“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. “Ne‑ver 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
