and well as Florence, I know," returned the child; "but I believe that when Florence was as little as me, she could play a great deal longer at a time without tiring herself. I am so tired sometimes," said little Paul, warming his hands, and looking in between the bars of the grate, as if some ghostly puppet-show were performing there, "and my bones ache so (Wickam says it's my bones), that I don't know what to do."

"Ay! But that's at night," said Mr. Dombey, drawing his own chair closer to his son's, and laying his hand gently on his back; "little people should be tired at night, for then they sleep well."

"Oh, it's not at night, papa," returned the child, "it's in the day; and I lie down in Florence's lap,

and she sings to me. cu-ri-ous things!"

At night I dream about such And he went on warming his hands again, and thinking about them, like an old man or a young goblin.

Mr. Dombey was so astonished, and so uncomfortable, and so perfectly at a loss how to pursue the conversation, that he could only sit looking at his son by the light of the fire, with his hand resting on his back, as if it were detained there by some magnetic attraction. Once he advanced his other hand, and turned the contemplative face toward his own for But it sought the fire again as soon as he released it; and remained, addressed toward the flickering blaze, until the nurse appeared, to summon him to bed.

a moment.

After they had left the room together, he thought he heard a soft voice singing; and remembering that Paul had said his sister sung to him, he had the curiosity to open the door and listen, and look after them. She was toiling up the great, wide, vacant staircase, with him in her arms; his head was lying on her shoulder, one of his arms thrown negligently round her neck. So they went, toiling up; she singing all the way, and Paul sometimes crooning out a feeble accompaniment. Mr. Dombey looked after them until they reached the top of the staircasenot without halting to rest by the way-and passed out of his sight; and then he still stood gazing upward, until the dull rays of the moon, glimmering in a melancholy manner through the dim sky-light, sent him back to his own room.

Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox were convoked in council at dinner next day; and when the cloth was removed, Mr. Dombey opened the proceedings by requiring to be informed, without any gloss or reservation, whether there was any thing the matter with Paul, and what Mr. Pilkins said about him.

"For the child is hardly," said Mr. Dombey, as stout as I could wish."

"With your usual happy discrimination, my dear Paul," returned Mrs. Chick, "you have hit the point at once. Our darling is not altogether as stout as we could wish. The fact is, that his mind is too much for him. His soul is a great deal too large for his frame. I am sure the way in which that dear child talks!" said Mrs. Chick, shaking her head; "no one would believe. His expressions, Lucretia, only yesterday upon the subject of Funerals!"

"I am afraid," said Mr. Dombey, interrupting her testily, "that some of those persons up stairs suggest improper subjects to the child. He was speaking | to me last night about his-about his Bones," said Mr. Dombey, laying an irritated stress upon the word. "What on earth has any body to do with the--with the-Bones of my son? He is not a living skeleton, I suppose."

"Very far from it," said Mrs. Chick, with unspeakable expression.

"I hope so," returned her brother. "Funerals again! who talks to the child of funerals? We are not undertakers, or mutes, or grave-diggers, I believe."

"Very far from it," interposed Mrs. Chick, with the same profound expression as before.

"Then who puts such things into his head?" said Mr. Dombey. "Really I was quite dismayed and shocked last night. Who puts such things into his head, Louisa?”

"My dear Paul," said Mrs. Chick, after a moment's silence, "it is of no use inquiring. I do not think, I will tell you candidly, that Wickam is a person of very cheerful spirit, or what one would call a-"

"A daughter of Momus," Miss Tox softly suggested.

"Exactly so," said Mrs. Chick; "but she is exceedingly attentive and useful, and not at all presumptuous; indeed I never saw a more biddable woman. If the dear child," pursued Mrs. Chick, in the tone of one who was summing up what had been previously quite agreed upon, instead of saying it all for the first time, is a little weakened by that last attack, and is not in quite such vigorous health as we could wish; and if he has some temporary weakness in his system, and does occasionally seem about to lose, for the moment, the use of his-"

Mrs. Chick was afraid to say limbs, after Mr. Dombey's recent objection to bones, and therefore waited for a suggestion from Miss Tox, who, true to her office, hazarded "members."

"Members!" repeated Mr. Dombey.

"I think the medical gentleman mentioned legs this morning, my dear Louisa, did he not ?" said Miss Tox.

"Why, of course he did, my love," retorted Mrs. Chick, mildly reproachful. "How can you ask me? You heard him. I say, if our dear Paul should lose,

for the moment, the use of his legs, these are casualties common to many children at his time of life, and not to be prevented by any care or caution. The sooner you understand that, Paul, and admit that, the better."

