perhaps a little worse, for the House may have been kindly inclined towards me then, and it certainly is not now."
"Turn again, Whittington," muttered the disconsolate Captain, after looking at Walter for some time.
"Aye!" replied Walter, laughing, "and turn a great many times, too, Captain Cuttle, I’m afraid, before such fortune as his ever turns up again. Not that I complain," he added, in his lively, animated, energetic way. "I have nothing to complain of. I am provided for. I can live. When I leave my uncle, I leave him to you; and I can leave him to no one better, Captain Cuttle. I haven’t told you all this because I despair, not I; it’s to convince you that I can’t pick and choose in Dombey’s House, and that where I am sent, there I must go, and what I am offered, that I must take. It’s better for my uncle that I should be sent away; for Mr. Dombey is a valuable friend to him, as he proved himself, you know when, Captain Cuttle; and I am persuaded he won’t be less valuable when he hasn’t me there, every day, to awaken his dislike. So hurrah for the West Indies, Captain Cuttle! How does that tune go that the sailors sing?
"For the Port of Barbados, Boys!
Cheerily!
Leaving old England behind us, Boys!
Cheerily!"
Here the Captain roared in chorus—
"Oh cheerily, cheerily!
"Oh Cheer—i—ly!"
The last line reaching the quick ears of an ardent skipper not quite sober, who lodged opposite, and who instantly sprung out of bed, threw up his window, and joined in, across the street, at the top of his voice, produced a fine effect. When it was impossible to sustain the concluding note any longer, the skipper bellowed forth a terrific "ahoy!" intended in part as a friendly greeting, and in part to show that he was not at all breathed. That done, he shut down his window, and went to bed again.
"And now, Captain Cuttle," said Walter, handing him the blue coat and waistcoat, and bustling very much, "if you ’ll come and break the news to Uncle Sol (which he ought to have known, days upon days ago, by rights), I ’ll leave you at the door, you know, and walk about until the afternoon."
The Captain, however, scarcely appeared to relish the commission, or to be by any means confident of his powers of executing it. He had arranged the future life and adventures of Walter so very differently, and so entirely to his own satisfaction; he had felicitated himself so often on the sagacity and foresight displayed in that arrangement, and had found it so complete and perfect in all its parts; that to suffer it to go to pieces all at once, and even to assist in breaking it up, required a great effort of his resolution. The Captain, too, found it difficult to unload his old ideas upon the subject, and to take a perfectly new cargo on board, with that rapidity which the circumstances required, or without jumbling and confounding the two. Consequently, instead of putting on his coat and waistcoat with anything like the impetuosity that could alone have kept pace with Walter’s mood, he declined to invest himself with those garments at all at present; and informed Walter that on such a serious matter, he must be allowed to "bite his nails a bit."
