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

The Happy Pair
THE dark blot on the street is gone. Mr. Dombey's mansion, if it be a gap
among the other houses any longer, is only so because it is not to be vied
with in its brightness, and haughtily casts them off. The saying is, that
home is home, be it never so homely. If it hold good in the opposite
contingency, and home is home be it never so stately, what an altar to the
Household Gods is raised up here!
Lights are sparkling in the windows this evening, and the ruddy glow of
fires is warm and bright upon the hangings and soft carpets, and the dinner
waits to be served, and the dinnertable is handsomely set forth, though only
for four persons, and the sideboard is cumbrous with plate. It is the first
time that the house has been arranged for occupation since its late changes,
and the happy pair are looked for every minute.
Only second to the wedding morning, in the interest and expectation it
engenders among the household, is this evening of the coming home. Mrs.
Perch is in the kitchen taking tea; and has made the tour of the
establishment, and priced the silks and damasks by the yard, and exhausted
every interjection in the dictionary and out of it expressive of admiration
and wonder. The upholsterer's foreman, who has left his hat, with a
pocket-handkerchief in it, both smelling strongly of varnish, under a chair
in the hall, lurks about the house, gazing upwards at the cornices, and
downward at the carpets, and occasionally, in a silent transport of
enjoyment, taking a rule out of his pocket, and skirmishingly measuring
expensive objects, with unutterable feelings. Cook is in high spirits, and
says give her a place where there's plenty of company (as she'll bet you
sixpence there will be now), for she is of a lively disposition, and she
always was from a child, and she don't mind who knows it; which sentiment
elicits from the breast of Mrs. Perch a responsive murmur of support and
approbation. All the housemaid hopes is, happiness for 'em--but marriage is
a lottery, and the more she thinks about it, the more she feels the
independence and the safety of a single life. Mr. Towlinson is saturnine and
grim, and says that's his opinion too, and give him War besides, and down
with the French--for this young man has a general impression that every