She could not go to bed, without making her nightly pilgrimage to his door.  The moment she touched it she found that it was open, and there was a light within.  The first impulse of the timid child—­and she yielded to it—­was to retire swiftly.  A next, to go back, and to enter.  She turned back, urged on by the love within her, and glided in.

Her father sat at his old table, in the middle of the room.  His face was turned towards her.  It looked worn and dejected, and in the loneliness surrounding him, there was an appeal to Florence that struck home, but when she spoke to him, the sternness of his glance and words so overcame her that she shrank away,—­and sobbing, silently ascended to her room again.

Diogenes was broad awake, and waiting for his little mistress.

“Oh, Di!  Oh, dear Di!  Love me for his sake!”

Diogenes already loved her for his own, and did not care how much he showed it.  So he made himself vastly ridiculous by performing a variety of uncouth bounces, and concluded, when poor Florence was at last asleep, by scratching open her bedroom door; rolling up his bed into a pillow; lying down on the boards at the full length of his tether with his head toward her; and looking lazily at her, upside down, out of the tops of his eyes, until, from winking and blinking, he fell asleep himself, and dreamed with gruff barks, of his enemy.

About this time Walter Gay was informed by Mr. Dombey of his appointment to a junior position in the firm’s counting house in the Barbadoes.  The boy ever since he first saw Florence had thought of her with admiration and compassion, pitying her loneliness; and now when he was about to cross the ocean, his first thought was to seek audience with her little maid, to tell her of his going, to say to her that his uncle had had an interest in Miss Dombey ever since the night when she was lost, and always wished her well and happy, and always would be proud and glad to serve her, if she should need that service.

Upon receiving the message, Florence hastened with Susan Nipper to the old Instrument-maker’s Shop, and they passed into the parlor so suddenly that Uncle Sol, in surprise at seeing them, sprang out of his own chair and nearly tumbled over another, as he exclaimed, “Miss Dombey!”

“Is it possible!” cried Walter, starting up in his turn.  “Here!”

“Yes,” said Florence, advancing to him.  “I was afraid you might be going away, and hardly thinking of me.  And, Walter, there is something I wish to say to you before you go, and you must call me Florence, if you please, and not speak like a stranger.  My dear brother before he died said that he was very fond of you, and said, ‘remember Walter’; and if you will be a brother to me, Walter, now that I have none on earth, I’ll be your sister all my life, and think of you like one, wherever we may be!”

In her sweet simplicity, she held out both her hands, and Walter, taking them, stooped down and touched the tearful face; and it seemed to him in doing so, that he responded to her innocent appeal beside the dead child’s bed.