CHARLES DICKENS DOMBEY AND SON CHAPTER I Dombey and ...

neck, and that hers was the last face in the doorway: turned towards 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
AFTER the lapse of some minutes, which appeared an immense time to little
Paul Dombey on the 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 semi-circular sweep towards the left;
and when he put out his left foot, he turned in the same manner towards the
right. So that he seemed, at every stride he took, to look about him as
though he were saying, 'Can anybody have the goodness to indicate any
subject, in any direction, on which I am uninformed? I rather think not.'