Chapter 11. Paul's Introduction to a New Scene

Dombey and Son

by Charles Dickens

Mrs Pipchin's constitution was made of such hard metal, in spite
of its liability to the fleshly weaknesses of standing in need of
repose after chops, and of requiring to be coaxed to sleep by the
soporific agency of sweet-breads, that it utterly set at naught the
predictions of Mrs Wickam, and showed no symptoms of decline. Yet, as
Paul's rapt interest in the old lady continued unbated, Mrs Wickam
would not budge an inch from the position she had taken up.
Fortifying and entrenching herself on the strong ground of her
Uncle's Betsey Jane, she advised Miss Berry, as a friend, to prepare
herself for the worst; and forewarned her that her aunt might, at any
time, be expected to go off suddenly, like a powder-mill.

'I hope, Miss Berry,' Mrs Wickam would observe, 'that you'll
come into whatever little property there may be to leave. You deserve
it, I am sure, for yours is a trying life. Though there don't seem
much worth coming into - you'll excuse my being so open - in this
dismal den.'

Poor Berry took it all in good part, and drudged and slaved away
as usual; perfectly convinced that Mrs Pipchin was one of the most
meritorious persons in the world, and making every day innumerable
sacrifices of herself upon the altar of that noble old woman. But all
these immolations of Berry were somehow carried to the credit of Mrs
Pipchin by Mrs Pipchin's friends and admirers; and were made to
harmonise with, and carry out, that melancholy fact of the deceased
Mr Pipchin having broken his heart in the Peruvian mines.

For example, there was an honest grocer and general dealer in
the retail line of business, between whom and Mrs Pipchin there was a
small memorandum book, with a greasy red cover, perpetually in
question, and concerning which divers secret councils and conferences
were continually being held between the parties to that register, on
the mat in the passage, and with closed doors in the parlour. Nor
were there wanting dark hints from Master Bitherstone (whose temper
had been made revengeful by the solar heats of India acting on his
blood), of balances unsettled, and of a failure, on one occasion
within his memory, in the supply of moist sugar at tea-time. This
grocer being a bachelor and not a man who looked upon the surface for
beauty, had once made honourable offers for the hand of Berry, which
Mrs Pipchin had, with contumely and scorn, rejected. Everybody said
how laudable this was in Mrs Pipchin, relict of a man who had died of
the Peruvian mines; and what a staunch, high, independent spirit the
old lady had. But nobody said anything about poor Berry, who cried
for six weeks (being soundly rated by her good aunt all the time),
and lapsed into a state of hopeless spinsterhood.

'Berry's very fond of you, ain't she?' Paul once asked Mrs
Pipchin when they were sitting by the fire with the cat.

'Yes,' said Mrs Pipchin.

'Why?' asked Paul.

'Why!' returned the disconcerted old lady. 'How can you ask such
things, Sir! why are you fond of your sister Florence?'

'Because she's very good,' said Paul. 'There's nobody like
Florence.'

'Well!' retorted Mrs Pipchin, shortly, 'and there's nobody like
me, I suppose.'

'Ain't there really though?' asked Paul, leaning forward in his
chair, and looking at her very hard.

'No,' said the old lady.

'I am glad of that,' observed Paul, rubbing his hands
thoughtfully. 'That's a very good thing.'

Mrs Pipchin didn't dare to ask him why, lest she should receive
some perfectly annihilating answer. But as a compensation to her
wounded feelings, she harassed Master Bitherstone to that extent
until bed-time, that he began that very night to make arrangements
for an overland return to India, by secreting from his supper a
quarter of a round of bread and a fragment of moist Dutch cheese, as
the beginning of a stock of provision to support him on the
voyage.

Mrs Pipchin had kept watch and ward over little Paul and his
sister for nearly twelve months. They had been home twice, but only
for a few days; and had been constant in their weekly visits to Mr
Dombey at the hotel. By little and little Paul had grown stronger,
and had become able to dispense with his carriage; though he still
looked thin and delicate; and still remained the same old, quiet,
dreamy child that he had been when first consigned to Mrs Pipchin's
care. One Saturday afternoon, at dusk, great consternation was
occasioned in the Castle by the unlooked-for announcement of Mr
Dombey as a visitor to Mrs Pipchin. The population of the parlour was
immediately swept upstairs as on the wings of a whirlwind, and after
much slamming of bedroom doors, and trampling overhead, and some
knocking about of Master Bitherstone by Mrs Pipchin, as a relief to
the perturbation of her spirits, the black bombazeen garments of the
worthy old lady darkened the audience-chamber where Mr Dombey was
contemplating the vacant arm-chair of his son and heir.

