being a struggle against all kinds of apoplectic symptoms, "we knew each other through your boy."
Mr. Dombey seemed touched, as it is not improbable the Major designed he should be, by this allusion. He looked down and sighed: and the Major, rousing himself fiercely, again said, in reference to the state of mind into which he felt himself in danger of falling, that this was weakness, and nothing should induce him to submit to it.
"Our friend had a remote connexion with that event," said the Major, "and all the credit that belongs to her, J. B. is willing to give her, Sir. Notwithstanding which, Ma’am," he added, raising his eyes from his plate, and casting them across Princess’s Place, to where Miss Tox was at that moment visible at her window watering her flowers, "you ’re a scheming jade, Ma’am, and your ambition is a piece of monstrous impudence. If it only made yourself ridiculous, Ma’am," said the Major, rolling his head at the unconscious Miss Tox, while his starting eyes appeared to make a leap towards her, "you might do that to your heart’s content, Ma’am, without any objection, I assure you, on the part of Bagstock." Here the Major laughed frightfully up in the tips of his ears and in the veins of his head. "But when, Ma’am,’ said the Major, "you compromise other people, and generous, unsuspicious people too, as a repayment for their condescension, you stir the blood of old Joe in his body."
"Major," said Mr. Dombey, reddening, "I hope you do not hint at anything so absurd on the part of Miss Tox as—"
"Dombey," returned the Major, "I hint at nothing. But Joey B. has lived in the world, Sir: lived in the world with his eyes open, Sir, and his ears cocked: and Joe tells you, Dombey, that there’s a de-vilish artful and ambitious woman over the way."
Mr. Dombey involuntarily glanced over the way; and an angry glance he sent in that direction, too.
"That’s all on such a subject that shall pass the lips of Joseph Bagstock," said the Major firmly. "Joe is not a tale-bearer, but there are times when he must speak, when he will speak!—confound your arts, Ma’am," cried the Major, again apostrophising his fair neighbour, with great ire,—"when the provocation is too strong to admit of his remaining silent."
The emotion of this outbreak threw the Major into a paroxysm of horse’s coughs, which held him for a long time. On recovering he added:
"And now, Dombey, as you have invited Joe—old Joe, who has no other merit, Sir, but that he is tough and hearty—to be your guest and guide at Leamington, command him in any way you please, and he is wholly yours. I don’t know, Sir," said the Major, wagging his double chin with a jocose air, "what it is you people see in Joe to make you hold him in such great request, all of you; but this I know, Sir, that if he wasn’t pretty tough, and obstinate in his refusals, you’d kill him among you with your invitations and so forth, in double-quick time."
Mr. Dombey, in a few words, expressed his sense of the preference he received over those other distinguished members of society who were clamouring for the possession of Major Bagstock. But the Major cut him short by giving him to understand that he followed his own inclinations, and that they had risen up in a body and said with one accord, "J. B., Dombey is the man for you to choose as a friend."
