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David Copperfield

by Charles Dickens

December, 1996  [Etext #766]

Project Gutenberg Etext of David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
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DAVID COPPERFIELD

by CHARLES DICKENS

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO
THE HON.  Mr. AND Mrs. RICHARD WATSON,
OF ROCKINGHAM, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.

CONTENTS

I.      I Am Born
II.     I Observe
III.    I Have a Change
IV.     I Fall into Disgrace
V.      I Am Sent Away
VI.     I Enlarge My Circle of Acquaintance
VII.    My 'First Half' at Salem House
VIII.   My Holidays.  Especially One Happy Afternoon
IX.     I Have a Memorable Birthday
X.      I Become Neglected, and Am Provided For
XI.     I Begin Life on My Own Account, and Don't Like It
XII.    Liking Life on My Own Account No Better, I Form a Great Resolution
XIII.   The Sequel of My Resolution
XIV.    My Aunt Makes up Her Mind About Me
XV.     I Make Another Beginning
XVI.    I Am a New Boy in More Senses Than One
XVII.   Somebody Turns Up
XVIII.  A Retrospect
XIX.    I Look About Me and Make a Discovery
XX.     Steerforth's Home
XXI.    Little Em'ly
XXII.   Some Old Scenes, and Some New People
XXIII.  I Corroborate Mr. Dick, and Choose a Profession
XXIV.   My First Dissipation
XXV.    Good and Bad Angels
XXVI.   I Fall into Captivity
XXVII.  Tommy Traddles
XXVIII. Mr. Micawber's Gauntlet
XXIX.   I Visit Steerforth at His Home, Again
XXX.    A Loss
XXXI.   A Greater Loss
XXXII.  The Beginning of a Long Journey
XXXIII. Blissful
XXXIV.  My Aunt Astonishes Me
XXXV.   Depression
XXXVI.  Enthusiasm
XXXVII.  A Little Cold Water
XXXVIII. A Dissolution of Partnership
XXXIX.   Wickfield and Heep
XL.      The Wanderer
XLI.     Dora's Aunts
XLII.    Mischief
XLIII.   Another Retrospect
XLIV.    Our Housekeeping
XLV.     Mr. Dick Fulfils My Aunt's Predictions
XLVI.    Intelligence
XLVII.   Martha
XLVIII.  Domestic
XLIX.    I Am Involved in Mystery
L.       Mr. Peggotty's Dream Comes True
LI.      The Beginning of a Longer Journey
LII.     I Assist at an Explosion
LIII.    Another Retrospect
LIV.     Mr. Micawber's Transactions
LV.      Tempest
LVI.     The New Wound, and the Old
LVII.    The Emigrants
LVIII.   Absence
LIX.     Return
LX.      Agnes
LXI.     I Am Shown Two Interesting Penitents
LXII.    A Light Shines on My Way
LXIII.   A Visitor
LXIV.    A Last Retrospect

PREFACE TO 1850 EDITION

I do not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from this Book,
in the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with
the composure which this formal heading would seem to require.  My
interest in it, is so recent and strong; and my mind is so divided
between pleasure and regret - pleasure in the achievement of a long
design, regret in the separation from many companions - that I am
in danger of wearying the reader whom I love, with personal
confidences, and private emotions.

Besides which, all that I could say of the Story, to any purpose,
I have endeavoured to say in it.

It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know, how
sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years'
imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing
some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the
creatures of his brain are going from him for ever.  Yet, I have
nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which
might be of less moment still) that no one can ever believe this
Narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the
writing.

Instead of looking back, therefore, I will look forward.  I cannot
close this Volume more agreeably to myself, than with a hopeful
glance towards the time when I shall again put forth my two green
leaves once a month, and with a faithful remembrance of the genial
sun and showers that have fallen on these leaves of David
Copperfield, and made me happy.
     London, October, 1850.

PREFACE TO
THE CHARLES DICKENS EDITION

I REMARKED in the original Preface to this Book, that I did not
find it easy to get sufficiently far away from it, in the first
sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the composure
which this formal heading would seem to require.  My interest in it
was so recent and strong, and my mind was so divided between
pleasure and regret - pleasure in the achievement of a long design,
regret in the separation from many companions - that I was in
danger of wearying the reader with personal confidences and private
emotions.

Besides which, all that I could have said of the Story to any
purpose, I had endeavoured to say in it.

It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how
sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years'
imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing
some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the
creatures of his brain are going from him for ever.  Yet, I had
nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which
might be of less moment still), that no one can ever believe this
Narrative, in the reading, more than I believed it in the writing.

So true are these avowals at the present day, that I can now only
take the reader into one confidence more.  Of all my books, I like
this the best.  It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent
to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that
family as dearly as I love them.  But, like many fond parents, I
have in my heart of hearts a favourite child.  And his name is
DAVID COPPERFIELD.
     1869

THE PERSONAL HISTORY AND
EXPERIENCE OF
DAVID COPPERFIELD THE YOUNGER

CHAPTER 1
I AM BORN

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether
that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. 
To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was
born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve
o'clock at night.  It was remarked that the clock began to strike,
and I began to cry, simultaneously.

In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared
by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had
taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any
possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I
was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was
privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably
attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either
gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.

