injured the shape of his hat, by butting at the carriage with his head to urge it forward, as is sometimes done by elephants in Oriental countries.
"Joe Bagstock," said the Major to both ladies, "is a proud and happy man for the rest of his life."
"You false creature!" said the old lady in the chair, insipidly. "Where do you come from? I can’t bear you."
"Then suffer old Joe to present a friend, Ma’am," said the Major, promptly, "as a reason for being tolerated. Mr. Dombey, Mrs. Skewton." The lady in the chair was gracious. "Mr. Dombey, Mrs. Granger." The lady with the parasol was faintly conscious of Mr. Dombey’s taking off his hat, and bowing low. "I am delighted, Sir," said the Major, "to have this opportunity."
The Major seemed in earnest, for he looked at all the three, and leered in his ugliest manner.
"Mrs. Skewton, Dombey," said the Major, "makes havoc in the heart of old Josh."
Mr. Dombey signified that he didn’t wonder at it.
"You perfidious goblin," said the lady in the chair, "have done! How long have you been here, bad man?"
"One day," replied the Major.
"And can you be a day, or even a minute," returned the lady, slightly settling her false curls and false eyebrows with her fan, and showing her false teeth, set off by her false complexion, "in the garden of what’s-its-name."
"Eden, I suppose, Mama," interrupted the younger lady, scornfully.
"My dear Edith," said the other, "I cannot help it. I never can remember those frightful names—without having your whole Soul and Being inspired by the sight of Nature; by the perfume," said Mrs. Skewton, rustling a handkerchief that was faint and sickly with essences, "of her artless breath, you creature!"
The discrepancy between Mrs. Skewton’s fresh enthusiasm of words, and forlornly faded manner, was hardly less observable than that between her age, which was about seventy, and her dress, which would have been youthful for twenty-seven. Her attitude in the wheeled chair (which she never varied) was one in which she had been taken in a barouche, some fifty years before, by a then fashionable artist who had appended to his published sketch the name of Cleopatra: in consequence of a discovery made by the critics of the time, that it bore an exact resemblance to that Princess as she reclined on board her galley. Mrs. Skewton was a beauty then, and bucks threw wine-glasses over their heads by dozens in her honour. The beauty and the barouche had both passed away, but she still preserved the attitude, and for this reason expressly, maintained the wheeled chair and the butting page: there being nothing whatever, except the attitude, to prevent her from walking.
"Mr. Dombey is devoted to Nature, I trust?" said Mrs. Skewton, settling her diamond brooch. And by the way, she chiefly lived upon the reputation of some diamonds, and her family connexions.
"My friend Dombey, Ma’am," returned the Major, "may be devoted to her in secret, but a man who is paramount in the greatest city in the universe—"
