"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.