I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can
show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or
falsified by the result.  On the second branch of the question, I
will only remark, that unless I ran through that part of my
inheritance while I was still a baby, I have not come into it yet. 
But I do not at all complain of having been kept out of this
property; and if anybody else should be in the present enjoyment of
it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.

I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the
newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas.  Whether sea-going
people were short of money about that time, or were short of faith
and preferred cork jackets, I don't know; all I know is, that there
was but one solitary bidding, and that was from an attorney
connected with the bill-broking business, who offered two pounds in
cash, and the balance in sherry, but declined to be guaranteed from
drowning on any higher bargain.  Consequently the advertisement was
withdrawn at a dead loss - for as to sherry, my poor dear mother's
own sherry was in the market then - and ten years afterwards, the
caul was put up in a raffle down in our part of the country, to
fifty members at half-a-crown a head, the winner to spend five
shillings.  I was present myself, and I remember to have felt quite
uncomfortable and confused, at a part of myself being disposed of
in that way.  The caul was won, I recollect, by an old lady with a
hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, produced from it the stipulated
five shillings, all in halfpence, and twopence halfpenny short - as
it took an immense time and a great waste of arithmetic, to
endeavour without any effect to prove to her.  It is a fact which
will be long remembered as remarkable down there, that she was
never drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two.  I have
understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast, that she
never had been on the water in her life, except upon a bridge; and
that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the
last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and
others, who had the presumption to go 'meandering' about the world. 
It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea
perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice.  She
always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive
knowledge of the strength of her objection, 'Let us have no
meandering.'

Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my birth.

I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or 'there by', as they say
in Scotland.  I was a posthumous child.  My father's eyes had
closed upon the light of this world six months, when mine opened on
it.  There is something strange to me, even now, in the reflection
that he never saw me; and something stranger yet in the shadowy
remembrance that I have of my first childish associations with his
white grave-stone in the churchyard, and of the indefinable
compassion I used to feel for it lying out alone there in the dark
night, when our little parlour was warm and bright with fire and
candle, and the doors of our house were - almost cruelly, it seemed
to me sometimes - bolted and locked against it.

An aunt of my father's, and consequently a great-aunt of mine, of
whom I shall have more to relate by and by, was the principal
magnate of our family.  Miss Trotwood, or Miss Betsey, as my poor
mother always called her, when she sufficiently overcame her dread
of this formidable personage to mention her at all (which was
seldom), had been married to a husband younger than herself, who
was very handsome, except in the sense of the homely adage,
'handsome is, that handsome does' - for he was strongly suspected
of having beaten Miss Betsey, and even of having once, on a
disputed question of supplies, made some hasty but determined
arrangements to throw her out of a two pair of stairs' window. 
These evidences of an incompatibility of temper induced Miss Betsey
to pay him off, and effect a separation by mutual consent.  He went
to India with his capital, and there, according to a wild legend in
our family, he was once seen riding on an elephant, in company with
a Baboon; but I think it must have been a Baboo - or a Begum. 
Anyhow, from India tidings of his death reached home, within ten
years.  How they affected my aunt, nobody knew; for immediately
upon the separation, she took her maiden name again, bought a
cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, established
herself there as a single woman with one servant, and was
understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible
retirement.

My father had once been a favourite of hers, I believe; but she was
mortally affronted by his marriage, on the ground that my mother
was 'a wax doll'.  She had never seen my mother, but she knew her
to be not yet twenty.  My father and Miss Betsey never met again. 
He was double my mother's age when he married, and of but a
delicate constitution.  He died a year afterwards, and, as I have
said, six months before I came into the world.

This was the state of matters, on the afternoon of, what I may be
excused for calling, that eventful and important Friday.  I can
make no claim therefore to have known, at that time, how matters
stood; or to have any remembrance, founded on the evidence of my
own senses, of what follows.

My mother was sitting by the fire, but poorly in health, and very
low in spirits, looking at it through her tears, and desponding
heavily about herself and the fatherless little stranger, who was
already welcomed by some grosses of prophetic pins, in a drawer
upstairs, to a world not at all excited on the subject of his
arrival; my mother, I say, was sitting by the fire, that bright,
windy March afternoon, very timid and sad, and very doubtful of
ever coming alive out of the trial that was before her, when,
lifting her eyes as she dried them, to the window opposite, she saw
a strange lady coming up the garden.

MY mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance, that it was
Miss Betsey.  The setting sun was glowing on the strange lady, over
the garden-fence, and she came walking up to the door with a fell
rigidity of figure and composure of countenance that could have
belonged to nobody else.

When she reached the house, she gave another proof of her identity. 
My father had often hinted that she seldom conducted herself like
any ordinary Christian; and now, instead of ringing the bell, she
came and looked in at that identical window, pressing the end of
her nose against the glass to that extent, that my poor dear mother
used to say it became perfectly flat and white in a moment.

She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been convinced
I am indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a Friday.

My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it
in the corner.  Miss Betsey, looking round the room, slowly and
inquiringly, began on the other side, and carried her eyes on, like
a Saracen's Head in a Dutch clock, until they reached my mother. 
Then she made a frown and a gesture to my mother, like one who was
accustomed to be obeyed, to come and open the door.  My mother
went.

'Mrs. David Copperfield, I think,' said Miss Betsey; the emphasis
referring, perhaps, to my mother's mourning weeds, and her
condition.

'Yes,' said my mother, faintly.

