“No thank’ee, Sir,” returned Toodle, “I can’t say she does. I don’t.”
Mr Dombey was stopped short now in his turn: and awkwardly: with his hand in his pocket.
“No, Sir,” said Toodle, turning his oilskin cap round and round; “we’re a doin’ pretty well, Sir; we haven’t no cause to complain in the worldly way, Sir. We’ve had four more since then, Sir, but we rubs on.”
Mr Dombey would have rubbed on to his own carriage, though in so doing he had rubbed the stoker underneath the wheels; but his attention was arrested by something in connexion with the cap still going slowly round and round in the man’s hand.
“We lost one babby,” observed Toodle, “there’s no denyin’.”
“Lately,” added Mr Dombey, looking at the cap.
“No, Sir, up’ard of three years ago, but all the rest is hearty. And in the matter o readin’, Sir,” said Toodle, ducking again, as if to remind Mr Dombey of what had passed between them on that subject long ago, “them boys o’ mine, they learned me, among ’em, arter all. They’ve made a wery tolerable scholar of me, Sir, them boys.”
“Come, Major!” said Mr Dombey.
“Beg your pardon, Sir,” resumed Toodle, taking a step before them and deferentially stopping them again, still cap in hand: “I wouldn’t have troubled you with such a pint except as a way of gettin’ in the name of my son Biler—christened Robin—him as you was so good as to make a Charitable Grinder on.”
“Well, man,” said Mr Dombey in his severest manner. “What about him?”