“Of course you think,” said Berry, gently doing what she was asked, “that he has been nursed by his mother, too?”
“Betsey Jane,” returned Mrs. Wickam in her most solemn tones, “was put upon as that child has been put upon, and changed as that child has changed. I have seen her sit, often and often, think, think, thinking, like him. I have seen her look, often and often, old, old, old, like him. I have heard her, many a time, talk just like him. I consider that child and Betsey Jane on the same footing entirely, Miss Berry.”
“Is your Uncle’s child alive?” asked Berry.
“Yes, Miss, she is alive,” returned Mrs. Wickam with an air of triumph, for it was evident Miss Berry expected the reverse; “and is married to a silver-chaser. Oh yes, Miss, she is alive,” said Mrs. Wickam, laying strong stress on her nominative case.
It being clear that somebody was dead, Mrs. Pipchin’s niece inquired who it was.
“I wouldn’t wish to make you uneasy,” returned Mrs. Wickam, pursuing her supper. “Don’t ask me.”
This was the surest way of being asked again. Miss Berry repeated her question, therefore; and after some resistance, and reluctance, Mrs. Wickam laid down her knife, and again glancing round the room and at Paul in bed, replied:
“She took fancies to people; whimsical fancies, some of them; others, affections that one might expect to see—only stronger than common. They all died.”
This was so very unexpected and awful to Mrs. Pipchin’s niece, that she sat upright on the hard edge of the bedstead, breathing short, and surveying her informant with looks of undisguised alarm.
Mrs. Wickam shook her left forefinger stealthily towards the bed where Florence lay; then turned it upside down, and made several emphatic points at the floor; immediately below which was the parlour in which Mrs. Pipchin habitually consumed the toast.
“Remember my words, Miss Berry,” said Mrs. Wickam, “and be thankful that Master Paul is not too fond of you. I am, that he’s not too fond of me, I assure you; though there isn’t much to live for—you’ll excuse my being so free—in this jail of a house!”
Miss Berry’s emotion might have led to her patting Paul too hard on the back, or might have produced a cessation of that soothing monotony, but he turned in his bed just now, and, presently awaking, sat up in it with his hair hot and wet from the effects of some childish dream, and asked for Florence.
She was out of her own bed at the first sound of his voice; and bending over his pillow immediately, sang him to sleep again. Mrs. Wickam shaking her head, and letting fall several tears, pointed out the little group to Berry, and turned her eyes up to the ceiling.
“Good night, Miss!” said Wickam softly. “Good night! Your aunt is an old lady, Miss Berry, and it’s what you must have looked for, often.”
This consolatory farewell, Mrs. Wickam accompanied with a look of heartfelt anguish; and being left alone with the two children again, and becoming conscious that the wind was blowing mournfully, she indulged in melancholy—that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries—until she was overpowered by slumber.
Although the niece of Mrs. Pipchin did not expect to find that exemplary dragon prostrate on the hearthrug when she went downstairs, she was relieved to find her unusually fractious and severe, and with every present appearance of intending to live a long time to be a comfort to all who knew her. Nor had she any symptoms of declining, in the course of the ensuing week, when the constitutional viands still continued to disappear in regular succession, notwithstanding that Paul studied her as attentively as ever, and occupied his usual seat between the black skirts and the fender, with unwavering constancy.
But as Paul himself was no stronger at the expiration of that time than he had been on his first arrival, though he looked much healthier in the face, a little carriage was got for him, in which he could lie at his ease, with an alphabet and other elementary works of reference, and be wheeled down to the seaside. Consistent in his odd tastes, the child set aside a ruddy-faced lad who was proposed as the drawer of this carriage, and selected, instead, his grandfather—a weazen, old, crab-faced man, in a suit of battered oilskin, who had got tough and stringy from long pickling in salt water, and who smelt like a weedy sea-beach when the tide is out.
With this notable attendant to pull him along, and Florence always walking by his side, and the despondent Wickam bringing up the rear, he went down to the margin of the ocean every day; and there he would sit or lie in his carriage for hours together: never so distressed as by the company of children—Florence alone excepted, always.
“Go away, if you please,” he would say to any child who came to bear him company. “Thank you, but I don’t want you.”
Some small voice, near his ear, would ask him how he was, perhaps.
“I am very well, I thank you,” he would answer. “But you had better go and play, if you please.”
Then he would turn his head, and watch the child away, and say to Florence, “We don’t want any others, do we? Kiss me, Floy.”
He had even a dislike, at such times, to the company of Wickam, and was well pleased when she strolled away, as she generally did, to pick up shells and acquaintances. His favourite spot was quite a lonely one, far away from most loungers; and with Florence sitting by his side at work, or reading to him, or talking to him, and the wind blowing on his face, and the water coming up among the wheels of his bed, he wanted nothing more.
“Floy,” he said one day, “where’s India, where that boy’s friends live?”
“Oh, it’s a long, long distance off,” said Florence, raising her eyes from