'Miss Trotwood,' said the visitor.  'You have heard of her, I dare
say?'

My mother answered she had had that pleasure.  And she had a
disagreeable consciousness of not appearing to imply that it had
been an overpowering pleasure.

'Now you see her,' said Miss Betsey.  My mother bent her head, and
begged her to walk in.

They went into the parlour my mother had come from, the fire in the
best room on the other side of the passage not being lighted - not
having been lighted, indeed, since my father's funeral; and when
they were both seated, and Miss Betsey said nothing, my mother,
after vainly trying to restrain herself, began to cry.
'Oh tut, tut, tut!' said Miss Betsey, in a hurry.  'Don't do that!
Come, come!'

My mother couldn't help it notwithstanding, so she cried until she
had had her cry out.

'Take off your cap, child,' said Miss Betsey, 'and let me see you.'

MY mother was too much afraid of her to refuse compliance with this
odd request, if she had any disposition to do so.  Therefore she
did as she was told, and did it with such nervous hands that her
hair (which was luxuriant and beautiful) fell all about her face.

'Why, bless my heart!' exclaimed Miss Betsey.  'You are a very
Baby!'

My mother was, no doubt, unusually youthful in appearance even for
her years; she hung her head, as if it were her fault, poor thing,
and said, sobbing, that indeed she was afraid she was but a
childish widow, and would be but a childish mother if she lived. 
In a short pause which ensued, she had a fancy that she felt Miss
Betsey touch her hair, and that with no ungentle hand; but, looking
at her, in her timid hope, she found that lady sitting with the
skirt of her dress tucked up, her hands folded on one knee, and her
feet upon the fender, frowning at the fire.

'In the name of Heaven,' said Miss Betsey, suddenly, 'why Rookery?'

'Do you mean the house, ma'am?' asked my mother.

'Why Rookery?' said Miss Betsey.  'Cookery would have been more to
the purpose, if you had had any practical ideas of life, either of
you.'

'The name was Mr. Copperfield's choice,' returned my mother.  'When
he bought the house, he liked to think that there were rooks about
it.'

The evening wind made such a disturbance just now, among some tall
old elm-trees at the bottom of the garden, that neither my mother
nor Miss Betsey could forbear glancing that way.  As the elms bent
to one another, like giants who were whispering secrets, and after
a few seconds of such repose, fell into a violent flurry, tossing
their wild arms about, as if their late confidences were really too
wicked for their peace of mind, some weatherbeaten ragged old
rooks'-nests, burdening their higher branches, swung like wrecks
upon a stormy sea.

'Where are the birds?' asked Miss Betsey.

'The -? ' My mother had been thinking of something else.

'The rooks - what has become of them?' asked Miss Betsey.

'There have not been any since we have lived here,' said my mother. 
'We thought - Mr. Copperfield thought - it was quite a large
rookery; but the nests were very old ones, and the birds have
deserted them a long while.'

'David Copperfield all over!' cried Miss Betsey.  'David
Copperfield from head to foot!  Calls a house a rookery when
there's not a rook near it, and takes the birds on trust, because
he sees the nests!'

'Mr. Copperfield,' returned my mother, 'is dead, and if you dare to
speak unkindly of him to me -'

My poor dear mother, I suppose, had some momentary intention of
committing an assault and battery upon my aunt, who could easily
have settled her with one hand, even if my mother had been in far
better training for such an encounter than she was that evening. 
But it passed with the action of rising from her chair; and she sat
down again very meekly, and fainted.

When she came to herself, or when Miss Betsey had restored her,
whichever it was, she found the latter standing at the window.  The
twilight was by this time shading down into darkness; and dimly as
they saw each other, they could not have done that without the aid
of the fire.

'Well?' said Miss Betsey, coming back to her chair, as if she had
only been taking a casual look at the prospect; 'and when do you
expect -'

'I am all in a tremble,' faltered my mother.  'I don't know what's
the matter.  I shall die, I am sure!'

'No, no, no,' said Miss Betsey.  'Have some tea.'

'Oh dear me, dear me, do you think it will do me any good?' cried
my mother in a helpless manner.

'Of course it will,' said Miss Betsey.  'It's nothing but fancy. 
What do you call your girl?'

'I don't know that it will be a girl, yet, ma'am,' said my mother
innocently.

'Bless the Baby!' exclaimed Miss Betsey, unconsciously quoting the
second sentiment of the pincushion in the drawer upstairs, but
applying it to my mother instead of me, 'I don't mean that.  I mean
your servant-girl.'

'Peggotty,' said my mother.

'Peggotty!' repeated Miss Betsey, with some indignation.  'Do you
mean to say, child, that any human being has gone into a Christian
church, and got herself named Peggotty?'
'It's her surname,' said my mother, faintly.  'Mr. Copperfield
called her by it, because her Christian name was the same as mine.'

'Here!  Peggotty!' cried Miss Betsey, opening the parlour door. 
'Tea.  Your mistress is a little unwell.  Don't dawdle.'

Having issued this mandate with as much potentiality as if she had
been a recognized authority in the house ever since it had been a
house, and having looked out to confront the amazed Peggotty coming
along the passage with a candle at the sound of a strange voice,
Miss Betsey shut the door again, and sat down as before: with her
feet on the fender, the skirt of her dress tucked up, and her hands
folded on one knee.

