter, manned by aquatic friends of the
Chicken's and steered by that illustrious character in person, who wore
a bright red fireman's coat for the purpose, and concealed the perpetual
black eye with which he was afflicted, beneath a green shade. Previous
to the institution of this equipage, Mr Toots sounded the Chicken on a
hypothetical case, as, supposing the Chicken to be enamoured of a young
lady named Mary, and to have conceived the intention of starting a boat
of his own, what would he call that boat? The Chicken replied, with
divers strong asseverations, that he would either christen it Poll or
The Chicken's Delight. Improving on this idea, Mr Toots, after deep
study and the exercise of much invention, resolved to call his boat
The Toots's Joy, as a delicate compliment to Florence, of which no man
knowing the parties, could possibly miss the appreciation.

Stretched on a crimson cushion in his gallant bark, with his shoes
in the air, Mr Toots, in the exercise of his project, had come up the
river, day after day, and week after week, and had flitted to and fro,
near Sir Barnet's garden, and had caused his crew to cut across and
across the river at sharp angles, for his better exhibition to any
lookers-out from Sir Barnet's windows, and had had such evolutions
performed by the Toots's Joy as had filled all the neighbouring part
of the water-side with astonishment. But whenever he saw anyone in Sir
Barnet's garden on the brink of the river, Mr Toots always feigned to be
passing there, by a combination of coincidences of the most singular and
unlikely description.

'How are you, Toots?' Sir Barnet would say, waving his hand from the
lawn, while the artful Chicken steered close in shore.

'How de do, Sir Barnet?' Mr Toots would answer, What a surprising thing
that I should see you here!'

Mr Toots, in his sagacity, always said this, as if, instead of that
being Sir Barnet's house, it were some deserted edifice on the banks of
the Nile, or Ganges.

'I never was so surprised!' Mr Toots would exclaim.--'Is Miss Dombey
there?'

Whereupon Florence would appear, perhaps.

'Oh, Diogenes is quite well, Miss Dombey,' Toots would cry. 'I called to
ask this