ney.

And young Gay--Walter--what of him?

He was overjoyed to purge the old man's hearth from bailiffs and
brokers, and to hurry back to his Uncle with the good tidings. He was
overjoyed to have it all arranged and settled next day before noon;
and to sit down at evening in the little back parlour with old Sol and
Captain Cuttle; and to see the Instrument-maker already reviving, and
hopeful for the future, and feeling that the wooden Midshipman was his
own again. But without the least impeachment of his gratitude to Mr
Dombey, it must be confessed that Walter was humbled and cast down. It
is when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind,
that we are the most disposed to picture to ourselves what flowers they
might have borne, if they had flourished; and now, when Walter found
himself cut off from that great Dombey height, by the depth of a new
and terrible tumble, and felt that all his old wild fancies had been
scattered to the winds in the fall, he began to suspect that they might
have led him on to harmless visions of aspiring to Florence in the
remote distance of time.

The Captain viewed the subject in quite a different light. He appeared
to entertain a belief that the interview at which he had assisted was so
very satisfactory and encouraging, as to be only a step or two removed
from a regular betrothal of Florence to Walter; and that the late
transaction had immensely forwarded, if not thoroughly established,
the Whittingtonian hopes. Stimulated by this conviction, and by the
improvement in the spirits of his old friend, and by his own consequent
gaiety, he even attempted, in favouring them with the ballad of 'Lovely
Peg' for the third time in one evening, to make an extemporaneous
substitution of the name 'Florence;' but finding this difficult, on
account of the word Peg invariably rhyming to leg (in which personal
beauty the original was described as having excelled all competitors),
he hit upon the happy thought of changing it to Fle-e-eg; which he
accordingly did, with an archness almost supernatural, and a voice quite
vociferous, notwithstanding that the time was close at band when he must
seek the abode of the dreadful Mrs MacStinger.

That same evening the Major was diffuse at his club, on the subject of
his friend Dombey in the City. 'Damme, Sir,' said the Major, 'he's a
prince, is my friend Dombey in the City. I tell you what, Sir. If you
had a few more men among you like old J