'You were speaking about its being a girl,' said Miss Betsey.  'I
have no doubt it will be a girl.  I have a presentiment that it
must be a girl.  Now child, from the moment of the birth of this
girl -'

'Perhaps boy,' my mother took the liberty of putting in.

'I tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl,' returned
Miss Betsey.  'Don't contradict.  From the moment of this girl's
birth, child, I intend to be her friend.  I intend to be her
godmother, and I beg you'll call her Betsey Trotwood Copperfield. 
There must be no mistakes in life with THIS Betsey Trotwood.  There
must be no trifling with HER affections, poor dear.  She must be
well brought up, and well guarded from reposing any foolish
confidences where they are not deserved.  I must make that MY
care.'

There was a twitch of Miss Betsey's head, after each of these
sentences, as if her own old wrongs were working within her, and
she repressed any plainer reference to them by strong constraint. 
So my mother suspected, at least, as she observed her by the low
glimmer of the fire: too much scared by Miss Betsey, too uneasy in
herself, and too subdued and bewildered altogether, to observe
anything very clearly, or to know what to say.

'And was David good to you, child?' asked Miss Betsey, when she had
been silent for a little while, and these motions of her head had
gradually ceased.  'Were you comfortable together?'

'We were very happy,' said my mother.  'Mr. Copperfield was only
too good to me.'

'What, he spoilt you, I suppose?' returned Miss Betsey.

'For being quite alone and dependent on myself in this rough world
again, yes, I fear he did indeed,' sobbed my mother.

'Well!  Don't cry!' said Miss Betsey.  'You were not equally
matched, child - if any two people can be equally matched - and so
I asked the question.  You were an orphan, weren't you?'
'Yes.'

'And a governess?'

'I was nursery-governess in a family where Mr. Copperfield came to
visit.  Mr. Copperfield was very kind to me, and took a great deal
of notice of me, and paid me a good deal of attention, and at last
proposed to me.  And I accepted him.  And so we were married,' said
my mother simply.

'Ha!  Poor Baby!' mused Miss Betsey, with her frown still bent upon
the fire.  'Do you know anything?'

'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' faltered my mother.

'About keeping house, for instance,' said Miss Betsey.

'Not much, I fear,' returned my mother.  'Not so much as I could
wish.  But Mr. Copperfield was teaching me -'

('Much he knew about it himself!') said Miss Betsey in a
parenthesis.

- 'And I hope I should have improved, being very anxious to learn,
and he very patient to teach me, if the great misfortune of his
death' - my mother broke down again here, and could get no farther.

'Well, well!' said Miss Betsey.

-'I kept my housekeeping-book regularly, and balanced it with Mr.
Copperfield every night,' cried my mother in another burst of
distress, and breaking down again.

'Well, well!' said Miss Betsey.  'Don't cry any more.'

- 'And I am sure we never had a word of difference respecting it,
except when Mr. Copperfield objected to my threes and fives being
too much like each other, or to my putting curly tails to my sevens
and nines,' resumed my mother in another burst, and breaking down
again.

'You'll make yourself ill,' said Miss Betsey, 'and you know that
will not be good either for you or for my god-daughter.  Come!  You
mustn't do it!'

This argument had some share in quieting my mother, though her
increasing indisposition had a larger one.  There was an interval
of silence, only broken by Miss Betsey's occasionally ejaculating
'Ha!' as she sat with her feet upon the fender.

'David had bought an annuity for himself with his money, I know,'
said she, by and by.  'What did he do for you?'

'Mr. Copperfield,' said my mother, answering with some difficulty,
'was so considerate and good as to secure the reversion of a part
of it to me.'

'How much?' asked Miss Betsey.

'A hundred and five pounds a year,' said my mother.

'He might have done worse,' said my aunt.

The word was appropriate to the moment.  My mother was so much
worse that Peggotty, coming in with the teaboard and candles, and
seeing at a glance how ill she was, - as Miss Betsey might have
done sooner if there had been light enough, - conveyed her upstairs
to her own room with all speed; and immediately dispatched Ham
Peggotty, her nephew, who had been for some days past secreted in
the house, unknown to my mother, as a special messenger in case of
emergency, to fetch the nurse and doctor.

Those allied powers were considerably astonished, when they arrived
within a few minutes of each other, to find an unknown lady of
portentous appearance, sitting before the fire, with her bonnet
tied over her left arm, stopping her ears with jewellers' cotton. 
Peggotty knowing nothing about her, and my mother saying nothing
about her, she was quite a mystery in the parlour; and the fact of
her having a magazine of jewellers' cotton in her pocket, and
sticking the article in her ears in that way, did not detract from
the solemnity of her presence.

The doctor having been upstairs and come down again, and having
satisfied himself, I suppose, that there was a probability of this
unknown lady and himself having to sit there, face to face, for
some hours, laid himself out to be polite and social.  He was the
meekest of his sex, the mildest of little men.  He sidled in and
out of a room, to take up the less space.  He walked as softly as
the Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly.  He carried his head on one
side, partly in modest depreciation of himself, partly in modest
propitiation of everybody else.  It is nothing to say that he
hadn't a word to throw at a dog.  He couldn't have thrown a word at
a mad dog.  He might have offered him one gently, or half a one, or
a fragment of one; for he spoke as slowly as he walked; but he
wouldn't have been rude to him, and he couldn't have been quick
with him, for any earthly consideration.

