ogress stepped forward to take leave and to bear off Florence, which she
had long been thirsting to do. The move on her part roused Mr Dombey,
whose eyes were fixed on Paul. After patting him on the head, and
pressing his small hand again, he took leave of Doctor Blimber, Mrs
Blimber, and Miss Blimber, with his usual polite frigidity, and walked
out of the study.

Despite his entreaty that they would not think of stirring, Doctor
Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber all pressed forward to attend him
to the hall; and thus Mrs Pipchin got into a state of entanglement with
Miss Blimber and the Doctor, and was crowded out of the study before
she could clutch Florence. To which happy accident Paul stood afterwards
indebted for the dear remembrance, that Florence ran back to throw her
arms round his neck, and that hers was the last face in the doorway:
turned towards him with a smile of encouragement, the brighter for the
tears through which it beamed.

It made his childish bosom heave and swell when it was gone; and sent
the globes, the books, blind Homer and Minerva, swimming round the room.
But they stopped, all of a sudden; and then he heard the loud clock in
the hall still gravely inquiring 'how, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how,
is, my, lit, tle, friend?' as it had done before.

He sat, with folded hands, upon his pedestal, silently listening. But
he might have answered 'weary, weary! very lonely, very sad!' And there,
with an aching void in his young heart, and all outside so cold, and
bare, and strange, Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished, and the
upholsterer were never coming.

CHAPTER 12. Paul's Education

After the lapse of some minutes, which appeared an immense time to
little Paul Dombey on the table, Doctor Blimber came back. The Doctor's
walk was stately, and calculated to impress the juvenile mind with
solemn feelings. It was a sort of march; but when the Doctor put out his
right foot, he gravely turned upon his axis, with a semi-circular sweep
towards the left; and when he put out his left foot, he turned in the
same manner towards the right. So that he seemed, at every stride he
took, to look about him as though he were saying, 'Can anybody have
the goodness to indicate any subject, in any direction, on which I am
uninformed? I rather think not.'

Mrs Blimber and Miss Blimber came back in the Doctor's company; and the
Doctor, lifting his new pupil off the table, delivered him over to Miss