I am engaged.' As Withers disappeared, Mrs Skewton turned her head languidly towards the Major, without otherwise moving, and asked him how his friend was.
'Dombey, Ma'am,' returned the Major, with a facetious gurgling in his throat, 'is as well as a man in his condition can be.

His condition is a desperate one, Ma'am.

He is touched, is Dombey! Touched!' cried the Major.

'He is bayonetted through the body.' Cleopatra cast a sharp look at the Major, that contrasted forcibly with the affected drawl in which she presently said: 'Major Bagstock, although I know but little of the world,--nor can I really regret my experience, for I fear it is a false place, full of withering conventionalities: where Nature is but little regarded, and where the music of the heart, and the gushing of the soul, and all that sort of thing, which is so truly poetical, is seldom heard,--I cannot misunderstand your meaning.

There is an allusion to Edith--to my extremely dear child,' said Mrs Skewton, tracing the outline of her eyebrows with her forefinger, 'in your words, to which the tenderest of chords vibrates excessively.' 'Bluntness, Ma'am,' returned the Major, 'has ever been the characteristic of the Bagstock breed.