The following passage is taken from Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Son, in which Paul’s views toward leaving his school (permanently, one later learns) are narrated.
“[Mrs Blimber] touched the child upon a tender point. He had secretly become more and more solicitous from day to day, as the time of his departure drew more near, that all the house should like him. From some hidden reason, very imperfectly understood by himself—if he understood at all—he felt a gradually increasing impulse of affection, towards almost everything and everybody in the place. He could not bear to think that they would be quite indifferent to him when he was gone. He wanted them to remember him kindly; and he had made it his business even to conciliate a great, hoarse, shaggy dog, chained up at the back of the house, who had previously been the terror of his life: that even he might miss him when he was no longer there" (Dickens 175).
Oh little Paul, I know how you feel. I’ve tried befriending the dogs, too. Unfortunately they are stray and wary of people….but maybe after a month's time they’ll wonder at the absence of the madama who used to call to them sometimes during her morning walks with the children.
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