As Peepy cried for me to take him to bed, I carried him upstairs, where the young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst of the little family like a dragon, and overturned them into cribs.
Peepy was the unfortunate child who had fallen downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting himself with a slip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his wounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity most, the bruises or the dirt. Mrs. Jellyby merely added, with the serene composure with which she said everything, “Go along, you naughty Peepy!” and fixed her fine eyes on Africa again.
Here Mrs. Jellyby was guilty of two wrongs, one of commission, the other of omission. She did a positive wrong in unjustly calling the child “naughty” when he was merely unfortunate. Even if children are so badly guided that they do wrong, it is a serious mistake to make them feel consciously “bad” by calling them unpleasant names. It is always wrong to define in the child’s consciousness a passing wave of evil.
Mrs. Jellyby’s sin of omission was her neglect of the opportunity of sympathizing with the suffering boy, and of training him to bear suffering bravely by the suggestion that he was “a brave little soldier home from the war.”
Mr. Jarndyce, in speaking of Harold Skimpole’s children, said, when Richard Carstone asked if he had any children:
“Yes, Rick! Half a dozen. More! Nearer a dozen, I should think. But he has never looked after them. How could he? He wanted somebody to look after him. He is a child, you know!” said Mr. Jarndyce.
“And have the children looked after themselves at all, sir?” inquired Richard.
“Why, just as you may suppose,” said Mr. Jarndyce, his countenance suddenly falling. “It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up. Harold Skimpole’s children have tumbled up somehow or other——”
Again Dickens was impressing the responsibility of parents for the care and proper training of their children.
Mr. Jarndyce accounted for the utterly unpractical nature of Mr. Skimpole by saying: