 same purpose. In short, however high and false the temperature
at which the Doctor kept his hothouse, the owners of the plants were always
ready to lend a helping hand at the bellows, and to stir the fire.
    Such spirits as he had in the outset, Paul soon lost of course. But he
retained all that was strange, and old, and thoughtful in his character: and
under circumstances so favourable to the development of those tendencies, became
even more strange, and old, and thoughtful, than before.
    The only difference was, that he kept his character to himself. He grew more
thoughtful and reserved, every day; and had no such curiosity in any living
member of the Doctor's household, as he had had in Mrs. Pipchin. He loved to be
alone; and in those short intervals when he was not occupied with his books,
liked nothing so well as wandering about the house by himself, or sitting on the
stairs, listening to the great clock in the hall. He was intimate with all the
paper-hanging in the house; saw things that no one else saw in the patterns;
found out miniature tigers and lions running up the bedroom walls, and squinting
faces leering in the squares and diamonds of the floor-cloth.
    The solitary child lived on, surrounded by this arabesque work of his musing
fancy, and no one understood him. Mrs. Blimber thought him odd, and sometimes
the servants said among themselves that little Dombey moped; but that was all.
    Unless young Toots had some idea on the subject, to the expression of which
he was wholly unequal. Ideas, like ghosts (according to the common notion of
ghosts), must be spoken to a little before they will explain themselves; and
Toots had long left off asking any questions of his own mind. Some mist there
may have been, issuing from that leaden casket, his cranium, which, if it could
have taken shape and form, would have become a genie; but it could not; and it
only so far followed the example of the smoke in the Arabian story, as to roll
out in a thick cloud, and there hang and hover. But it left a little figure
visible upon a lonely shore, and Toots was always staring at it.
    »How are you?« he would say to Paul, fifty times a day.
    »Quite well, Sir, thank you,« Paul would answer.
    »Shake hands,« would be Toots's next advance.
    Which Paul, of course, would immediately do. Mr. Toots generally