'Mrs Pipchin,' said Mr Dombey, 'How do you do?'

'Thank you, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin, 'I am pretty well,
considering.'

Mrs Pipchin always used that form of words. It meant,
considering her virtues, sacrifices, and so forth.

'I can't expect, Sir, to be very well,' said Mrs Pipchin, taking
a chair and fetching her breath; 'but such health as I have, I am
grateful for.'

Mr Dombey inclined his head with the satisfied air of a patron,
who felt that this was the sort of thing for which he paid so much a
quarter. After a moment's silence he went on to say:

'Mrs Pipchin, I have taken the liberty of calling, to consult
you in reference to my son. I have had it in my mind to do so for
some time past; but have deferred it from time to time, in order that
his health might be thoroughly re-established. You have no misgivings
on that subject, Mrs Pipchin?'

'Brighton has proved very beneficial, Sir,' returned Mrs
Pipchin. 'Very beneficial, indeed.'

'I purpose,' said Mr Dombey, 'his remaining at Brighton.'

Mrs Pipchin rubbed her hands, and bent her grey eyes on the
fire.

'But,' pursued Mr Dombey, stretching out his forefinger, 'but
possibly that he should now make a change, and lead a different kind
of life here. In short, Mrs Pipchin, that is the object of my visit.
My son is getting on, Mrs Pipchin. Really, he is getting on.'

There was something melancholy in the triumphant air with which
Mr Dombey said this. It showed how long Paul's childish life had been
to him, and how his hopes were set upon a later stage of his
existence. Pity may appear a strange word to connect with anyone so
haughty and so cold, and yet he seemed a worthy subject for it at
that moment.

'Six years old!' said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth -
perhaps to hide an irrepressible smile that rather seemed to strike
upon the surface of his face and glance away, as finding no
resting-place, than to play there for an instant. 'Dear me, six will
be changed to sixteen, before we have time to look about us.'

'Ten years,' croaked the unsympathetic Pipchin, with a frosty
glistening of her hard grey eye, and a dreary shaking of her bent
head, 'is a long time.'

'It depends on circumstances, returned Mr Dombey; 'at all
events, Mrs Pipchin, my son is six years old, and there is no doubt,
I fear, that in his studies he is behind many children of his age -
or his youth,' said Mr Dombey, quickly answering what he mistrusted
was a shrewd twinkle of the frosty eye, 'his youth is a more
appropriate expression. Now, Mrs Pipchin, instead of being behind his
peers, my son ought to be before them; far before them. There is an
eminence ready for him to mount upon. There is nothing of chance or
doubt in the course before my son. His way in life was clear and
prepared, and marked out before he existed. The education of such a
young gentleman must not be delayed. It must not be left imperfect.
It must be very steadily and seriously undertaken, Mrs Pipchin.'

'Well, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin, 'I can say nothing to the
contrary.'

'I was quite sure, Mrs Pipchin,' returned Mr Dombey,
approvingly, 'that a person of your good sense could not, and would
not.'

'There is a great deal of nonsense - and worse - talked about
young people not being pressed too hard at first, and being tempted
on, and all the rest of it, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin, impatiently
rubbing her hooked nose. 'It never was thought of in my time, and it
has no business to be thought of now. My opinion is "keep 'em at
it".'

'My good madam,' returned Mr Dombey, 'you have not acquired your
reputation undeservedly; and I beg you to believe, Mrs Pipchin, that
I am more than satisfied with your excellent system of management,
and shall have the greatest pleasure in commending it whenever my
poor commendation - ' Mr Dombey's loftiness when he affected to
disparage his own importance, passed all bounds - 'can be of any
service. I have been thinking of Doctor Blimber's, Mrs Pipchin.'

'My neighbour, Sir?' said Mrs Pipchin. 'I believe the Doctor's
is an excellent establishment. I've heard that it's very strictly
conducted, and there is nothing but learning going on from morning to
night.'

'And it's very expensive,' added Mr Dombey.

'And it's very expensive, Sir,' returned Mrs Pipchin, catching
at the fact, as if in omitting that, she had omitted one of its
leading merits.

