thoughtfully, as he looked back at the fire, "I wonder why it didn’t save me my mama."
He didn’t ask the question of his father this time. Perhaps he had seen, with a child’s quickness, that it had already made his father uncomfortable. But he repeated the thought aloud, as if it were quite an old one to him, and had troubled him very much; and sat with his chin resting on his hand, still cogitating and looking for an explanation in the fire.
Mr. Dombey having recovered from his surprise, not to say his alarm (for it was the very first occasion on which the child had ever broached the subject of his mother to him, though he had had him sitting by his side, in this same manner, evening after evening), expounded to him how that money, though a very potent spirit, never to be disparaged on any account whatever, could not keep people alive whose time was come to die; and how that we must all die, unfortunately, even in the city, though we were never so rich. But how that money caused us to be honoured, feared, respected, courted, and admired, and made us powerful and glorious in the eyes of all men; and how that it could, very often, even keep off death, for a long time together. How, for example, it had secured to his Mama the services of Mr. Pilkins, by which he, Paul, had often profited himself; likewise of the great Doctor Parker Peps, whom he had never known. And how it could do all, that could be done. This, with more to the same purpose, Mr. Dombey instilled into the mind of his son, who listened attentively, and seemed to understand the greater part of what was said to him.
"It can’t make me strong and quite well, either, Papa; can it?" asked Paul, after a short silence; rubbing his tiny hands.
"Why, you are strong and quite well," returned Mr. Dombey. "Are you not?"
Oh! the age of the face that was turned up again, with an expression, half of melancholy, half of slyness, on it!
"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; "and 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. At night I dream about such cu-ri-ous things!"
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 towards his own for a
