, with various small
attentions, the head accountant: from whom Mr. Perch had expectations of a
messengership in a Fire Office, when the affairs of the House should be wound
up.
    To Major Bagstock, the bankruptcy was quite a calamity. The Major was not a
sympathetic character - his attention being wholly concentrated on J. B. - nor
was he a man subject to lively emotions, except in the physical regards of
gasping and choking. But he had so paraded his friend Dombey at the club; had so
flourished him at the heads of the members in general, and so put them down by
continual assertion of his riches; that the club, being but human, was delighted
to retort upon the Major, by asking him, with a show of great concern, whether
this tremendous smash had been at all expected, and how his friend Dombey bore
it. To such questions, the Major, waxing very purple, would reply that it was a
bad world, Sir, altogether; that Joey knew a thing or two, but had been done,
Sir, done like an infant; that if you had foretold this, Sir, to J. Bagstock,
when he went abroad with Dombey and was chasing that vagabond up and down
France, J. Bagstock would have pooh-pooh'd you - would have pooh-pooh'd you,
Sir, by the Lord! That Joe had been deceived, Sir, taken in, hoodwinked,
blindfolded, but was broad awake again and staring; insomuch, Sir, that if Joe's
father were to rise up from the grave to-morrow, he wouldn't trust the old blade
with a penny piece, but would tell him that his son Josh was too old a soldier
to be done again, Sir. That he was a suspicious, crabbed, cranky, used-up, J. B.
infidel, Sir; and that if it were consistent with the dignity of a rough and
tough old Major, of the old school, who had had the honour of being personally
known to, and commended by, their late Royal Highnesses the Dukes of Kent and
York, to retire to a tub and live in it, by Gad! Sir, he'd have a tub in Pall
Mall to-morrow, to show his contempt for mankind!
    Of all this, and many variations of the same tune, the Major would deliver
himself with so many apoplectic symptoms, such rollings of his head, and such
violent growls of ill usage and resentment, that the younger members of the club
surmised he had