Mr. Chillip, looking mildly at my aunt with his head on one side,
and making her a little bow, said, in allusion to the jewellers'
cotton, as he softly touched his left ear:

'Some local irritation, ma'am?'

'What!' replied my aunt, pulling the cotton out of one ear like a
cork.

Mr. Chillip was so alarmed by her abruptness - as he told my mother
afterwards - that it was a mercy he didn't lose his presence of
mind.  But he repeated sweetly:

'Some local irritation, ma'am?'

'Nonsense!' replied my aunt, and corked herself again, at one blow.

Mr. Chillip could do nothing after this, but sit and look at her
feebly, as she sat and looked at the fire, until he was called
upstairs again.  After some quarter of an hour's absence, he
returned.

'Well?' said my aunt, taking the cotton out of the ear nearest to
him.

'Well, ma'am,' returned Mr. Chillip, 'we are- we are progressing
slowly, ma'am.'

'Ba--a--ah!' said my aunt, with a perfect shake on the contemptuous
interjection.  And corked herself as before.

Really - really - as Mr. Chillip told my mother, he was almost
shocked; speaking in a professional point of view alone, he was
almost shocked.  But he sat and looked at her, notwithstanding, for
nearly two hours, as she sat looking at the fire, until he was
again called out.  After another absence, he again returned.

'Well?' said my aunt, taking out the cotton on that side again.

'Well, ma'am,' returned Mr. Chillip, 'we are - we are progressing

slowly, ma'am.'

'Ya--a--ah!' said my aunt.  With such a snarl at him, that Mr.
Chillip absolutely could not bear it.  It was really calculated to
break his spirit, he said afterwards.  He preferred to go and sit
upon the stairs, in the dark and a strong draught, until he was
again sent for.

Ham Peggotty, who went to the national school, and was a very
dragon at his catechism, and who may therefore be regarded as a
credible witness, reported next day, that happening to peep in at
the parlour-door an hour after this, he was instantly descried by
Miss Betsey, then walking to and fro in a state of agitation, and
pounced upon before he could make his escape.  That there were now
occasional sounds of feet and voices overhead which he inferred the
cotton did not exclude, from the circumstance of his evidently
being clutched by the lady as a victim on whom to expend her
superabundant agitation when the sounds were loudest.  That,
marching him constantly up and down by the collar (as if he had
been taking too much laudanum), she, at those times, shook him,
rumpled his hair, made light of his linen, stopped his ears as if
she confounded them with her own, and otherwise tousled and
maltreated him.  This was in part confirmed by his aunt, who saw
him at half past twelve o'clock, soon after his release, and
affirmed that he was then as red as I was.

The mild Mr. Chillip could not possibly bear malice at such a time,
if at any time.  He sidled into the parlour as soon as he was at
liberty, and said to my aunt in his meekest manner:

'Well, ma'am, I am happy to congratulate you.'

'What upon?' said my aunt, sharply.

Mr. Chillip was fluttered again, by the extreme severity of my
aunt's manner; so he made her a little bow and gave her a little
smile, to mollify her.

'Mercy on the man, what's he doing!' cried my aunt, impatiently.
'Can't he speak?'

'Be calm, my dear ma'am,' said Mr. Chillip, in his softest accents.

'There is no longer any occasion for uneasiness, ma'am.  Be calm.'

It has since been considered almost a miracle that my aunt didn't
shake him, and shake what he had to say, out of him.  She only
shook her own head at him, but in a way that made him quail.

'Well, ma'am,' resumed Mr. Chillip, as soon as he had courage, 'I
am happy to congratulate you.  All is now over, ma'am, and well
over.'

During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to the
delivery of this oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly.

'How is she?' said my aunt, folding her arms with her bonnet still
tied on one of them.

'Well, ma'am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I hope,' returned
Mr. Chillip.  'Quite as comfortable as we can expect a young mother
to be, under these melancholy domestic circumstances.  There cannot
be any objection to your seeing her presently, ma'am.  It may do
her good.'

'And SHE.  How is SHE?' said my aunt, sharply.

Mr. Chillip laid his head a little more on one side, and looked at
my aunt like an amiable bird.

'The baby,' said my aunt.  'How is she?'

'Ma'am,' returned Mr. Chillip, 'I apprehended you had known.  It's
a boy.'

My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the strings, in
the manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chillip's head with it,
put it on bent, walked out, and never came back.  She vanished like
a discontented fairy; or like one of those supernatural beings,
whom it was popularly supposed I was entitled to see; and never
came back any more.

No.  I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; but Betsey
Trotwood Copperfield was for ever in the land of dreams and
shadows, the tremendous region whence I had so lately travelled;
and the light upon the window of our room shone out upon the
earthly bourne of all such travellers, and the mound above the
ashes and the dust that once was he, without whom I had never been.

CHAPTER 2
I OBSERVE

The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I
look far back, into the blank of my infancy, are my mother with her
pretty hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty with no shape at all,
and eyes so dark that they seemed to darken their whole
neighbourhood in her face, and cheeks and arms so hard and red that
I wondered the birds didn't peck her in preference to apples.

I believe I can remember these two at a little distance apart,
dwarfed to my sight by stooping down or kneeling on the floor, and
I going unsteadily from the one to the other.  I have an impression
on my mind which I cannot distinguish from actual remembrance, of
the touch of Peggotty's forefinger as she used to hold it out to
me, and of its being roughened by needlework, like a pocket
nutmeg-grater.