'I have had some communication with the Doctor, Mrs Pipchin,'
said Mr Dombey, hitching his chair anxiously a little nearer to the
fire, 'and he does not consider Paul at all too young for his
purpose. He mentioned several instances of boys in Greek at about the
same age. If I have any little uneasiness in my own mind, Mrs
Pipchin, on the subject of this change, it is not on that head. My
son not having known a mother has gradually concentrated much - too
much - of his childish affection on his sister. Whether their
separation - ' Mr Dombey said no more, but sat silent.

'Hoity-toity!' exclaimed Mrs Pipchin, shaking out her black
bombazeen skirts, and plucking up all the ogress within her. 'If she
don't like it, Mr Dombey, she must be taught to lump it.' The good
lady apologised immediately afterwards for using so common a figure
of speech, but said (and truly) that that was the way she reasoned
with 'em.

Mr Dombey waited until Mrs Pipchin had done bridling and shaking
her head, and frowning down a legion of Bitherstones and Pankeys; and
then said quietly, but correctively, 'He, my good madam, he.'

Mrs Pipchin's system would have applied very much the same mode
of cure to any uneasiness on the part of Paul, too; but as the hard
grey eye was sharp enough to see that the recipe, however Mr Dombey
might admit its efficacy in the case of the daughter, was not a
sovereign remedy for the son, she argued the point; and contended
that change, and new society, and the different form of life he would
lead at Doctor Blimber's, and the studies he would have to master,
would very soon prove sufficient alienations. As this chimed in with
Mr Dombey's own hope and belief, it gave that gentleman a still
higher opinion of Mrs Pipchin's understanding; and as Mrs Pipchin, at
the same time, bewailed the loss of her dear little friend (which was
not an overwhelming shock to her, as she had long expected it, and
had not looked, in the beginning, for his remaining with her longer
than three months), he formed an equally good opinion of Mrs
Pipchin's disinterestedness. It was plain that he had given the
subject anxious consideration, for he had formed a plan, which he
announced to the ogress, of sending Paul to the Doctor's as a weekly
boarder for the first half year, during which time Florence would
remain at the Castle, that she might receive her brother there, on
Saturdays. This would wean him by degrees, Mr Dombey said; possibly
with a recollection of his not having been weaned by degrees on a
former occasion.

Mr Dombey finished the interview by expressing his hope that Mrs
Pipchin would still remain in office as general superintendent and
overseer of his son, pending his studies at Brighton; and having
kissed Paul, and shaken hands with Florence, and beheld Master
Bitherstone in his collar of state, and made Miss Pankey cry by
patting her on the head (in which region she was uncommonly tender,
on account of a habit Mrs Pipchin had of sounding it with her
knuckles, like a cask), he withdrew to his hotel and dinner: resolved
that Paul, now that he was getting so old and well, should begin a
vigorous course of education forthwith, to qualify him for the
position in which he was to shine; and that Doctor Blimber should
take him in hand immediately.

Whenever a young gentleman was taken in hand by Doctor Blimber,
he might consider himself sure of a pretty tight squeeze. The Doctor
only undertook the charge of ten young gentlemen, but he had, always
ready, a supply of learning for a hundred, on the lowest estimate;
and it was at once the business and delight of his life to gorge the
unhappy ten with it.

In fact, Doctor Blimber's establishment was a great hot-house,
in which there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work. All the
boys blew before their time. Mental green-peas were produced at
Christmas, and intellectual asparagus all the year round.
Mathematical gooseberries (very sour ones too) were common at
untimely seasons, and from mere sprouts of bushes, under Doctor
Blimber's cultivation. Every description of Greek and Latin vegetable
was got off the driest twigs of boys, under the frostiest
circumstances. Nature was of no consequence at all. No matter what a
young gentleman was intended to bear, Doctor Blimber made him bear to
pattern, somehow or other.

This was all very pleasant and ingenious, but the system of
forcing was attended with its usual disadvantages. There was not the
right taste about the premature productions, and they didn't keep
well. Moreover, one young gentleman, with a swollen nose and an
excessively large head (the oldest of the ten who had 'gone through'
everything), suddenly left off blowing one day, and remained in the
establishment a mere stalk. And people did say that the Doctor had
rather overdone it with young Toots, and that when he began to have
whiskers he left off having brains.

