“I’ve stepped over from Balls Pond at a early hour,” said Mr Perch, confidentially looking in at the room door, and stopping on the mat to wipe his shoes all round, which had no mud upon them, “agreeable to my instructions last night. They was, to be sure and bring a note to you, Mr Carker, before you went out in the morning. I should have been here a good hour and a half ago,” said Mr Perch, meekly, “but for the state of health of Mrs P., who I thought I should have lost in the night, I do assure you, five distinct times.”
“Is your wife so ill?” asked Harriet.
“Why, you see,” said Mr Perch, first turning round to shut the door carefully, “she takes what has happened in our House so much to heart, Miss. Her nerves is so very delicate, you see, and soon unstrung. Not but what the strongest nerves had good need to be shook, I’m sure. You feel it very much yourself, no doubts.”
Harriet repressed a sigh, and glanced at her brother.
“I’m sure I feel it myself, in my humble way,” Mr Perch went on to say, with a shake of his head, “in a manner I couldn’t have believed if I hadn’t been called upon to undergo. It has almost the effect of drink upon me. I literally feels every morning as if I had been taking more than was good for me over-night.”
Mr Perch’s appearance corroborated this recital of his symptoms. There was an air of feverish lassitude about it, that seemed referable to drams; and, which, in fact, might no doubt have been traced to those numerous discoveries of himself in the bars of public-houses, being treated and questioned, which he was in the daily habit of making.
“Therefore I can judge,” said Mr Perch, shaking his head and speaking in a silvery murmur, “of the feelings of such as is at all peculiarly sitiwated in this most painful rewelation.”
Here Mr Perch waited to be confided in; and receiving no confidence, coughed behind his hand. This leading to nothing, he coughed behind his hat; and that leading to nothing, he put his hat on the ground and sought in his breast pocket for the letter.
“If I rightly recollect, there was no answer,” said Mr Perch, with an affable smile; “but perhaps you’ll be so good as cast your eye over it, Sir.”
John Carker broke the seal, which was Mr Dombey’s, and possessing himself of the contents, which were very brief, replied, “No. No answer is expected.”