This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go
farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I
believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children
to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy.  Indeed, I
think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may
with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than
to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to
retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being
pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from
their childhood.

I might have a misgiving that I am 'meandering' in stopping to say
this, but that it brings me to remark that I build these
conclusions, in part upon my own experience of myself; and if it
should appear from anything I may set down in this narrative that
I was a child of close observation, or that as a man I have a
strong memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of
these characteristics.

Looking back, as I was saying, into the blank of my infancy, the
first objects I can remember as standing out by themselves from a
confusion of things, are my mother and Peggotty.  What else do I
remember?  Let me see.

There comes out of the cloud, our house - not new to me, but quite
familiar, in its earliest remembrance.  On the ground-floor is
Peggotty's kitchen, opening into a back yard; with a pigeon-house
on a pole, in the centre, without any pigeons in it; a great dog-
kennel in a corner, without any dog; and a quantity of fowls that
look terribly tall to me, walking about, in a menacing and
ferocious manner.  There is one cock who gets upon a post to crow,
and seems to take particular notice of me as I look at him through
the kitchen window, who makes me shiver, he is so fierce.  Of the
geese outside the side-gate who come waddling after me with their
long necks stretched out when I go that way, I dream at night: as
a man environed by wild beasts might dream of lions.

Here is a long passage - what an enormous perspective I make of it! 
- leading from Peggotty's kitchen to the front door.  A dark
store-room opens out of it, and that is a place to be run past at
night; for I don't know what may be among those tubs and jars and
old tea-chests, when there is nobody in there with a dimly-burning
light, letting a mouldy air come out of the door, in which there is
the smell of soap, pickles, pepper, candles, and coffee, all at one
whiff.  Then there are the two parlours: the parlour in which we
sit of an evening, my mother and I and Peggotty - for Peggotty is
quite our companion, when her work is done and we are alone - and
the best parlour where we sit on a Sunday; grandly, but not so
comfortably.  There is something of a doleful air about that room
to me, for Peggotty has told me - I don't know when, but apparently
ages ago - about my father's funeral, and the company having their
black cloaks put on.  One Sunday night my mother reads to Peggotty
and me in there, how Lazarus was raised up from the dead.  And I am
so frightened that they are afterwards obliged to take me out of
bed, and show me the quiet churchyard out of the bedroom window,
with the dead all lying in their graves at rest, below the solemn
moon.

There is nothing half so green that I know anywhere, as the grass
of that churchyard; nothing half so shady as its trees; nothing
half so quiet as its tombstones.  The sheep are feeding there, when
I kneel up, early in the morning, in my little bed in a closet
within my mother's room, to look out at it; and I see the red light
shining on the sun-dial, and think within myself, 'Is the sun-dial
glad, I wonder, that it can tell the time again?'

Here is our pew in the church.  What a high-backed pew!  With a
window near it, out of which our house can be seen, and IS seen
many times during the morning's service, by Peggotty, who likes to
make herself as sure as she can that it's not being robbed, or is
not in flames.  But though Peggotty's eye wanders, she is much
offended if mine does, and frowns to me, as I stand upon the seat,
that I am to look at the clergyman.  But I can't always look at him
- I know him without that white thing on, and I am afraid of his
wondering why I stare so, and perhaps stopping the service to
inquire - and what am I to do?  It's a dreadful thing to gape, but
I must do something.  I look at my mother, but she pretends not to
see me.  I look at a boy in the aisle, and he makes faces at me. 
I look at the sunlight coming in at the open door through the
porch, and there I see a stray sheep - I don't mean a sinner, but
mutton - half making up his mind to come into the church.  I feel
that if I looked at him any longer, I might be tempted to say
something out loud; and what would become of me then!  I look up at
the monumental tablets on the wall, and try to think of Mr. Bodgers
late of this parish, and what the feelings of Mrs. Bodgers must
have been, when affliction sore, long time Mr. Bodgers bore, and
physicians were in vain.  I wonder whether they called in Mr.
Chillip, and he was in vain; and if so, how he likes to be reminded
of it once a week.  I look from Mr. Chillip, in his Sunday
neckcloth, to the pulpit; and think what a good place it would be
to play in, and what a castle it would make, with another boy
coming up the stairs to attack it, and having the velvet cushion
with the tassels thrown down on his head.  In time my eyes
gradually shut up; and, from seeming to hear the clergyman singing
a drowsy song in the heat, I hear nothing, until I fall off the
seat with a crash, and am taken out, more dead than alive, by
Peggotty.

And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed
bedroom-windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and
the ragged old rooks'-nests still dangling in the elm-trees at the
bottom of the front garden.  Now I am in the garden at the back,
beyond the yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are -
a very preserve of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high
fence, and a gate and padlock; where the fruit clusters on the
trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any
other garden, and where my mother gathers some in a basket, while
I stand by, bolting furtive gooseberries, and trying to look
unmoved.  A great wind rises, and the summer is gone in a moment. 
We are playing in the winter twilight, dancing about the parlour. 
When my mother is out of breath and rests herself in an
elbow-chair, I watch her winding her bright curls round her
fingers, and straitening her waist, and nobody knows better than I
do that she likes to look so well, and is proud of being so pretty.