There young Toots was, at any rate; possessed of the gruffest of
voices and the shrillest of minds; sticking ornamental pins into his
shirt, and keeping a ring in his waistcoat pocket to put on his
little finger by stealth, when the pupils went out walking;
constantly falling in love by sight with nurserymaids, who had no
idea of his existence; and looking at the gas-lighted world over the
little iron bars in the left-hand corner window of the front three
pairs of stairs, after bed-time, like a greatly overgrown cherub who
had sat up aloft much too long.

The Doctor was a portly gentleman in a suit of black, with
strings at his knees, and stockings below them. He had a bald head,
highly polished; a deep voice; and a chin so very double, that it was
a wonder how he ever managed to shave into the creases. He had
likewise a pair of little eyes that were always half shut up, and a
mouth that was always half expanded into a grin, as if he had, that
moment, posed a boy, and were waiting to convict him from his own
lips. Insomuch, that when the Doctor put his right hand into the
breast of his coat, and with his other hand behind him, and a fly
perceptible wag of his head, made the commonest observation to a
nervous stranger, it was like a sentiment from the sphynx, and
settled his business.

The Doctor's was a mighty fine house, fronting the sea. Not a
joyful style of house within, but quite the contrary. Sad-coloured
curtains, whose proportions were spare and lean, hid themselves
despondently behind the windows. The tables and chairs were put away
in rows, like figures in a sum; fires were so rarely lighted in the
rooms of ceremony, that they felt like wells, and a visitor
represented the bucket; the dining-room seemed the last place in the
world where any eating or drinking was likely to occur; there was no
sound through all the house but the ticking of a great clock in the
hall, which made itself audible in the very garrets; and sometimes a
dull cooing of young gentlemen at their lessons, like the murmurings
of an assemblage of melancholy pigeons.

Miss Blimber, too, although a slim and graceful maid, did no
soft violence to the gravity of the house. There was no light
nonsense about Miss Blimber. She kept her hair short and crisp, and
wore spectacles. She was dry and sandy with working in the graves of
deceased languages. None of your live languages for Miss Blimber.
They must be dead - stone dead - and then Miss Blimber dug them up
like a Ghoul.

Mrs Blimber, her Mama, was not learned herself, but she
pretended to be, and that did quite as well. She said at evening
parties, that if she could have known Cicero, she thought she could
have died contented. It was the steady joy of her life to see the
Doctor's young gentlemen go out walking, unlike all other young
gentlemen, in the largest possible shirt-collars, and the stiffest
possible cravats. It was so classical, she said.

As to Mr Feeder, B.A., Doctor Blimber's assistant, he was a kind
of human barrel-organ, with a little list of tunes at which he was
continually working, over and over again, without any variation. He
might have been fitted up with a change of barrels, perhaps, in early
life, if his destiny had been favourable; but it had not been; and he
had only one, with which, in a monotonous round, it was his
occupation to bewilder the young ideas of Doctor Blimber's young
gentlemen. The young gentlemen were prematurely full of carking
anxieties. They knew no rest from the pursuit of stony-hearted verbs,
savage noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts
of exercises that appeared to them in their dreams. Under the forcing
system, a young gentleman usually took leave of his spirits in three
weeks. He had all the cares of the world on his head in three months.
He conceived bitter sentiments against his parents or guardians in
four; he was an old misanthrope, in five; envied Curtius that blessed
refuge in the earth, in six; and at the end of the first twelvemonth
had arrived at the conclusion, from which he never afterwards
departed, that all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of the
sages, were a mere collection of words and grammar, and had no other
meaning in the world.

But he went on blow, blow, blowing, in the Doctor's hothouse,
all the time; and the Doctor's glory and reputation were great, when
he took his wintry growth home to his relations and friends.

Upon the Doctor's door-steps one day, Paul stood with a
fluttering heart, and with his small right hand in his father's. His
other hand was locked in that of Florence. How tight the tiny
pressure of that one; and how loose and cold the other!

Mrs Pipchin hovered behind the victim, with her sable plumage
and her hooked beak, like a bird of ill-omen. She was out of breath -
for Mr Dombey, full of great thoughts, had walked fast - and she
croaked hoarsely as she waited for the opening of the door.

'Now, Paul,' said Mr Dombey, exultingly. 'This is the way indeed
to be Dombey and Son, and have money. You are almost a man
already.'

'Almost,' returned the child.

Even his childish agitation could not master the sly and quaint
yet touching look, with which he accompanied the reply.