"Surely you must know, Louisa," observed Mr. Dombey, "that I don't question your natural devotion to, and natural regard for, the future head of my house. Mr. Pilkins saw Paul this morning, I believe?" said Mr. Dombey.

"Yes, he did," returned his sister. "Miss Tox and myself were present, Miss Tox and myself are always present. We make a point of it. Mr. Pilkins has seen him for some days past, and a very clever man I believe him to be. He says it is nothing to speak of; which I can confirm, if that is any consolation; but he recommended, to-day, sea-air. Very wisely, Paul, I feel convinced."

"Sea-air," repeated Mr. Dombey, looking at his sister.

"There is nothing to be made uneasy by in that," said Mrs. Chick. "My George and Frederick were both ordered sea-air, when they were about his age; and I have been ordered it myself a great many times. I quite agree with you, Paul, that perhaps topics may be incautiously mentioned up stairs before him, which it would be as well for his little mind not to expatiate upon; but I really don't see how that is to be helped in the case of a child of his quickness. If he were a common child, there would be nothing in it. I must say I think, with Miss Tox, that a short absence from this house, the air of Brighton, and the bodily and mental training of so judicious a person as Mrs. Pipchin for instance-"

"Who is Mrs. Pipchin, Louisa?" asked Mr. Dombey; aghast at this familiar introduction of a name he had never heard before.

"Mrs. Pipchin, my dear Paul," returned his sister, " is an elderly lady-Miss Tox knows her whole history-who has for some time devoted all the energies of her mind, with the greatest success, to the study and treatment of infancy, and who has been extremely well connected. Her husband broke his heart in -how did you say her husband broke his heart, my dear? I forget the precise circumstances."

"In pumping water out of the Peruvian mines," replied Miss Tox.

"Not being a Pumper himself, of course," said Mrs. Chick, giancing at her brother; and it really did seem necessary to offer the explanation, for Miss Tox had spoken of him as if he had died at the handle; "but having invested money in the speculation, which failed. I believe that Mrs. Pipchin's management of children is quite astonishing. I have heard it commended in private circles ever since I wasdear me how high!" Mrs. Chick's eye wandered about the book-case near the bust of Mr. Pitt, which was about ten feet from the ground.

"Perhaps I should say of Mrs. Pipchin, my dear sir," observed Miss Tox, with an ingenuous blush, "having been so pointedly referred to, that the encomium which has been passed upon her by your sweet sister is well merited. Many ladies and gentlemen, now grown up to be interesting members of society, have been indebted to her care. The humble individual who addresses you was once under her

charge. I believe juvenile nobility itself is no stranger to her establishment."

"Do I understand that this respectable matron keeps an establishment, Miss Tox?" inquired Mr. Dombey, condescendingly.

"Why, I really don't know," rejoined that lady, "whether I am justified in calling it so. It is not a Preparatory School by any means. Should I express

my meaning," said Miss Tox, with peculiar sweetness, "if I designated it an infantine Boarding-house of a very select description?"

"On an exceedingly limited and particular scale," suggested Mrs. Chick, with a glance at her brother. "Oh! Exclusion itself!" said Miss Tox.

There was something in this. Mrs. Pipchin's husband having broken his heart of the Peruvian mines was good. It had a rich sound. Besides, Mr. Dombey was in a state almost amounting to consterna tion at the idea of Paul remaining where he was one hour after his removal had been recommended by the medical practitioner. It was a stoppage and delay upon the road the child must traverse, slowly at the best, before the goal was reached. Their recommendation of Mrs. Pipchin had great weight with him; for he knew that they were jealous of any interference with their charge, and he never for a moment took it into account that they might be solicitous to divide a responsibility, of which he had, as shown just now, his own established views. Broke his heart of the Peruvian mines, mused Mr. Dombey. Well, a very respectable way of doing it.

"Supposing we should decide, on to-morrow's inquiries, to send Paul down to Brighton to this lady, who would go with him?” inquired Mr. Dombey, after some reflection.

"I don't think you could send the child anywhere at present without Florence, my dear Paul," returned his sister, hesitating. "It's quite an infatuation with him. He's very young, you know, and has his fancies."

Mr. Dombey turned his head away, and going slowly to the book-case and unlocking it, brought back a book to read.

"Any body else, Louisa?" he said, without looking up, and turning over the leaves.

"Wickam, of course. Wickam would be quite sufficient. I should say," returned his sister. "Paul being in such hands as Mrs. Pipchin's, you could hardly send any body who would be a further check upon her. You would go down yourself once a week at least, of course."

"Of course," said Mr. Dombey; and sat looking at one page for an hour afterward, without reading one word.