That is among my very earliest impressions.  That, and a sense that
we were both a little afraid of Peggotty, and submitted ourselves
in most things to her direction, were among the first opinions - if
they may be so called - that I ever derived from what I saw.

Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlour fire, alone. 
I had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles.  I must have read
very perspicuously, or the poor soul must have been deeply
interested, for I remember she had a cloudy impression, after I had
done, that they were a sort of vegetable.  I was tired of reading,
and dead sleepy; but having leave, as a high treat, to sit up until
my mother came home from spending the evening at a neighbour's, I
would rather have died upon my post (of course) than have gone to
bed.  I had reached that stage of sleepiness when Peggotty seemed
to swell and grow immensely large.  I propped my eyelids open with
my two forefingers, and looked perseveringly at her as she sat at
work; at the little bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread - how
old it looked, being so wrinkled in all directions! - at the little
house with a thatched roof, where the yard-measure lived; at her
work-box with a sliding lid, with a view of St. Paul's Cathedral
(with a pink dome) painted on the top; at the brass thimble on her
finger; at herself, whom I thought lovely.  I felt so sleepy, that
I knew if I lost sight of anything for a moment, I was gone.

'Peggotty,' says I, suddenly, 'were you ever married?'

'Lord, Master Davy,' replied Peggotty.  'What's put marriage in
your head?'

She answered with such a start, that it quite awoke me.  And then
she stopped in her work, and looked at me, with her needle drawn
out to its thread's length.

'But WERE you ever married, Peggotty?' says I.  'You are a very
handsome woman, an't you?'

I thought her in a different style from my mother, certainly; but
of another school of beauty, I considered her a perfect example. 
There was a red velvet footstool in the best parlour, on which my
mother had painted a nosegay.  The ground-work of that stool, and
Peggotty's complexion appeared to me to be one and the same thing. 
The stool was smooth, and Peggotty was rough, but that made no
difference.

'Me handsome, Davy!' said Peggotty.  'Lawk, no, my dear!  But what
put marriage in your head?'

'I don't know! - You mustn't marry more than one person at a time,
may you, Peggotty?'

'Certainly not,' says Peggotty, with the promptest decision.

'But if you marry a person, and the person dies, why then you may
marry another person, mayn't you, Peggotty?'

'YOU MAY,' says Peggotty, 'if you choose, my dear.  That's a matter
of opinion.'

'But what is your opinion, Peggotty?' said I.

I asked her, and looked curiously at her, because she looked so
curiously at me.

'My opinion is,' said Peggotty, taking her eyes from me, after a
little indecision and going on with her work, 'that I never was
married myself, Master Davy, and that I don't expect to be.  That's
all I know about the subject.'

'You an't cross, I suppose, Peggotty, are you?' said I, after
sitting quiet for a minute.

I really thought she was, she had been so short with me; but I was
quite mistaken: for she laid aside her work (which was a stocking
of her own), and opening her arms wide, took my curly head within
them, and gave it a good squeeze.  I know it was a good squeeze,
because, being very plump, whenever she made any little exertion
after she was dressed, some of the buttons on the back of her gown
flew off.  And I recollect two bursting to the opposite side of the
parlour, while she was hugging me.

'Now let me hear some more about the Crorkindills,' said Peggotty,
who was not quite right in the name yet, 'for I an't heard half
enough.'

I couldn't quite understand why Peggotty looked so queer, or why
she was so ready to go back to the crocodiles.  However, we
returned to those monsters, with fresh wakefulness on my part, and
we left their eggs in the sand for the sun to hatch; and we ran
away from them, and baffled them by constantly turning, which they
were unable to do quickly, on account of their unwieldy make; and
we went into the water after them, as natives, and put sharp pieces
of timber down their throats; and in short we ran the whole
crocodile gauntlet.  I did, at least; but I had my doubts of
Peggotty, who was thoughtfully sticking her needle into various
parts of her face and arms, all the time.

We had exhausted the crocodiles, and begun with the alligators,
when the garden-bell rang.  We went out to the door; and there was
my mother, looking unusually pretty, I thought, and with her a
gentleman with beautiful black hair and whiskers, who had walked
home with us from church last Sunday.

As my mother stooped down on the threshold to take me in her arms
and kiss me, the gentleman said I was a more highly privileged
little fellow than a monarch - or something like that; for my later
understanding comes, I am sensible, to my aid here.

'What does that mean?' I asked him, over her shoulder.

He patted me on the head; but somehow, I didn't like him or his
deep voice, and I was jealous that his hand should touch my
mother's in touching me - which it did.  I put it away, as well as
I could.

'Oh, Davy!' remonstrated my mother.

'Dear boy!' said the gentleman.  'I cannot wonder at his devotion!'

I never saw such a beautiful colour on my mother's face before. 
She gently chid me for being rude; and, keeping me close to her
shawl, turned to thank the gentleman for taking so much trouble as
to bring her home.  She put out her hand to him as she spoke, and,
as he met it with his own, she glanced, I thought, at me.

'Let us say "good night", my fine boy,' said the gentleman, when he
had bent his head - I saw him! - over my mother's little glove.

'Good night!' said I.

'Come!  Let us be the best friends in the world!' said the
gentleman, laughing.  'Shake hands!'

My right hand was in my mother's left, so I gave him the other.

'Why, that's the Wrong hand, Davy!' laughed the gentleman.

