By the time he was five years old, though he had the prettiest, sweetest
little face in the world, there was always a patient, wistful look upon
it, and he was thin and tiny and delicate. He soon got tired, and had
such old-fashioned ways of speaking and doing things, that his nurse
often shook her head sadly over him.
When he sat in his little arm-chair with his father, after dinner, they
were a strange pair,--so like, and so unlike each other.
"What is money, papa?" asked Paul on one of these occasions, crossing
his tiny arms as well as he could--just as his father's were crossed.
"Why, gold, silver and copper; you know what it is well enough, Paul,"
answered his father.
"Oh yes; I mean, what can money do?"
"Anything, everything--almost," replied Mr. Dombey, taking one of his
son's wee hands.
Paul drew his hand gently away. "It didn't save me my mamma, and it
can't make me strong and big," said he.
"Why, you _are_ strong and big, as big as such little people usually
are," returned Mr. Dombey.
"No," replied Paul, sighing; "when Florence was as little as me, she was
strong and tall, and did not get tired of playing as I do. I am so tired
sometimes, papa."
Mr. Dombey's anxiety was aroused, and the doctor was sent for to examine
Paul.
"The child is hardly so stout as we could wish," said the doctor; "his
mind is too big for his body, he thinks too much--let him try sea
air--sea air does wonders for children."
So it was arranged that Florence, Paul, and nurse should go to Brighton,
and stay in the house of a lady named Mrs. Pipchin, who kept a very
select boarding-house for children.
There is no doubt that, apart from his importance to the house of Dombey
& Son, little Paul had crept into his father's heart, cold though it
still was towards his daughter, colder than ever now, for there was in
it a sort of unacknowledged jealousy of the warm love lavished on her by
Paul, which he himself was unable to win.
Mrs. Pipchin was a marvellously ugly old lady, with a hook nose and
stern cold eyes.
"Well, Master Paul, how do you think you will like me?" said Mrs.
Pipchin, seeing the child intently regarding her.
"I don't think I shall like you at all," replied Paul, shaking his head.
"I want to go away. I do not like your house."
Paul did not like Mrs. Pipchin, but he would sit in his arm-chair and
look at her. Her ugliness seemed to fascinate him.
As the weeks went by little Paul grew more healthy-looking, but he did
not seem any stronger, and could not run about out of doors. A little
carriage was therefore got for him, in which he could be wheeled down to
the beach, where he would pass the greater part of the day. He took a
great fancy to a queer crab-faced old man, smelling of sea-weed, who
wheeled his carriage, and held long conversations with him; but Florence
was the only child companion whom he ever cared to have with him, though
he liked to watch other children playing in the distance.
"I love you, Floy," he said one day to her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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