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

meant by that, and if she knew whom she was talking to.
Mrs. MacStinger in retort, looked at her all over. 'What do you want with
Captain Cuttle, I should wish to know?' said Mrs. MacStinger.
'Should you? Then I'm sorry that you won't be satisfied,' returned Miss
Nipper.
'Hush, Susan! If you please!' said Florence. 'Perhaps you can have the
goodness to tell us where Captain Cuttle lives, ma'am, as he don't live
here.'
'Who says he don't live here?' retorted the implacable MacStinger. 'I said
it wasn't Cap'en Cuttle's house--and it ain't his house--and forbid it, that
it ever should be his house--for Cap'en Cuttle don't know how to keep a
house--and don't deserve to have a house--it's my house--and when I let the
upper floor to Cap'en Cuttle, oh I do a thankless thing, and cast pearls
before swine!'
Mrs. MacStinger pitched her voice for the upper windows in offering these
remarks, and cracked off each clause sharply by itself as if from a rifle
possessing an infinity of barrels. After the last shot, the Captain's voice
was heard to say, in feeble remonstrance from his own room, 'Steady below!'
'Since you want Cap'en Cuttle, there he is!' said Mrs. MacStinger, with an
angry motion of her hand. On Florence making bold to enter, without any more
parley, and on Susan following, Mrs. MacStinger recommenced her pedestrian
exercise in pattens, and Alexander MacStinger (still on the paving-stone),
who had stopped in his crying to attend to the conversation, began to wail
again, entertaining himself during that dismal performance, which was quite
mechanical, with a general survey of the prospect, terminating in the
hackney-coach.
The Captain in his own apartment was sitting with his hands in his pockets
and his legs drawn up under his chair, on a very small desolate island,
lying about midway in an ocean of soap and water. The Captain's windows had