It brought a vague expression of dissatisfaction into Mr
Dombey's face; but the door being opened, it was quickly gone

'Doctor Blimber is at home, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.

The man said yes; and as they passed in, looked at Paul as if he
were a little mouse, and the house were a trap. He was a weak-eyed
young man, with the first faint streaks or early dawn of a grin on
his countenance. It was mere imbecility; but Mrs Pipchin took it into
her head that it was impudence, and made a snap at him directly.

'How dare you laugh behind the gentleman's back?' said Mrs
Pipchin. 'And what do you take me for?'

'I ain't a laughing at nobody, and I'm sure I don't take you for
nothing, Ma'am,' returned the young man, in consternation.

'A pack of idle dogs!' said Mrs Pipchin, 'only fit to be
turnspits. Go and tell your master that Mr Dombey's here, or it'll be
worse for you!'

The weak-eyed young man went, very meekly, to discharge himself
of this commission; and soon came back to invite them to the Doctor's
study.

'You're laughing again, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin, when it came to
her turn, bringing up the rear, to pass him in the hall.

'I ain't,' returned the young man, grievously oppressed. 'I
never see such a thing as this!'

'What is the matter, Mrs Pipchin?' said Mr Dombey, looking
round. 'Softly! Pray!'

Mrs Pipchin, in her deference, merely muttered at the young man
as she passed on, and said, 'Oh! he was a precious fellow' - leaving
the young man, who was all meekness and incapacity, affected even to
tears by the incident. But Mrs Pipchin had a way of falling foul of
all meek people; and her friends said who could wonder at it, after
the Peruvian mines!

The Doctor was sitting in his portentous study, with a globe at
each knee, books all round him, Homer over the door, and Minerva on
the mantel-shelf. 'And how do you do, Sir?' he said to Mr Dombey,
'and how is my little friend?' Grave as an organ was the Doctor's
speech; and when he ceased, the great clock in the hall seemed (to
Paul at least) to take him up, and to go on saying, 'how, is, my,
lit, tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?' over and over and
over again.

The little friend being something too small to be seen at all
from where the Doctor sat, over the books on his table, the Doctor
made several futile attempts to get a view of him round the legs;
which Mr Dombey perceiving, relieved the Doctor from his
embarrassment by taking Paul up in his arms, and sitting him on
another little table, over against the Doctor, in the middle of the
room.

'Ha!' said the Doctor, leaning back in his chair with his hand
in his breast. 'Now I see my little friend. How do you do, my little
friend?'

The clock in the hall wouldn't subscribe to this alteration in
the form of words, but continued to repeat how, is, my, lit, tle,
friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?'

'Very well, I thank you, Sir,' returned Paul, answering the
clock quite as much as the Doctor.

'Ha!' said Doctor Blimber. 'Shall we make a man of him?'

'Do you hear, Paul?' added Mr Dombey; Paul being silent.

'Shall we make a man of him?' repeated the Doctor.

'I had rather be a child,' replied Paul.

'Indeed!' said the Doctor. 'Why?'

The child sat on the table looking at him, with a curious
expression of suppressed emotion in his face, and beating one hand
proudly on his knee as if he had the rising tears beneath it, and
crushed them. But his other hand strayed a little way the while, a
little farther - farther from him yet - until it lighted on the neck
of Florence. 'This is why,' it seemed to say, and then the steady
look was broken up and gone; the working lip was loosened; and the
tears came streaming forth.

'Mrs Pipchin,' said his father, in a querulous manner, 'I am
really very sorry to see this.'

'Come away from him, do, Miss Dombey,' quoth the matron.

'Never mind,' said the Doctor, blandly nodding his head, to keep
Mrs Pipchin back. 'Never mind; we shall substitute new cares and new
impressions, Mr Dombey, very shortly. You would still wish my little
friend to acquire - '

'Everything, if you please, Doctor,' returned Mr Dombey,
firmly.

'Yes,' said the Doctor, who, with his half-shut eyes, and his
usual smile, seemed to survey Paul with the sort of interest that
might attach to some choice little animal he was going to stuff.
'Yes, exactly. Ha! We shall impart a great variety of information to
our little friend, and bring him quickly forward, I daresay. I
daresay. Quite a virgin soil, I believe you said, Mr Dombey?'

'Except some ordinary preparation at home, and from this lady,'
replied Mr Dombey, introducing Mrs Pipchin, who instantly
communicated a rigidity to her whole muscular system, and snorted
defiance beforehand, in case the Doctor should disparage her; 'except
so far, Paul has, as yet, applied himself to no studies at all.'

