he had had fewer things to think of.
But he had a great many; and was always thinking, all day long.

First, there was Florence coming to the party. Florence would see that
the boys were fond of him; and that would make her happy. This was his
great theme. Let Florence once be sure that they were gentle and good to
him, and that he had become a little favourite among them, and then the
would always think of the time he had passed there, without being very
sorry. Florence might be all the happier too for that, perhaps, when he
came back.

When he came back! Fifty times a day, his noiseless little feet went up
the stairs to his own room, as he collected every book, and scrap, and
trifle that belonged to him, and put them all together there, down to
the minutest thing, for taking home! There was no shade of coming back
on little Paul; no preparation for it, or other reference to it, grew
out of anything he thought or did, except this slight one in connexion
with his sister. On the contrary, he had to think of everything familiar
to him, in his contemplative moods and in his wanderings about the
house, as being to be parted with; and hence the many things he had to
think of, all day long.

He had to peep into those rooms upstairs, and think how solitary they
would be when he was gone, and wonder through how many silent days,
weeks, months, and years, they would continue just as grave and
undisturbed. He had to think--would any other child (old-fashioned, like
himself) stray there at any time, to whom the same grotesque distortions
of pattern and furniture would manifest themselves; and would anybody
tell that boy of little Dombey, who had been there once? He had to think
of a portrait on the stairs, which always looked earnestly after him as
he went away, eyeing it over his shoulder; and which, when he passed it
in the company of anyone, still seemed to gaze at him, and not at his
companion. He had much to think of, in association with a print that
hung up in another place, where, in the centre of a wondering group, one
figure that he knew, a figure with a light about its head--benignant,
mild, and merciful--stood pointing upward.

At his own bedroom window, there were crowds of thoughts that mixed
with these, and came on, one upon another, like the rolling waves. Where
those wild birds lived, that were always hovering out at sea in troubled
weather; where the clouds rose and first began; whence the wind issued
on its r