'Why, John! My Goodness, John!'

'Ah! who'd have thought it!' John returned.

'You never mean to say,' pursued Dot, sitting on the floor and
shaking her head at him, 'that it's Gruff and Tackleton the
toymaker!'

John nodded.

Mrs. Peerybingle nodded also, fifty times at least. Not in assent-
-in dumb and pitying amazement; screwing up her lips the while with
all their little force (they were never made for screwing up; I am
clear of that), and looking the good Carrier through and through,
in her abstraction. Miss Slowboy, in the mean time, who had a
mechanical power of reproducing scraps of current conversation for
the delectation of the baby, with all the sense struck out of them,
and all the nouns changed into the plural number, inquired aloud of
that young creature, Was it Gruffs and Tackletons the toymakers
then, and Would it call at Pastry-cooks for wedding-cakes, and Did
its mothers know the boxes when its fathers brought them homes; and
so on.

'And that is really to come about!' said Dot. 'Why, she and I were
girls at school together, John.'

He might have been thinking of her, or nearly thinking of her,
perhaps, as she was in that same school time. He looked upon her
with a thoughtful pleasure, but he made no answer.