“Hearty, Ma’am, thank’ee,” replied Toodle. “How do you find yourself, Ma’am? Do the rheumaticks keep off pretty well, Ma’am? We must all expect to grow into ’em, as we gets on.”
“Thank you,” said Miss Tox. “I have not felt any inconvenience from that disorder yet.”
“You’re wery fortunate, Ma’am,” returned Mr Toodle. “Many people at your time of life, Ma’am, is martyrs to it. There was my mother—” But catching his wife’s eye here, Mr Toodle judiciously buried the rest in another mug of tea.
“You never mean to say, Mrs Richards,” cried Miss Tox, looking at Rob, “that that is your—”
“Eldest, Ma’am,” said Polly. “Yes, indeed, it is. That’s the little fellow, Ma’am, that was the innocent cause of so much.”
“This here, Ma’am,” said Toodle, “is him with the short legs—and they was,” said Mr Toodle, with a touch of poetry in his tone, “unusual short for leathers—as Mr Dombey made a Grinder on.”
The recollection almost overpowered Miss Tox. The subject of it had a peculiar interest for her directly. She asked him to shake hands, and congratulated his mother on his frank, ingenuous face. Rob, overhearing her, called up a look, to justify the eulogium, but it was hardly the right look.
“And now, Mrs Richards,” said Miss Tox,—“and you too, Sir,” addressing Toodle—“I’ll tell you, plainly and truly, what I have come here for. You may be aware, Mrs Richards—and, possibly, you may be aware too, Sir—that a little distance has interposed itself between me and some of my friends, and that where I used to visit a good deal, I do not visit now.”
Polly, who, with a woman’s tact, understood this at once, expressed as much in a little look. Mr Toodle, who had not the faintest idea of what Miss Tox was talking about, expressed that also, in a stare.
“Of course,” said Miss Tox, “how our little coolness has arisen is of no moment, and does not require to be discussed. It is sufficient for me to say, that I have the greatest possible respect for, and interest in, Mr Dombey;” Miss Tox’s voice faltered; “and everything that relates to him.”