"It can't make me strong and quite well, either, papa, can it?"
"Why, you are strong and quite well," returned Mr. Dombey. "Are you not?"
Oh! the age of the face that was turned up again, with an expression, half of melancholy, half of slyness on it!
"You are as strong and well as such little people usually are, eh?" said Mr. Dombey.
"Florence is older than I am, but I'm not as strong and well as Florence, I know," returned the child; "but I believe that when Florence was as little as me, she could play a great deal longer at a time without tiring herself. I am so tired sometimes that I don't know what to do."
"But that's at night," said Mr. Dombey, drawing his own chair closer to his son's, and laying his hand gently on his back; "little people should be tired at night, for then they sleep well."
"Oh, it's not at night, papa," returned the child, "it's in the day; and I lie down in Florence's lap, and she sings to me. At night I dream about such cu-ri-ous things!"
Mr. Dombey was so astonished, and so perfectly at a loss how to pursue the conversation, that he could only sit looking at his son by the light of the fire.
Here they sat until Florence came timidly into the room to take Paul upstairs to bed; when he raised towards his father, in bidding him good-night, a countenance so much brighter, so much younger, and so much more childlike altogether, that Mr. Dombey, while he felt greatly reassured by the change, was quite amazed at it.
After they had left the room together, he thought he heard a soft voice singing; and remembering that Paul had said his sister sang to him, he had the curiosity to open the door and listen, and look after them. She was toiling up the great, wide staircase, with him in her arms; his head was lying on her shoulder, one of his arms thrown negligently round her neck. So they went, toiling up; she singing all the way, and Paul sometimes crooning out a feeble accompaniment.