This celebrated Mrs. Pipchin was a marvelous, illfavored, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard gray eye, that looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury. Forty years at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been the death of Mr. Pipchin; but his relict still wore black bombazine, of such a lustreless, deep, dead, sombre shade, that gas itself couldn't light her up after dark, and her presence was a quencher to any number of candles. was generally spoken of as "a great manager" of

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children; and the secret of her management was, to give them every thing that they didn't like, and nothing that they did-which was found to sweeten their dispositions very much. She was such a bitter old lady, that one was tempted to believe there had been some mistake in the application of the Peruvian machinery, and that all her waters of gladness and milk of human kindness had been pumped out dry, instead of the mines.

The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-street at Brighton; where the soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, and sterile, and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin; where the small front-gardens had the unaccountable property of producing nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in them; and where snails were constantly discovered holding on to the street doors, and other public places they were not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of cupping-glasses. In the winter-time the air couldn't be got out of the Castle, and in the summer time it couldn't be got in. There was such a continual reverberation of wind in it, that it sounded like a great shell, which the inhabitants were obliged to hold to their ears night and day, whether they liked it or no. It was not, naturally, a fresh-smelling house; and in the window of the front parlor, which was never opened, Mrs. Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots, which imparted an earthy flavor of their own to the establishment. However choice examples of their kind, too, these plants were of a kind peculiarly adapted to the embowerment of Mrs. Pipchin. There were half a dozen specimens of the cactus, writhing round bits of lath, like hairy serpents; another specimen shooting out broad claws, like a green lobster; several creeping vegetables, possessed of sticky and adhesive leaves: and one uncomfortable flower-pot hanging to the ceiling, which appeared to have boiled over, and tickling people underneath with its long green ends, reminded them of spiders-in which Mrs. Pipchin's dwelling was uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it challenged competition still more proudly, in the season, in point of earwigs.

Mrs. Pipchin's scale of charges being high, however, to all who could afford to pay, and Mrs. Pipchin very seldom sweetening the equable acidity of her nature in favor of any body, she was held to be an old lady of remarkable firmness, who was quite scientific in her knowledge of the childish character. On this reputation, and on the broken heart of Mr. Pipchin, she had contrived, taking one year with another, to eke out a tolerable sufficient living since her husband's demise. Within three days after Mrs. Chick's first allusion to her, this excellent old lady had the satisfaction of anticipating a handsome addition to her current receipts from the pocket of Mr. Dombey; and of receiving Florence and her little brother Paul as inmates of the Castle.

Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox, who had brought them down on the previous night (which they all passed at a hotel), had just driven away from the door, on their journey home again; and Mrs. Pipchin, with her back to the fire, stood, reviewing the new-comers, like an old soldier. Mrs. Pipchin's middle-aged niece, her good-natured and devoted slave, but possessing a gaunt and iron-bound aspect, and much

afflicted with boils on her nose, was divesting Master Bitherstone of the clean collar he had worn on parade. Miss Pankey, the only other little boarder at present, had that moment been walked off to the Castle Dungeon (an empty apartment at the back, devoted to correctional purposes), for having sniffed thrice in the presence of visitors.

"Well, sir," said Mrs. Pipchin to Paul, "how do you do think you shall like me?"

"I don't think I shall like you at all," replied Paul. "I want to go away. This isn't my house." "No. It's mine," retorted Mrs. Pipchin.

"It's a very nasty one," said Paul.

"There's a worse place in it than this though," said Mrs. Pipchin, "where we shut up our bad boys." "Has he ever been in it?" asked Paul: pointing out Master Bitherstone.

Mrs. Pipchin nodded assent; and Paul had enough to do, for the rest of that day, in surveying Master Bitherstone from head to foot, and watching all the workings of his countenance, with the interest attaching to a boy of mysterious and terrible experiences.

At one o'clock there was a dinner, chiefly of the farinaceous and vegetable kind, when Miss Pankey (a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a child, who was shampoo'd every morning, and seemed in danger of being rubbed away, altogether) was led in from captivity by the ogress herself, and instructed that nobody who sniffed before visitors ever went to heaven. When this great truth had been thoroughly impressed upon her, she was regaled with rice; and subsequently repeated the form of grace established in the Castle, in which there was a special clause, thanking Mrs. Pipchin for a good dinner. Mrs. Pipchin's niece, Berinthia, took cold pork. Mrs. Pipchin, whose constitution required warm nourishment, made a special repast of mutton-chops, which were brought in hot and hot, between two plates, and smelled very nice.

