Chapter IV

Walter Gay is now the head of the old city house of Dombey and Son.

Carker was hanged; and the Charitable Grinder was transported for picking Joey Bagstock’s pocket on that melancholy occasion.

Mr. Toots, under the tuition of the Game Chicken, set up for a sporting character――took in twelve dozen copies of _Bell’s Life_ every week, and read them all one after the other.

The old woman and the handsome daughter are frequent guests at the Mansion House――where they are usually charged with breaking from 35 to 89 panes of glass in the West London Union.

The Game Chicken espoused Mrs. Pipchin, and the young couple set up a public-house called the “Peruvian Mines,” where Miss Tox is barmaid.

The Cap’en got a medal from the Humane Society for saving Dombey. He always carries it on his hook. Captain Bunsby married Mrs. Macstinger.

As for Dombey, he took to drinking at first――and then to being a church-rate martyr. He has since, however, become a reformed character, and is now a clerk in a saving’s bank at 18s. a-week. Occasionally, however, he and Perch have something comfortable together.

And what of Edith――erring, beauteous, haughty, impassioned Edith. She, too, was repentant. At first she officiated as a pew-opener at a very fashionable chapel. But here she was persecuted by Major Bagstock and Cousin Feenix――both of whom used to squeeze her hand when she showed them into pews. At length she retired from the world, and now gets up fine linen at Tooting.

As for Joey B. and Cousin Feenix they challenged each other with respect to Mrs. Dombey. Neither of them, however, appeared at the place of mortal combat, and neither has been seen, nor heard of since.

From _The Man in the Moon_, Edited by Angus B. Reach. Volume III. London, no date, but about 1848-9.

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OUR MISCELLANY (_which ought to have come out, but didn’t_); edited by E. H. Yates and R. B. Brough, and published by G. Routledge & Co., London, in 1856, contained several prose parodies, and amongst them one upon Charles Dickens. This was written by Brough, and consisted of three chapters, of which it will suffice to quote the first:

HARD TIMES.[53]
(_Refinished._)

_By Charles Diggins._