Bokelskere.no

Then the clergyman, an amiable and mild-looking young curate, but obviously afraid of the baby, appeared like the principal character in a ghost-story, 'a tall figure in all white;' [...].

Once upon the road to church, Mr Dombey clapped his hands for the amusement of his son. At which instance of parental enthusiasm Miss Tox was enchanted. But exclusive of this incident, the chief difference between the christening party and a party in the mourning coach, consisted in the colours of the carriage and horses.

Arrived at the church steps, they were received by a portentous beadle. Mr Dombey dismounting first to help the ladies out, and standing near him at the coach door, looked like another beadle. A beadle less gorgeous but more dreadful; the beadle of private life; the beadle of our business and bosoms.

The books precisely matched as to size, and drawn up in line, like soldiers, looked in their cold, hard, slippery uniforms, as if the had but one idea among, them, and that was a freezer. The bookcase, glazed and locked, repudiated all familiarities.

'Godfathers, of course,' continued Mrs Chick, 'are important in point of connexion and influence.'

'I don't know why they should be, to my son, said Mr Dombey coldly.

I believe if there are three words in the English language for which she has respect amounting almost to veneration, those words are, Dombey and Son.

Little Paul, suffering no contamination from the blood of the Toodles, grew stouter and stronger every day.

The funeral of the deceased lady having been 'performed', to the entire satisfaction of the undertaker, as well as of the neighbourhood at large, which is generally disposed to be captious on such a point, and is prone to take offence at any omissions or short-comings in the ceremonies, the various members of Mr Dombey's household subsided into their several places in the domestic system.

Not that she had anything particular to forgive in her sister-in-law, nor indeed anything at all, except her having married her brother - in itself a species of audacity - and her having, in the course of events, given birth to a girl instead of a boy: which as Mrs Chick had frequently observed, was not quite what she had expected of her, and was not a pleasant return for all the attention and distinction she had met with.

'Well Sir,' said Doctor Parker Peps in a round, deep sonorous voice, muffled for the occasion, like the knocker; [...].

'[...] I'll go down! I needn't beg you,' he added, pausing for a moment at the settee before the fire, 'to take particular care of this young gentleman, Mrs -'

'Blockitt, Sir?' suggested the nurse, a simpering piece of fading gentility, who did not presume to state her name as a fact, but merely offered as a mild suggestion.