Descending to the little parlour, Captain Cuttle, after holding a hasty council with himself, decided to open the shop-door for a few minutes, and satisfy himself that now, at all events, there was no one loitering about it. Accordingly he set it open, and stood upon the threshold, keeping a bright look-out, and sweeping the whole street with his spectacles.
“How de do, Captain Gills?” said a voice beside him. The Captain, looking down, found that he had been boarded by Mr Toots while sweeping the horizon.
“How are, you, my lad?” replied the Captain.
“Well, I’m pretty well, thank’ee, Captain Gills,” said Mr Toots. “You know I’m never quite what I could wish to be, now. I don’t expect that I ever shall be any more.”
Mr Toots never approached any nearer than this to the great theme of his life, when in conversation with Captain Cuttle, on account of the agreement between them.
“Captain Gills,” said Mr Toots, “if I could have the pleasure of a word with you, it’s—it’s rather particular.”
“Why, you see, my lad,” replied the Captain, leading the way into the parlour, “I ain’t what you may call exactly free this morning; and therefore if you can clap on a bit, I should take it kindly.”
“Certainly, Captain Gills,” replied Mr Toots, who seldom had any notion of the Captain’s meaning. “To clap on, is exactly what I could wish to do. Naturally.”
“If so be, my lad,” returned the Captain. “Do it!”
The Captain was so impressed by the possession of his tremendous secret—by the fact of Miss Dombey being at that moment under his roof, while the innocent and unconscious Toots sat opposite to him—that a perspiration broke out on his forehead, and he found it impossible, while slowly drying the same, glazed hat in hand, to keep his eyes off Mr Toots’s face. Mr Toots, who himself appeared to have some secret reasons for being in a nervous state, was so unspeakably disconcerted by the Captain’s stare, that after looking at him vacantly for some time in silence, and shifting uneasily on his chair, he said: