Mrs. Blimber, her mamma, was not learned herself, but she pretended to be, and that did quite as well. She said at evening parties, that if she could have known Cicero, she thought she could have died contented. It was the steady joy of her life to see the Doctor's young gentlemen go out walking, unlike all other young gentlemen, in the largest possible shirt-collars, and the stiffest possible cravats. It was so classical, she said.

As to Mr. Feeder, B.A., Dr. Blimber's assistant, he was a kind of human barrel-organ, with a little list of tunes at which he was continually working, over and over again, without any variation. He. might have been fitted up with a change of barrels, perhaps, in early life, if his destiny had been favorable; but it had not been; and he had only one, with which, in a monotonous round, it was his occupation to bewilder the young ideas of Dr. Blimber's young gentlemen. The young gentlemen were prematurely full of carking anxieties. They knew no rest from the pursuit of stony-hearted verbs, savage noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts of exercises that appeared to them in their dreams. Under the forcing system, a young gentleman usually took leave of his spirits in three weeks. He had all the cares of the world on his head in three months. He conceived bitter sentiments against his parents or guardians in four; he was an old misanthrope in five; envied Curtius that blessed refuge in the earth in six; and at the end of the first twelvemonth had arrived at the conclusion, from which he never afterward departed, that all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of the sages, were a mere collection of words and grammar, and had no other meaning in the

world.

But he went on blow, blow, blowing, in the Doctor's hot-house, all the time; and the Doctor's glory and reputation were great, when he took his wintry growth home to his relations and friends.

Upon the Doctor's door-steps one day, Paul stood with a fluttering heart, and with his small right hand in his father's. His other hand was locked in that of Florence. How tight the tiny pressure of that one; and how loose and cold the other!

Mrs. Pipchin hovered behind the victim, with her sable plumage and her hooked beak, like a bird of ill-omen. She was out of breath-for Mr. Dombey, full of great thoughts, had walked fast-and she croaked hoarsely as she waited for the opening of the door.

"Now, Paul," said Mr. Dombey, exultingly. "This is the way indeed to be Dombey and Son, and have money. You are almost a man already."

"Almost," returned the child.

Even his childish agitation could not master the sly and quaint yet touching look with which he accompanied the reply.

It brought a vague expression of dissatisfaction into Mr. Dombey's face; but the door being opened, it was quickly gone.

"Doctor Blimber is at home, I believe?" said Mr. Dombey.

The man said yes; and as they passed in, looked at Paul as if he were a little mouse, and the house were a trap. He was a weak-eyed young man, with the first faint streaks or early dawn of a grin on his

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"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 mantelshelf. "And how do you, 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 Dr. 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. "Nev-er mind; we shall substitute new cares and new impressions, Mr. Dombey, very shortly. You would still wish my little friend to acquire-"

"Every thing, 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 informa tion to our little friend, and bring him quickly forward, I dare say. I dare say. 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."

Dr. 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-"

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"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, opportunėly 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 todo 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. Vir

gil, 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 Dr. 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 (beautiful 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 Dr. 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-andshoulders 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 roared it couldn't have been more surprising.

"Ask Mr. Feeder, if you please, Toots," said the Doctor," to prepare a few introductory volumes for Mr. Dombey's son, and to allot him a convenient seat for study. My dear, I believe Mr. Dombey has not seen the dormitories."

"If Mr. Dombey will walk up stairs," said Mrs. Blimber, "I shall be more than proud to show him the dominions of the drowsy god."

With that, Mrs. Blimber, who was a lady of great suavity, and a wiry figure, and who wore a cap composed of sky-blue materials, proceeded up stairs with Mr. Dombey and Cornelia; Mrs. Pipchin following, and looking out sharp for her enemy the footman.

While they were gone, Paul sat upon the table, holding Florence by the hand, and glancing timidly from the Doctor round and round the room, while the Doctor, leaning back in his chair, with his hand in his breast as usual, held a book from him at arm's length, and read. There was something very awful in this manner of reading. It was such a determined, unimpassioned, inflexible, cold-blooded way of going to work. It left the Doctor's countenance exposed to view; and when the Doctor smiled auspiciously at his author, or knit his brows, or shook his head and made wry faces at him, as much as to say, "Don't tell me, sir; I know better," it was terrific.

