“Well!” said Mr. Dombey. It was all that he could say. It all seemed so foolish. It would have surprised Mr. Dombey if he had been told that Mr. Toodles’s children were more fortunate than his own, and that they were having a great deal better time. But that was what Dickens thought, and I agree with him. Little Paul was so carefully looked after that he had no adventures. But his sister Florence had better luck. One of her adventures was quite exciting, for she was lost in one of the worst parts of London, and was rescued by a young gentleman who felt the romance of it. At the time Paul was a baby, and Mrs. Toodles had a longing to see her own children. So without asking permission she took Paul and Florence with her. They found their way to the poor part of town where her family lived, and all the little Toodleses greeted their mother with shouts, and there was a great celebration. On going home they fell in with a noisy and pushing crowd. Mrs. Toodles of course looked after little Paul, who was very important, but she forgot Florence for a moment. When she looked for her she wasn’t there. What followed let Dickens tell. HOW FLORENCE DOMBEY WAS LOST IN LONDON AS Susan Nipper and the two children were in the crowd, there came a wild cry of “Mad bull!” With a wild confusion before her, of people running up and down, and shouting, and wheels running over them, and boys fighting, and mad bulls coming up, and the nurse in the midst of all these dangers being torn to pieces, Florence screamed and ran. She ran till she was exhausted, urging Susan to do the same; and then, stopping and wringing her hands as she remembered they had left the other nurse behind, found, with a sensation of terror not to be described, that she was quite alone. “Susan! Susan!” cried Florence, clapping her hands in the very ecstasy of her alarm. “Oh, where are they! where are they!” “Where are they?” said an old woman, coming hobbling across as fast as she could from the opposite side of the way. “Why did you run away from ’em?” “I was frightened,” answered Florence. “I didn’t know what I did. I thought they were with me. Where are they?” The old woman took her by the wrist, and said: “I’ll show you.” She was a very ugly old woman, with red rims round her eyes, and a mouth that mumbled and chattered of itself when she was not speaking. She was miserably dressed, and carried some skins over her arm. She seemed to have followed Florence some little way at all events, for she had lost her breath; and this made her uglier still, as she stood trying to regain it: working her shrivelled, yellow face and throat into all sorts of contortions. Florence was afraid of her, and looked, hesitating, up the street, of which she had almost reached the bottom. It was a solitary place--more a back road than a street--and there was no one in it but herself and the old woman.