Doctor Blimber inclined his head, in gentle tolerance of such
insignificant poaching as Mrs Pipchin's, and said he was glad to hear
it. It was much more satisfactory, he observed, rubbing his hands, to
begin at the foundation. And again he leered at Paul, as if he would
have liked to tackle him with the Greek alphabet, on the spot.

'That circumstance, indeed, Doctor Blimber,' pursued Mr Dombey,
glancing at his little son, 'and the interview I have already had the
pleasure of holding with you, renders any further explanation, and
consequently, any further intrusion on your valuable time, so
unnecessary, that - '

'Now, Miss Dombey!' said the acid Pipchin.

'Permit me,' said the Doctor, 'one moment. Allow me to present
Mrs Blimber and my daughter; who will be associated with the domestic
life of our young Pilgrim to Parnassus Mrs Blimber,' for the lady,
who had perhaps been in waiting, opportunely entered, followed by her
daughter, that fair Sexton in spectacles, 'Mr Dombey. My daughter
Cornelia, Mr Dombey. Mr Dombey, my love,' pursued the Doctor, turning
to his wife, 'is so confiding as to - do you see our little
friend?'

Mrs Blimber, in an excess of politeness, of which Mr Dombey was
the object, apparently did not, for she was backing against the
little friend, and very much endangering his position on the table.
But, on this hint, she turned to admire his classical and
intellectual lineaments, and turning again to Mr Dombey, said, with a
sigh, that she envied his dear son.

'Like a bee, Sir,' said Mrs Blimber, with uplifted eyes, 'about
to plunge into a garden of the choicest flowers, and sip the sweets
for the first time Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Plautus, Cicero.
What a world of honey have we here. It may appear remarkable, Mr
Dombey, in one who is a wife - the wife of such a husband - '

'Hush, hush,' said Doctor Blimber. 'Fie for shame.'

'Mr Dombey will forgive the partiality of a wife,' said Mrs
Blimber, with an engaging smile.

Mr Dombey answered 'Not at all:' applying those words, it is to
be presumed, to the partiality, and not to the forgiveness.

'And it may seem remarkable in one who is a mother also,'
resumed Mrs Blimber.

'And such a mother,' observed Mr Dombey, bowing with some
confused idea of being complimentary to Cornelia.

'But really,' pursued Mrs Blimber, 'I think if I could have
known Cicero, and been his friend, and talked with him in his
retirement at Tusculum (beau-ti-ful Tusculum!), I could have died
contented.'

A learned enthusiasm is so very contagious, that Mr Dombey half
believed this was exactly his case; and even Mrs Pipchin, who was
not, as we have seen, of an accommodating disposition generally, gave
utterance to a little sound between a groan and a sigh, as if she
would have said that nobody but Cicero could have proved a lasting
consolation under that failure of the Peruvian Mines, but that he
indeed would have been a very Davy-lamp of refuge.

Cornelia looked at Mr Dombey through her spectacles, as if she
would have liked to crack a few quotations with him from the
authority in question. But this design, if she entertained it, was
frustrated by a knock at the room-door.

'Who is that?' said the Doctor. 'Oh! Come in, Toots; come in. Mr
Dombey, Sir.' Toots bowed. 'Quite a coincidence!' said Doctor
Blimber. 'Here we have the beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega Our
head boy, Mr Dombey.'

The Doctor might have called him their head and shoulders boy,
for he was at least that much taller than any of the rest. He blushed
very much at finding himself among strangers, and chuckled aloud.

'An addition to our little Portico, Toots,' said the Doctor; 'Mr
Dombey's son.'

Young Toots blushed again; and finding, from a solemn silence
which prevailed, that he was expected to say something, said to Paul,
'How are you?' in a voice so deep, and a manner so sheepish, that if
a lamb had roared it couldn't have been more surprising.

'Ask Mr Feeder, if you please, Toots,' said the Doctor, 'to
prepare a few introductory volumes for Mr Dombey's son, and to allot
him a convenient seat for study. My dear, I believe Mr Dombey has not
seen the dormitories.'

'If Mr Dombey will walk upstairs,' said Mrs Blimber, 'I shall be
more than proud to show him the dominions of the drowsy god.'