Toots, too, had no business to be outside the door, ostentatiously examining the wheels in his watch, and counting his half-crowns. But that didn't last long; for Dr. Blimber, happening to change the position of his tight plump legs, as if he were going to get up, Toots swiftly vanished, and appeared no more.

Mr. Dombey and his conductress were soon heard coming down stairs again, talking all the way; and presently they re-entered the Doctor's study.

"I hope, Mr. Dombey," said the Doctor, laying down his book, "that the arrangements meet your approval."

They are excellent, sir," said Mr. Dombey. "Very fair, indeed," said Mrs. Pipchin, in a low voice; never disposed to give too much encouragement.

"Mrs. Pipchin," said Mr. Dombey, wheeling round, "will, with your permission, Doctor and Mrs. Blimber, visit Paul now and then."

"Whenever Mrs. Pipchin pleases," observed the Doctor.

"Always happy to see her," said Mrs. Blimber.

"I think," said Mr. Dombey, "I have given all the trouble I need, and may take my leave. Paul, my child," he went close to him, as he sat upon the table. "Good-bye."

"Good-bye, papa."

The limp and careless little hand that Mr. Dombey took in his was singularly out of keeping with the wistful face. But he had no part in its sorrowful expression. It was not addressed to him. No, no. To Florence-all to Florence.

If Mr. Dombey in his insolence of wealth, had ever made an enemy, hard to appease and cruelly vindictive in his hate, even such an enemy might have received the pang that wrung his proud heart then, as compensation for his injury.

He bent down over his boy, and kissed him. If his sight were dimmed as he did so, by something that for a moment blurred the little face, and made it indistinct to him, his mental vision may have been, for that short time, the clearer perhaps.

"I shall see you soon, Paul. You are free on Saturdays and Sundays, you know."

"Yes, papa," returned Paul: looking at his sister. "On Saturdays and Sundays."

"And you'll try and learn a great deal here, and be a clever man," said Mr. Dombey; "won't you?" "I'll try," returned the child, wearily.

"And you'll soon be grown up now!" said Mr. Dombey.

"Oh! very soon!" replied the child. Once more

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the old, old look passed rapidly across his features like a strange light. It fell on Mrs. Pipchin, and extinguished itself in her black dress. That excellent ogress stepped forward to take leave and to bear off Florence, which she had long been thirsting to do. The move on her part roused Mr. Dombey, whose eyes were fixed on Paul. After patting him on the head, and pressing his small hand again, he took leave of Doctor Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, and Miss Blimber, with his usual polite frigidity, and walked out of the study.

Despite his entreaty that they would not think of stirring, Doctor Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, and Miss Blimber all pressed forward to attend him to the hall; and thus Mrs. Pipchin got into a state of entanglement with Miss Blimber and the Doctor, and was crowded out of the study before she could clutch Florence. To which happy accident Paul stood afterward indebted for the dear remembrance, that Florence ran back to throw her arms round his neck, and that hers was the last face in the doorway: turned toward him with a smile of encouragement, the brighter for the tears through which it beamed.

It made his childish bosom heave and swell when it was gone; and sent the globes, the books, blind Homer and Minerva, swimming round the room. But they stopped, all of a sudden; and then he heard the loud clock in the hall still gravely inquiring "How, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?" as it had done before.

He sat, with folded hands, upon his pedestal, silently listening. But he might have answered, "Weary, weary! very lonely, very sad!" And there, with an aching void in his young heart, and all outside so cold, and bare, and strange, Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished, and the upholsterer were never coming.

CHAPTER XII.

PAUL'S EDUCATION.

an immense time to little Paul Dombey on the FTER the lapse of some minutes, which appeared table, Doctor Blimber came back. The Doctor's walk was stately, and calculated to impress the juvenile mind with solemn feelings. It was a sort of march; but when the Doctor put out his right foot, he gravely turned upon his axis, with a semicircular sweep toward the left: and when he put out his left foot, he turned in the same manner toward the right. So that he seemed, at every stride he took, to look about him as though he were saying, "Can any body have the goodness to indicate any subject, in any direction, on which I am uninformed? I rather think not."

Mrs. Blimber and Miss Blimber came back in the Doctor's company; and the Doctor, lifting his new pupil off the table, delivered him over to Miss Blimber.

"Cornelia," said the Doctor, "Dombey will be your charge at first. Bring him on, Cornelia, bring him on."

Miss Blimber received her young ward from the Doctor's hands; and Paul, feeling that the spectacles were surveying him, cast down his eyes.

"How old are you, Dombey?" said Miss Blimber. "Six," answered Paul, wondering, as he stole a glance at the young lady, why her hair didn't grow long like Florence's, and why she was like a boy.

"How much do you know of your Latin Grammar, Dombey?" said Miss Blimber.

"None of it," answered Paul. Feeling that the answer was a shock to Miss Blimber's sensibility, he looked up at the three faces that were looking down at him, and said:

"I haven't been well. I have been a weak child. I couldn't learn a Latin Grammar, when I was out every day with old Glubb. I wish you'd tell old Glubb to come and see me, if you please."

"What a dreadful low name!" said Mrs. Blimber. "Unclassical to a degree! Who is the monster,

child?"

"What monster?" inquired Paul.

"Glubb," said Mrs. Blimber, with a great disrelish. "He's no more a monster than you are," returned Paul.

"What!" cried the Doctor, in a terrible voice. "Ay, ay, ay? Aha! What's that?"

Paul was dreadfully frightened; but still he made a stand for the absent Glubb, though he did it trembling.

"He's a very nice old man, ma'am," he said. "He used to draw my couch. He knows all about the deep sea, and the fish that are in it, and the great monsters that come and lie on rocks in the sun, and dive into the water again when they're startled, blowing and splashing so that they can be heard for miles. There are some creatures," said Paul, warming with his subject, "I don't know how many yards long, and I forget their names, but Florence knows, that pretend to be in distress; and when a man goes near them, out of compassion, they open their great jaws and attack him. But all he has got to do," said Paul, boldly tendering this information to the very Doctor himself, "is to keep on turning as he runs away, and then, as they turn slowly, because they are so long, and can't bend, he's sure to beat them. And though old Glubb don't know why the sea should make me think of my mamma that's dead, or what it is that it is always sayingalways saying! he knows a great deal about it. And I wish," the child concluded, with a sudden falling of his countenance, and failing in his animation, as he looked like one forlorn, upon the three strange faces, "that you'd let old Glubb come here to see me, for I know him very well, and he knows me."

"Ha!" said the Doctor, shaking his head: "this is bad, but study will do much."

Mrs. Blimber opined, with something like a shiver, that he was an unaccountable child; and, allowing for the difference of visage, looked at him pretty much as Mrs. Pipchin had been used to do.

"Take him round the house, Cornelia," said the Doctor, "and familiarize him with his new sphere. Go with that young lady, Dombey."

Dombey obeyed; giving his hand to the abstruse Cornelia, and looking at her sideways, with timid curiosity, as they went away together. For her spectacles, by reason of the glistening of the glasses, made her so mysterious, that he didn't know where she was looking, and was not indeed quite sure that she had any eyes at all behind them.

Cornelia took him first to the school-room, which was situated at the back of the hall, and was approached through two baize doors, which deadened and muffled the young gentlemen's voices. Here there were eight young gentlemen in various stages of mental prostration, all very hard at work, and very grave indeed. Toots, as an old hand, had a desk to himself in one corner: and a magnificent man, of immense age, he looked, in Paul's young eyes, behind it.

Mr. Feeder, B.A., who sat at another little desk, had his Virgil stop on, and was slowly grinding that tune to four young gentlemen. Of the remaining four, two, who grasped their foreheads convulsively, were engaged in solving mathematical problems; one with his face like a dirty window, from much crying, was endeavoring to flounder through a hopeless number of lines before dinner; and one sat looking at his task in stony stupefaction and despairwhich, it seemed, had been his condition ever since breakfast-time.

