Mr. Dombey was so alarmed about Paul's remarks as to his health, that he called the family doctor in consultation the very next day. The doctor admitted that Paul was not as strong as he could hope, and suggested that sea air might benefit him. So the boy was sent to the home of a Mrs. Pipchin at Brighton. But he refused to go without Florence, much to the secret displeasure of Mr. Dombey, who did not like to see any one—especially this neglected daughter—gain more influence with Paul than he himself had.
Mrs. Pipchin was a cross-grained old lady who gained a livelihood by taking care of delicate children. But she was not unkind to Paul, whose patient little face and strange way of asking questions attracted her, as they did everybody else.
When he had been with her for some time and it was found that he did not gain in strength, a little carriage was hired for him, in which he could lie at his ease with his books and be wheeled down to the seaside.
Consistent in his odd tastes, the child set aside a ruddy-faced lad who was proposed as the drawer of this carriage, and selected, instead, the boy's grandfather—a weazen, old, crab-faced man, in a suit of battered oilskin. With this attendant to pull him along, and Florence always walking by his side, he went down to the margin of the ocean every day; and there he would sit or lie in his carriage for hours together; never so distressed as by the company of children—Florence alone excepted, always.
Some small voice, near his ear, would ask him how he was, perhaps.
"I am very well, I thank you," he would answer. "But you had better go and play, if you please."
Then he would turn his head, and watch the child away, and say to Florence, "We don't want any others, do we? Kiss me, Floy."
His favorite spot was quite a lonely one, far away from most loungers; and with Florence sitting by his side at work, or reading to him, or talking to him, and the wind blowing on his face, and the water coming up among the wheels of his bed, he wanted nothing more.
"Floy," he said one day, "where's India?"
"Oh, it's a long, long distance off," said Florence, raising her eyes from her work.