feast on his behalf; to which Mrs Skewton,
acting for her dearest child, who was haughtily careless on the subject,
subjoined a western list, comprising Cousin Feenix, not yet returned
to Baden-Baden, greatly to the detriment of his personal estate; and a
variety of moths of various degrees and ages, who had, at various times,
fluttered round the light of her fair daughter, or herself, without any
lasting injury to their wings. Florence was enrolled as a member of
the dinner-party, by Edith's command--elicited by a moment's doubt and
hesitation on the part of Mrs Skewton; and Florence, with a wondering
heart, and with a quick instinctive sense of everything that grated on
her father in the least, took her silent share in the proceedings of the
day.

The proceedings commenced by Mr Dombey, in a cravat of extraordinary
height and stiffness, walking restlessly about the drawing-room
until the hour appointed for dinner; punctual to which, an East India
Director,' of immense wealth, in a waistcoat apparently constructed in
serviceable deal by some plain carpenter, but really engendered in the
tailor's art, and composed of the material called nankeen, arrived and
was received by Mr Dombey alone. The next stage of the proceedings
was Mr Dombey's sending his compliments to Mrs Dombey, with a correct
statement of the time; and the next, the East India Director's falling
prostrate, in a conversational point of view, and as Mr Dombey was not
the man to pick him up, staring at the fire until rescue appeared in the
shape of Mrs Skewton; whom the director, as a pleasant start in life for
the evening, mistook for Mrs Dombey, and greeted with enthusiasm.

The next arrival was a Bank Director, reputed to be able to buy up
anything--human Nature generally, if he should take it in his head to
influence the money market in that direction--but who was a wonderfully
modest-spoken man, almost boastfully so, and mentioned his 'little
place' at Kingston-upon-Thames, and its just being barely equal to
giving Dombey a bed and a chop, if he would come and visit it. Ladies,
he said, it was not for a man who lived in his quiet way to take upon
himself to invite--but if Mrs Skewton and her daughter, Mrs Dombey,
should ever find themselves in that direction, and would do him the
honour to look at a little bit of a shrubbery they would find there, and
a poor little flower-bed or so, and a humble apology for a pinery, and
two or three little attempts o