As it rained after dinner, and they couldn't go out walking on the beach, and Mrs. Pipchin's constitution required rest after chops, they went away with Berry (otherwise Berinthia) to the Dungeon; an empty room looking out upon a chalk wall and a water-butt, and made ghastly by a ragged fire-place without any stove in it. Enlivened by company, however, this was the best place after all; for Berry played with them there, and seemed to enjoy a game at romps as much as they did; until Mrs. Pipchin knocking angrily at the wall, like the Cock Lane Ghost revived, they left off, and Berry told them stories in a whisper until twilight.

For tea there was plenty of milk and water, and bread and butter, with a little black tea-pot for Mrs. Pipchin and Berry, and buttered toast unlimited for Mrs. Pipchin, which was brought in, hot and hot, like the chops. Though Mrs. Pipchin got very greasy, outside, over this dish, it didn't seem to lubricate her internally, at all; for she was as fierce as ever, and the hard gray eye knew no softening.

After tea, Berry brought out a little work-box, with the Royal Pavilion on the lid, and fell to working busily; while Mrs. Pipchin, having put on her spectacles and opened a great volume bound in green baize, began to nod. And whenever Mrs. Pipchin caught herself falling forward into the fire, and woke

up, she filliped Master Bitherstone on the nose for nodding too.

At last it was the children's bed-time, and after prayers they went to bed. As little Miss Pankey was afraid of sleeping alone in the dark, Mrs. Pipchin always made a point of driving her up stairs herself, like a sheep; and it was cheerful to hear Miss Pankey moaning long afterward, in the least eligible chamber, and Mrs. Pipchin now and then going in to shake her. At about half-past nine o'clock the odor of a warm sweet-bread (Mrs. Pipchin's constitution wouldn't go to sleep without sweet-bread) diversified the prevailing fragrance of the house, which Mrs. Wickam said was "a smell of building;" and slumber fell upon the Castle shortly after.

over.

The breakfast next morning was like the tea over night, except that Mrs. Pipchin took her roll instead of toast, and seemed a little more irate when it was Master Bitherstone read aloud to the rest a pedigree from Genesis (judiciously selected by Mrs. Pipchin), getting over the names with the ease and clearness of a person tumbling up the tread-mill. That done, Miss Pankey was borne away to be shampoo'd; and Master Bitherstone to have something else done to him with salt water, from which he always returned very blue and dejected. Paul and Florence went out in the mean time on the beach with Wickam-who was constantly in tears—and at about noon Mrs. Pipchin presided over some Early Readings. It being a part of Mrs. Pipchin's system not to encourage a child's mind to develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it by force like an oyster, the moral of these lessons was usually of a violent and stunning character: the hero-a naughty boy-seldom, in the mildest catastrophe, being finished off by any thing less than a lion, or a bear.

Such was life at Mrs. Pipchin's. On Saturday Mr. Dombey came down; and Florence and Paul would go to his hotel, and have tea. They passed the whole of Sunday with him, and generally rode out before dinner; and on these occasions Mr. Dombey seemed to grow, like Falstaff's assailants, and instead of being one man in buckram, to become a dozen. Sunday evening was the most melancholy evening in the week; for Mrs. Pipchin always made a point of being particularly cross on Sunday nights. Miss Pankey was generally brought back from an aunt's at Rottingdean, in deep distress; and Master Bitherstone, whose relatives were all in India, and who was required to sit, between the services, in an erect position with his head against the parlor wall, neither moving hand nor foot, suffered so acutely in his young spirits that he once asked Florence, on a Sunday night, if she could give him any idea of the way back to Bengal.

At this exemplary old lady Paul would sit staring | in his little arm-chair by the fire, for any length of time. He never seemed to know what weariness was, when he was looking fixedly at Mrs. Pipchin. He was not fond of her; he was not afraid of her; but in those old, old moods of his, she seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him. There he would sit, looking at her, and warming his hands, and looking at her, until he sometimes quite confounded Mrs. Pip- | chin, Ogress as she was. Once she asked him, when they were alone, what he was thinking about. "You," said Paul, without the least reserve.

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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 huzzy"—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

“Wickam,” retorted Mrs. Pipchin, coloring, “is a wicked, impudent, bold-faced 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."

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

"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 toward Paul, as Paul had toward 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 bombazine drapery, studying every line and wrinkle of her countenance, and peering at the hard gray eye, until Mrs. Pipchin was sometimes fain to shut it on pretense of dozing. Mrs. Pipchin had an old black eat, who generally lay coiled upon the centre foot of he 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

"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 mamma. My uncle's child took on just as Master Paul do. My uncle's child made people's blood run cold, sometimes, 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. Every thing 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 toward 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