tion that there
was another milestone passed upon the road, and that the great end of
the journey lay so much the nearer. For the feeling uppermost in his
mind, now and constantly intensifying, and increasing in it as Paul grew
older, was impatience. Impatience for the time to come, when his visions
of their united consequence and grandeur would be triumphantly realized.

Some philosophers tell us that selfishness is at the root of our best
loves and affections.' Mr Dombey's young child was, from the beginning,
so distinctly important to him as a part of his own greatness, or (which
is the same thing) of the greatness of Dombey and Son, that there is no
doubt his parental affection might have been easily traced, like many
a goodly superstructure of fair fame, to a very low foundation. But he
loved his son with all the love he had. If there were a warm place in
his frosty heart, his son occupied it; if its very hard surface could
receive the impression of any image, the image of that son was there;
though not so much as an infant, or as a boy, but as a grown man--the
'Son' of the Firm. Therefore he was impatient to advance into the
future, and to hurry over the intervening passages of his history.
Therefore he had little or no anxiety' about them, in spite of his love;
feeling as if the boy had a charmed life, and must become the man with
whom he held such constant communication in his thoughts, and for whom
he planned and projected, as for an existing reality, every day.

Thus Paul grew to be nearly five years old. He was a pretty little
fellow; though there was something wan and wistful in his small face,
that gave occasion to many significant shakes of Mrs Wickam's head, and
many long-drawn inspirations of Mrs Wickam's breath. His temper gave
abundant promise of being imperious in after-life; and he had as hopeful
an apprehension of his own importance, and the rightful subservience
of all other things and persons to it, as heart could desire. He was
childish and sportive enough at times, and not of a sullen disposition;
but he had a strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way, at other times, of
sitting brooding in his miniature arm-chair, when he looked (and talked)
like one of those terrible little Beings in the Fairy tales, who, at a
hundred and fifty or two hundred years of age, fantastically represent
the children for whom they have been substituted. He would frequently
be stricken with this precocious mood upstairs i