With that, Mrs Blimber, who was a lady of great suavity, and a
wiry figure, and who wore a cap composed of sky-blue materials, pied
upstairs with Mr Dombey and Cornelia; Mrs Pipchin following, and
looking out sharp for her enemy the footman.

While they were gone, Paul sat upon the table, holding Florence
by the hand, and glancing timidly from the Doctor round and round the
room, while the Doctor, leaning back in his chair, with his hand in
his breast as usual, held a book from him at arm's length, and read.
There was something very awful in this manner of reading. It was such
a determined, unimpassioned, inflexible, cold-blooded way of going to
work. It left the Doctor's countenance exposed to view; and when the
Doctor smiled suspiciously at his author, or knit his brows, or shook
his head and made wry faces at him, as much as to say, 'Don't tell
me, Sir; I know better,' it was terrific.

Toots, too, had no business to be outside the door,
ostentatiously examining the wheels in his watch, and counting his
half-crowns. But that didn't last long; for Doctor Blimber, happening
to change the position of his tight plump legs, as if he were going
to get up, Toots swiftly vanished, and appeared no more.

Mr Dombey and his conductress were soon heard coming downstairs
again, talking all the way; and presently they re-entered the
Doctor's study.

'I hope, Mr Dombey,' said the Doctor, laying down his book,
'that the arrangements meet your approval.'

'They are excellent, Sir,' said Mr Dombey.

'Very fair, indeed,' said Mrs Pipchin, in a low voice; never
disposed to give too much encouragement.

'Mrs Pipchin,' said Mr Dombey, wheeling round, 'will, with your
permission, Doctor and Mrs Blimber, visit Paul now and then.'

'Whenever Mrs Pipchin pleases,' observed the Doctor.

'Always happy to see her,' said Mrs Blimber.

'I think,' said Mr Dombey, 'I have given all the trouble I need,
and may take my leave. Paul, my child,' he went close to him, as he
sat upon the table. 'Good-bye.'

'Good-bye, Papa.'

The limp and careless little hand that Mr Dombey took in his,
was singularly out of keeping with the wistful face. But he had no
part in its sorrowful expression. It was not addressed to him. No,
no. To Florence - all to Florence.

If Mr Dombey in his insolence of wealth, had ever made an enemy,
hard to appease and cruelly vindictive in his hate, even such an
enemy might have received the pang that wrung his proud heart then,
as compensation for his injury.

He bent down, over his boy, and kissed him. If his sight were
dimmed as he did so, by something that for a moment blurred the
little face, and made it indistinct to him, his mental vision may
have been, for that short time, the clearer perhaps.

'I shall see you soon, Paul. You are free on Saturdays and
Sundays, you know.'

'Yes, Papa,' returned Paul: looking at his sister. 'On Saturdays
and Sundays.'

'And you'll try and learn a great deal here, and be a clever
man,' said Mr Dombey; 'won't you?'

'I'll try,' returned the child, wearily.

'And you'll soon be grown up now!' said Mr Dombey.

'Oh! very soon!' replied the child. Once more the old, old look
passed rapidly across his features like a strange light. It fell on
Mrs Pipchin, and extinguished itself in her black dress. That
excellent ogress stepped forward to take leave and to bear off
Florence, which she had long been thirsting to do. The move on her
part roused Mr Dombey, whose eyes were fixed on Paul. After patting
him on the head, and pressing his small hand again, he took leave of
Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber, with his usual polite
frigidity, and walked out of the study.

Despite his entreaty that they would not think of stirring,
Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber all pressed forward to
attend him to the hall; and thus Mrs Pipchin got into a state of
entanglement with Miss Blimber and the Doctor, and was crowded out of
the study before she could clutch Florence. To which happy accident
Paul stood afterwards indebted for the dear remembrance, that
Florence ran back to throw her arms round his neck, and that hers was
the last face in the doorway: turned towards him with a smile of
encouragement, the brighter for the tears through which it beamed.

It made his childish bosom heave and swell when it was gone; and
sent the globes, the books, blind Homer and Minerva, swimming round
the room. But they stopped, all of a sudden; and then he heard the
loud clock in the hall still gravely inquiring 'how, is, my, lit,
tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?' as it had done
before.

He sat, with folded hands, upon his pedestal, silently
listening. But he might have answered 'weary, weary! very lonely,
very sad!' And there, with an aching void in his young heart, and all
outside so cold, and bare, and strange, Paul sat as if he had taken
life unfurnished, and the upholsterer were never coming.