miration. The good old lady might have been--not
to record it disrespectfully--a witch, and Paul and the cat her two
familiars, as they all sat by the fire together. It would have been
quite in keeping with the appearance of the party if they had all sprung
up the chimney in a high wind one night, and never been heard of any
more.

This, however, never came to pass. The cat, and Paul, and Mrs Pipchin,
were constantly to be found in their usual places after dark; and Paul,
eschewing the companionship of Master Bitherstone, went on studying Mrs
Pipchin, and the cat, and the fire, night after night, as if they were a
book of necromancy, in three volumes.

Mrs Wickam put her own construction on Paul's eccentricities; and being
confirmed in her low spirits by a perplexed view of chimneys from the
room where she was accustomed to sit, and by the noise of the wind, and
by the general dulness (gashliness was Mrs Wickam's strong expression)
of her present life, deduced the most dismal reflections from the
foregoing premises. It was a part of Mrs Pipchin's policy to prevent
her own 'young hussy'--that was Mrs Pipchin's generic name for female
servant--from communicating with Mrs Wickam: to which end she devoted
much of her time to concealing herself behind doors, and springing
out on that devoted maiden, whenever she made an approach towards Mrs
Wickam's apartment. But Berry was free to hold what converse she could
in that quarter, consistently with the discharge of the multifarious
duties at which she toiled incessantly from morning to night; and to
Berry Mrs Wickam unburdened her mind.

'What a pretty fellow he is when he's asleep!' said Berry, stopping to
look at Paul in bed, one night when she took up Mrs Wickam's supper.

'Ah!' sighed Mrs Wickam. 'He need be.'

'Why, he's not ugly when he's awake,' observed Berry.

'No, Ma'am. Oh, no. No more was my Uncle's Betsey Jane,' said Mrs
Wickam.

Berry looked as if she would like to trace the connexion of ideas
between Paul Dombey and Mrs Wickam's Uncle's Betsey Jane.

'My Uncle's wife,' Mrs Wickam went on to say, 'died just like his Mama.
My Uncle's child took on just as Master Paul do.'

'Took on! You don't think he grieves for his Mama, sure?' argued Berry,
sitting down on the side of the bed. 'He can't remember anything about
her, you know, Mrs Wickam. It's not possible.'

'No, Ma'am,' said Mrs Wickam 'No more did my Uncle's child. But my
Uncle's child said very stra