“Diogenes is quite in his native air, isn’t he, Miss Dombey?” says Mr Toots.
Florence assents, with a grateful smile.
“Miss Dombey,” says Mr Toots, “beg your pardon, but if you would like to walk to Blimber’s, I—I’m going there.”
Florence puts her arm in that of Mr Toots without a word, and they walk away together, with Diogenes going on before. Mr Toots’s legs shake under him; and though he is splendidly dressed, he feels misfits, and sees wrinkles, in the masterpieces of Burgess and Co., and wishes he had put on that brightest pair of boots.
Doctor Blimber’s house, outside, has as scholastic and studious an air as ever; and up there is the window where she used to look for the pale face, and where the pale face brightened when it saw her, and the wasted little hand waved kisses as she passed. The door is opened by the same weak-eyed young man, whose imbecility of grin at sight of Mr Toots is feebleness of character personified. They are shown into the Doctor’s study, where blind Homer and Minerva give them audience as of yore, to the sober ticking of the great clock in the hall; and where the globes stand still in their accustomed places, as if the world were stationary too, and nothing in it ever perished in obedience to the universal law, that, while it keeps it on the roll, calls everything to earth.
And here is Doctor Blimber, with his learned legs; and here is Mrs Blimber, with her sky-blue cap; and here Cornelia, with her sandy little row of curls, and her bright spectacles, still working like a sexton in the graves of languages. Here is the table upon which he sat forlorn and strange, the “new boy” of the school; and hither comes the distant cooing of the old boys, at their old lives in the old room on the old principle!
“Toots,” says Doctor Blimber, “I am very glad to see you, Toots.”
Mr Toots chuckles in reply.
“Also to see you, Toots, in such good company,” says Doctor Blimber.
Mr Toots, with a scarlet visage, explains that he has met Miss Dombey by accident, and that Miss Dombey wishing, like himself, to see the old place, they have come together.