Ha! Phoebus!

　　'Ha! Phoebus!' said Mr. Dick, laying down his pen.  'How does the world go? I'll tell you what,' he added, in a lower tone, 'I shouldn't wish it to be mentioned, but it's a -' here he beckoned to me, and put his lips close to my ear - 'it's a mad world.  Mad as Bedlam, boy!' said Mr. Dick, taking snuff from a round box on the table, and laughing heartily.

　　Without presuming to give my opinion on this question, I delivered my message.

　　'Well,' said Mr. Dick, in  answer, 'my compliments to her,  and I - I believe  I have made a  start.  I think  I have made  a start,' said  Mr. Dick, passing his hand among  his grey  hair, and  casting anything  but a  confident look  at his manuscript.  'You have been to school?'

　　'Yes, sir,' I answered; 'for a short time.'

　　'Do you recollect the date,' said Mr. Dick, looking earnestly at me, and  taking up his pen to note it down, 'when King Charles the First had his head cut  off?' I said I believed it happened in the year sixteen hundred and forty-nine.

　　'Well,'  returned  Mr.  Dick,  scratching his  ear  with  his  pen, and  looking dubiously at me.  'So the books say; but I don't see how that can be.   Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him have made that mistake  of putting some of the trouble out of his head, after it was taken off, into mine?'

　　I was very much surprised by the inquiry; but could give no information on  this point.

　　'It's very strange,' said Mr. Dick, with a despondent look upon his papers,  and with his hand among his hair again,  'that I never can get that quite  right.  I never  can  make that  perfectly  clear.  But  no  matter, no  matter!'  he said cheerfully, and rousing himself, 'there's  time enough!  My compliments to  Miss Trotwood, I am getting on very well indeed.'