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This last ejaculation was occasioned by Mr Toots's deep concern at the distress he saw in Florence's face; which caused him to stop short in a fit of chuckles, and become an image of despair. 'Dear Mr Toots, said Florence, 'you are so friendly to me, and so honest, that I am sure I may ask a favour of you.
No taxgatherer in the British Dominions that wide-spread territory on which the sun never sets, and where the tax-gatherer never goes to bed was more regular and persevering in his calls than Mr Toots. Mr Toots never went upstairs; and always performed the same ceremonies, richly dressed for the purpose, at the hall door. 'Oh! Good morning! would be Mr Toots's first remark to the servant.
Captain Cuttle cordially reciprocating the warmth of Mr Toots's farewell, locked the door behind him, and shaking his head with the same remarkable expression of pity and tenderness as he had regarded him with before, went up to see if Florence wanted him. There was an entire change in the Captain's face as he went upstairs.
A mighty sensation is created, even among these grave young gentlemen, by a visit from the emancipated Toots; who is regarded with a kind of awe, as one who has passed the Rubicon, and is pledged never to come back, and concerning the cut of whose clothes, and fashion of whose jewellery, whispers go about, behind hands; the bilious Bitherstone, who is not of Mr Toots's time, affecting to despise the latter to the smaller boys, and saying he knows better, and that he should like to see him coming that sort of thing in Bengal, where his mother had got an emerald belonging to him that was taken out of the footstool of a Rajah.
Improving on this idea, Mr Toots, after deep study and the exercise of much invention, resolved to call his boat The Toots's Joy, as a delicate compliment to Florence, of which no man knowing the parties, could possibly miss the appreciation.
The Captain beckoned to Mr Toots, who followed him with a bewildered countenance, and, ascending to the top of the house, was introduced, without a word of preparation from his conductor, into Florence's new retreat. Poor Mr Toots's amazement and pleasure at sight of her were such, that they could find a vent in nothing but extravagance.
No doubt Diogenes is there, and no doubt Mr Toots has reason to observe him, for he comes straightway at Mr Toots's legs, and tumbles over himself in the desperation with which he makes at him, like a very dog of Montargis. But he is checked by his sweet mistress. 'Down, Di, down. Don't you remember who first made us friends, Di? For shame! Oh!
'If you could see Sol Gills, young gen'l'm'n, said the Captain, impressively, and laying his heavy hand on Mr Toots's knee, 'old Sol, mind you with your own eyes as you sit there you'd be welcomer to me, than a wind astern, to a ship becalmed. But you can't see Sol Gills.
The Captain reserved, until some fitter time, the consideration of Mr Toots's offer of friendship, and thus dismissed him. Captain Cuttle's spirits were so low, in truth, that he half determined, that day, to take no further precautions against surprise from Mrs MacStinger, but to abandon himself recklessly to chance, and be indifferent to what might happen.
Mr Toots also showed him, by holding up a companion sheet of paper, that Doctor and Mrs Blimber requested the pleasure of Mr Toots's company at an early party on Wednesday Evening the Seventeenth Instant, when the hour was half-past seven o'clock, and when the object was Quadrilles.
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