[Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens]@TWC D-Link bookDombey and Son CHAPTER 5 13/29
'Let me lie by him. Pray do!' Mrs Chick interposed with some motherly words about going to sleep like a dear, but Florence repeated her supplication, with a frightened look, and in a voice broken by sobs and tears. 'I'll not wake him,' she said, covering her face and hanging down her head.
'I'll only touch him with my hand, and go to sleep.
Oh, pray, pray, let me lie by my brother to-night, for I believe he's fond of me!' Richards took her without a word, and carrying her to the little bed in which the infant was sleeping, laid her down by his side.
She crept as near him as she could without disturbing his rest; and stretching out one arm so that it timidly embraced his neck, and hiding her face on the other, over which her damp and scattered hair fell loose, lay motionless. 'Poor little thing,' said Miss Tox; 'she has been dreaming, I daresay.' Dreaming, perhaps, of loving tones for ever silent, of loving eyes for ever closed, of loving arms again wound round her, and relaxing in that dream within the dam which no tongue can relate.
Seeking, perhaps--in dreams--some natural comfort for a heart, deeply and sorely wounded, though so young a child's: and finding it, perhaps, in dreams, if not in waking, cold, substantial truth.
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