CHARLES DICKENS DOMBEY AND SON CHAPTER I Dombey and ...

'Louisa!' said Mr. Dombey. 'It is not necessary to prolong these
observations. The woman is discharged and paid. You leave this house,
Richards, for taking my son--my son,' said Mr. Dombey, emphatically
repeating these two words, 'into haunts and into society which are not to be
thought of without a shudder. As to the accident which befel Miss Florence
this morning, I regard that as, in one great sense, a happy and fortunate
circumstance; inasmuch as, but for that occurrence, I never could have
known--and from your own lips too--of what you had been guilty. I think,
Louisa, the other nurse, the young person,' here Miss Nipper sobbed aloud,
'being so much younger, and necessarily influenced by Paul's nurse, may
remain. Have the goodness to direct that this woman's coach is paid to'--Mr.
Dombey stopped and winced--'to Staggs's Gardens.'
Polly moved towards the door, with Florence holding to her dress, and crying
to her in the most pathetic manner not to go away. It was a dagger in the
haughty father's heart, an arrow in his brain, to see how the flesh and
blood he could not disown, clung to this obscure stranger, and he sitting
by. Not that he cared to whom his daughter turned, or from whom turned away.
The swift sharp agony struck through him, as he thought of what his son
might do.
His son cried lustily that night, at all events. Sooth to say, poor Paul had
better reason for his tears than sons of that age often have, for he had
lost his second mother--his first, so far as he knew--by a stroke as sudden
as that natural affliction which had darkened the beginning of his life. At
the same blow, his sister too, who cried herself to sleep so mournfully, had
lost as good and true a friend. But that is quite beside the question. Let
us waste no words about it.