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“You are as strong and well as such little people usually are? Eh?” said Mr. Dombey.

“Florence is older than I am, but I’m not as strong and well as Florence, I know,” returned the child; “I am so tired sometimes,” said little Paul, “and my bones ache so that I don’t know what to do.”

The unusual tone of that conversation so alarmed Mr. Dombey that the very next day he began to inquire into the real state of Paul’s health; and as the doctor suggested that sea-air might be of benefit to the child, to Brighton he was promptly sent, to remain until he should seem benefited. He refused to go without Florence to whom he clung with a passion of devotion which made Mr. Dombey both irritated and jealous to see, wishing himself to absorb the boy’s entire affection.

So to Brighton Paul and Florence went, in charge of Paul’s nurse, Wickam. They found board in the house of an old lady, Mrs. Pipchin by name, whose temper was not of the best and whose methods of managing children were rather peculiar.

At this exemplary old lady, Paul would sit staring in his little armchair 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 she seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him.

Once she asked him, when they were alone, what he was thinking about.

“You,” said Paul, without the least reserve.

“And what are you thinking about me?” asked Mrs. Pipchin.

“I’m thinking how old you must be,” said Paul.

“You mustn’t say such things as that, young gentleman,” returned the dame.

“Why not?” asked Paul.

“Because it’s not polite,” said Mrs. Pipchin, snappishly.

“Not polite?” said Paul.

“No.”

“It’s not polite,” said Paul innocently, “to eat all the mutton-chops and toast, Wickam says.”

“Wickam,” retorted Mrs. Pipchin colouring, “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.”

“You don’t believe it, sir?” repeated Mrs. Pipchin, amazed.

“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, 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 an attraction towards Paul as Paul had towards her. She would make him move his chair to her side of the fire, instead of sitting opposite, and there he would remain studying every line of Mrs. Pipchin’s face, while the old black cat lay coiled up on the fender purring and winking at the fire, and Paul went on studying Mrs, Pipchin and the cat and the fire, night after night, as if they were a history of necromancy in three volumes.

At the end of a week, as Paul was no stronger, though he looked much healthier in the face, a little carriage was got for him, in which he could be wheeled down to the seaside. Consistent in his odd tastes, the child set aside a ruddy faced lad, who was proposed as the drawer of this carriage, and selected instead, his grandfather, Glubb by name, a weazen, old, crab-faced man, in a suit of battered oilskins, who smelt like a weedy sea-beach when the tide is out. With this notable attendant to pull him along and Florence always by his side, he went down to the margin of the ocean every day; and there he would sit or lie in his carriage for hours together, never so distressed as at the company of children.