your own
Papa!'

If the Major could have known how many hopes and ventures, what a
multitude of plans and speculations, rested on that baby head; and
could have seen them hovering, in all their heterogeneous confusion
and disorder, round the puckered cap of the unconscious little Paul;
he might have stared indeed. Then would he have recognised, among the
crowd, some few ambitious motes and beams belonging to Miss Tox; then
would he perhaps have understood the nature of that lady's faltering
investment in the Dombey Firm.

If the child himself could have awakened in the night, and seen,
gathered about his cradle-curtains, faint reflections of the dreams that
other people had of him, they might have scared him, with good reason.
But he slumbered on, alike unconscious of the kind intentions of Miss
Tox, the wonder of the Major, the early sorrows of his sister, and
the stern visions of his father; and innocent that any spot of earth
contained a Dombey or a Son.

CHAPTER 8. Paul's Further Progress, Growth and Character

Beneath the watching and attentive eyes of Time--so far another
Major--Paul's slumbers gradually changed. More and more light broke
in upon them; distincter and distincter dreams disturbed them; an
accumulating crowd of objects and impressions swarmed about his rest;
and so he passed from babyhood to childhood, and became a talking,
walking, wondering Dombey.

On the downfall and banishment of Richards, the nursery may be said to
have been put into commission: as a Public Department is sometimes, when
no individual Atlas can be found to support it The Commissioners were,
of course, Mrs Chick and Miss Tox: who devoted themselves to their
duties with such astonishing ardour that Major Bagstock had every day
some new reminder of his being forsaken, while Mr Chick, bereft of
domestic supervision, cast himself upon the gay world, dined at clubs
and coffee-houses, smelt of smoke on three different occasions, went to
the play by himself, and in short, loosened (as Mrs Chick once told him)
every social bond, and moral obligation.

Yet, in spite of his early promise, all this vigilance and care could
not make little Paul a thriving boy. Naturally delicate, perhaps, he
pined and wasted after the dismissal of his nurse, and, for a long time,
seemed but to wait his opportunity of gliding through their hands, and
seeking his lost mother. This dangerous ground in his steeple-chase
towards manhood passed, he s