Mr.

The appearance of a new boy did not create the sensation that might have been expected. Feeder, B.A. (who was in the habit of shaving his head for coolness, and had nothing but little bristles on it), gave him a bony hand, and told him he was glad to see him-which Paul would have been very glad to have told him, if he could have done so with the least sincerity. Then Paul, instructed by Cornelia, shook hands with the four young gentlemen at Mr. Feeder's desk; then with the two young gentlemen at work on the problems, who were very feverish; then with the young gentleman at work against time, who was very inky; and lastly with the young gentleman in a state of stupefaction, who was flabby and quite cold.

Paul having been already introduced to Toots, that pupil merely chuckled and breathed hard, as his custom was, and pursued the occupation in which he was engaged. It was not a severe one; for on account of his having "gone through" so much (in more senses than one), and also of his having, as before hinted, left off blowing in his prime, Toots now had license to pursue his own course of study: which was chiefly to write long letters to himself from persons of distinction, addressed "P. Toots, Esquire, Brighton, Sussex," and to preserve them in his desk with great care.

These ceremonies passed, Cornelia led Paul up stairs to the top of the house; which was rather a slow journey, on account of Paul being obliged to land both feet on every stair before he mounted another. But they reached their journey's end at last; and there, in a front room, looking over the wild sea, Cornelia showed him a nice little bed with white hangings, close to the window, on which there was already beautifully written on a card in round text -down strokes very thick, and up strokes very fine -DOMBEY; while two other little bedsteads in the same room were announced, through like means, as respectively appertaining unto BRIGGS and TOZER.

Just as they got down stairs again into the hall, Paul saw the weak-eyed young man who had given that mortal offense to Mrs. Pipchin suddenly seize a very large drumstick, and fly at a gong that was hanging up as if he had gone mad, or wanted ven

geance. Instead of receiving warning, however, or being instantly taken into custody, the young man left off unchecked, after having made a dreadful noise. Then Cornelia Blimber said to Dombey that dinner would be ready in a quarter of an hour, and perhaps he had better go into the school-room among his "friends."

So Dombey, deferentially passing the great clock which was still as anxious as ever to know how he found himself, opened the school-room door a very little way, and strayed in like a lost boy: shutting it after him with some difficulty. His friends were all dispersed about the room except the stony friend,

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Young Toots, who was ready beforehand, and had therefore nothing to do, and had leisure to bestow upon Paul, said, with heavy good-nature: "Sit down, Dombey."

"Thank you, sir," said Paul.

His endeavoring to hoist himself on to a very high window-seat, and his slipping down again, appeared to prepare Toots's mind for the reception of a discovery. "You're a very small chap," said Mr. Toots. "Yes, sir, I'm small," returned Paul.

"Thank

you, sir." For Toots had lifted him into the seat, and done it kindly too.

who remained immovable. Mr. Feeder was stretch- | ing himself in his gray gown, as if, regardless of expense, he were resolved to pull the sleeves off.

"Heigh-ho-hum!" cried Mr. Feeder, shaking himself like a cart-horse; "oh dear me, dear me! Yaa-a-ah!"

Paul was quite alarmed by Mr. Feeder's yawning; it was done on such a great scale, and he was so terribly in earnest. All the boys too (Toots excepted) seemed knocked up, and were getting ready for dinner-some newly tying their neckcloths, which were very stiff indeed; and others washing their hands or brushing their hair in an adjoining antechamber -as if they didn't think they should enjoy it at all.

"Who's your tailor?" inquired Toots, after looking at him for some moments.

"It's a woman that has made my clothes as yet," said Paul. "My sister's dress-maker."

"My tailor's Burgess and Co.," said Toots. "Fash'nable. But very dear."

Paul had wit enough to shake his head, as if he would have said it was easy to see that; and indeed he thought so.

"Your father's regularly rich, ain't he ?" inquired Mr. Toots.

"Yes, sir," said Paul. "He's Dombey and Son." "And which ?" demanded Toots.

"And Son, sir," replied Paul.