h he don't. So take care, child, you don't call him anything BUT Mr.
Dick.'

I promised to obey, and went upstairs with my message; thinking, as I
went, that if Mr. Dick had been working at his Memorial long, at the
same rate as I had seen him working at it, through the open door, when
I came down, he was probably getting on very well indeed. I found him
still driving at it with a long pen, and his head almost laid upon the
paper. He was so intent upon it, that I had ample leisure to observe the
large paper kite in a corner, the confusion of bundles of manuscript,
the number of pens, and, above all, the quantity of ink (which he seemed
to have in, in half-gallon jars by the dozen), before he observed my
being present.

'Ha! Phoebus!' said Mr. Dick, laying down his pen. 'How does the world
go? I'll tell you what,' he added, in a lower tone, 'I shouldn't wish it
to be mentioned, but it's a--' here he beckoned to me, and put his lips
close to my ear--'it's a mad world. Mad as Bedlam, boy!' said Mr. Dick,
taking snuff from a round box on the table, and laughing heartily.

Without presuming to give my opinion on this question, I delivered my
message.

'Well,' said Mr. Dick, in answer, 'my compliments to her, and I--I
believe I have made a start. I think I have made a start,' said Mr.
Dick, passing his hand among his grey hair, and casting anything but a
confident look at his manuscript. 'You have been to school?'

'Yes, sir,' I answered; 'for a short time.'

'Do you recollect the date,' said Mr. Dick, looking earnestly at me, and
taking up his pen to note it down, 'when King Charles the First had his
head cut off?' I said I believed it happened in the year sixteen hundred
and forty-nine.

'Well,' returned Mr. Dick, scratching his ear with his pen, and looking
dubiously at me. 'So the books say; but I don't see how that can be.
Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him have made
that mistake of putting some of the trouble out of his head, after it
was taken off, into mine?'

I was very much surprised by the inquiry; but could give no information
on this point.

'It's very strange,' said Mr. Dick, with a despondent look upon his
papers, and with his hand among his hair again, 'that I never can get
that quite right. I never can make that perfectly clear. But no matter,
no matter!' he said cheerfully, and rousing himself, 'there's time
enough! My compliments to Miss Trotwood, I am getting on very