“You,” said Paul, without the least reserve.
“And what are you thinking about me?” asked Mrs. Pipchin.
“I’m thinking how old you must be,” said Paul.
“You mustn’t say such things as that, young gentleman,” returned the dame. “That’ll never do.”
“Why not?” asked Paul.
“Because it’s not polite,” said Mrs. Pipchin, snappishly.
“Not polite?” said Paul.
“No.”
“It’s not polite,” said Paul, innocently, “to eat all the mutton chops and toast, Wickam says.”
“Wickam,” retorted Mrs. Pipchin, colouring, “is a wicked, impudent, boldfaced hussy.”
“What’s that?” inquired Paul.
“Never you mind, Sir,” retorted Mrs. Pipchin. “Remember the story of the little boy that was gored to death by a mad bull for asking questions.”
“If the bull was mad,” said Paul, “how did he know that the boy had asked questions? Nobody can go and whisper secrets to a mad bull. I don’t believe that story.”
“You don’t believe it, Sir?” repeated Mrs. Pipchin, amazed.
“No,” said Paul.
“Not if it should happen to have been a tame bull, you little Infidel?” said Mrs. Pipchin.
As Paul had not considered the subject in that light, and had founded his conclusions on the alleged lunacy of the bull, he allowed himself to be put down for the present. But he sat turning it over in his mind, with such an obvious intention of fixing Mrs. Pipchin presently, that even that hardy old lady deemed it prudent to retreat until he should have forgotten the subject.
From that time, Mrs. Pipchin appeared to have something of the same odd kind of attraction towards Paul, as Paul had towards her. She would make him move his chair to her side of the fire, instead of sitting opposite; and there he would remain in a nook between Mrs. Pipchin and the fender, with all the light of his little face absorbed into the black bombazeen drapery, studying every line and wrinkle of her countenance, and peering at the hard grey eye, until Mrs. Pipchin was sometimes fain to shut it, on pretence of dozing. Mrs. Pipchin had an old black cat, who generally lay coiled upon the centre foot of the fender, purring egotistically, and winking at the fire until the contracted pupils of his eyes were like two notes of admiration. The good old lady might have been—not to record it disrespectfully—a witch, and Paul and the cat her two familiars, as they all sat by the fire together. It would have been quite in keeping with the appearance of the party if they had all sprung up the chimney in a high wind one night, and never been heard of any more.
This, however, never came to pass. The cat, and Paul, and Mrs. Pipchin, were constantly to be found in their usual places after dark; and Paul, eschewing the companionship of Master Bitherstone, went on studying Mrs. Pipchin, and the cat, and the fire, night after night, as if they were a book of necromancy, in three volumes.
Mrs. Wickam put her own construction on Paul’s eccentricities; and being confirmed in her low spirits by a perplexed view of chimneys from the room where she was accustomed to sit, and by the noise of the wind, and by the general dullness (gashliness was Mrs. Wickam’s strong expression) of her present life, deduced the most dismal reflections from the foregoing premises. It was a part of Mrs. Pipchin’s policy to prevent her own “young hussy”—that was Mrs. Pipchin’s generic name for female servant—from communicating with Mrs. Wickam: to which end she devoted much of her time to concealing herself behind doors, and springing out on that devoted maiden, whenever she made an approach towards Mrs. Wickam’s apartment. But Berry was free to hold what converse she could in that quarter, consistently with the discharge of the multifarious duties at which she toiled incessantly from morning to night; and to Berry Mrs. Wickam unburdened her mind.
“What a pretty fellow he is when he’s asleep!” said Berry, stopping to look at Paul in bed, one night when she took up Mrs. Wickam’s supper.
“Ah!” sighed Mrs. Wickam. “He need be.”
“Why, he’s not ugly when he’s awake,” observed Berry.
“No, Ma’am. Oh, no. No more was my Uncle’s Betsey Jane,” said Mrs. Wickam.
Berry looked as if she would like to trace the connection of ideas between Paul Dombey and Mrs. Wickam’s Uncle’s Betsey Jane.
“My Uncle’s wife,” Mrs. Wickam went on to say, “died just like his Mama. My Uncle’s child took on just as Master Paul do. My Uncle’s child made people’s blood run cold, some times, she did!”
“How?” asked Berry.
“I wouldn’t have sat up all night alone with Betsey Jane!” said Mrs. Wickam, “not if you’d have put Wickam into business next morning for himself. I couldn’t have done it, Miss Berry.”
Miss Berry naturally asked why not? But Mrs. Wickam, agreeably to the usage of some ladies in her condition, pursued her own branch of the subject, without any compunction.
“Betsey Jane,” said Mrs. Wickam, “was as sweet a child as I could wish to see. I couldn’t wish to see a sweeter. Everything that a child could have in the way of illnesses, Betsey Jane had come through. The cramps was as common to her,” said Mrs. Wickam, “as biles is to yourself, Miss Berry.” Miss Berry involuntarily wrinkled her nose.
“But Betsey Jane,” said Mrs. Wickam, lowering her voice, and looking round the room, and towards Paul in bed, “had been minded, in her cradle, by her departed mother. I couldn’t say how, nor I couldn’t say when, nor I couldn’t say whether the dear child knew it or not, but Betsey Jane had been watched by her mother, Miss Berry! You may say nonsense! I ain’t offended, Miss. I hope you may be able to think in your own conscience that it is nonsense; you’ll find your spirits all the better for it in this—you’ll excuse my being so free—in this burying-ground of a place; which is wearing of me down. Master Paul’s