MY mother drew my right hand forward, but I was resolved, for my
former reason, not to give it him, and I did not.  I gave him the
other, and he shook it heartily, and said I was a brave fellow, and
went away.

At this minute I see him turn round in the garden, and give us a
last look with his ill-omened black eyes, before the door was shut.

Peggotty, who had not said a word or moved a finger, secured the
fastenings instantly, and we all went into the parlour.  My mother,
contrary to her usual habit, instead of coming to the elbow-chair
by the fire, remained at the other end of the room, and sat singing
to herself.

- 'Hope you have had a pleasant evening, ma'am,' said Peggotty,
standing as stiff as a barrel in the centre of the room, with a
candlestick in her hand.

'Much obliged to you, Peggotty,' returned my mother, in a cheerful
voice, 'I have had a VERY pleasant evening.'

'A stranger or so makes an agreeable change,' suggested Peggotty.

'A very agreeable change, indeed,' returned my mother.

Peggotty continuing to stand motionless in the middle of the room,
and my mother resuming her singing, I fell asleep, though I was not
so sound asleep but that I could hear voices, without hearing what
they said.  When I half awoke from this uncomfortable doze, I found
Peggotty and my mother both in tears, and both talking.

'Not such a one as this, Mr. Copperfield wouldn't have liked,' said
Peggotty.  'That I say, and that I swear!'

'Good Heavens!' cried my mother, 'you'll drive me mad!  Was ever
any poor girl so ill-used by her servants as I am!  Why do I do
myself the injustice of calling myself a girl?  Have I never been
married, Peggotty?'

'God knows you have, ma'am,' returned Peggotty.
'Then, how can you dare,' said my mother - 'you know I don't mean
how can you dare, Peggotty, but how can you have the heart - to
make me so uncomfortable and say such bitter things to me, when you
are well aware that I haven't, out of this place, a single friend
to turn to?'

'The more's the reason,' returned Peggotty, 'for saying that it
won't do.  No!  That it won't do.  No!  No price could make it do. 
No!' - I thought Peggotty would have thrown the candlestick away,
she was so emphatic with it.

'How can you be so aggravating,' said my mother, shedding more
tears than before, 'as to talk in such an unjust manner!  How can
you go on as if it was all settled and arranged, Peggotty, when I
tell you over and over again, you cruel thing, that beyond the
commonest civilities nothing has passed!  You talk of admiration. 
What am I to do?  If people are so silly as to indulge the
sentiment, is it my fault?  What am I to do, I ask you?  Would you
wish me to shave my head and black my face, or disfigure myself
with a burn, or a scald, or something of that sort?  I dare say you
would, Peggotty.  I dare say you'd quite enjoy it.'

Peggotty seemed to take this aspersion very much to heart, I
thought.

'And my dear boy,' cried my mother, coming to the elbow-chair in
which I was, and caressing me, 'my own little Davy!  Is it to be
hinted to me that I am wanting in affection for my precious
treasure, the dearest little fellow that ever was!'

'Nobody never went and hinted no such a thing,' said Peggotty.

'You did, Peggotty!' returned my mother.  'You know you did.  What
else was it possible to infer from what you said, you unkind
creature, when you know as well as I do, that on his account only
last quarter I wouldn't buy myself a new parasol, though that old
green one is frayed the whole way up, and the fringe is perfectly
mangy?  You know it is, Peggotty.  You can't deny it.'  Then,
turning affectionately to me, with her cheek against mine, 'Am I a
naughty mama to you, Davy?  Am I a nasty, cruel, selfish, bad mama? 
Say I am, my child; say "yes", dear boy, and Peggotty will love
you; and Peggotty's love is a great deal better than mine, Davy. 
I don't love you at all, do I?'

At this, we all fell a-crying together.  I think I was the loudest
of the party, but I am sure we were all sincere about it.  I was
quite heart-broken myself, and am afraid that in the first
transports of wounded tenderness I called Peggotty a 'Beast'.  That
honest creature was in deep affliction, I remember, and must have
become quite buttonless on the occasion; for a little volley of
those explosives went off, when, after having made it up with my
mother, she kneeled down by the elbow-chair, and made it up with
me.

We went to bed greatly dejected.  My sobs kept waking me, for a
long time; and when one very strong sob quite hoisted me up in bed,
I found my mother sitting on the coverlet, and leaning over me.  I
fell asleep in her arms, after that, and slept soundly.

Whether it was the following Sunday when I saw the gentleman again,
or whether there was any greater lapse of time before he
reappeared, I cannot recall.  I don't profess to be clear about
dates.  But there he was, in church, and he walked home with us
afterwards.  He came in, too, to look at a famous geranium we had,
in the parlour-window.  It did not appear to me that he took much
notice of it, but before he went he asked my mother to give him a
bit of the blossom.  She begged him to choose it for himself, but
he refused to do that - I could not understand why - so she plucked
it for him, and gave it into his hand.  He said he would never,
never part with it any more; and I thought he must be quite a fool
not to know that it would fall to pieces in a day or two.

Peggotty began to be less with us, of an evening, than she had
always been.  My mother deferred to her very much - more than
usual, it occurred to me - and we were all three excellent friends;
still we were different from what we used to be, and were not so
comfortable among ourselves.  Sometimes I fancied that Peggotty
perhaps objected to my mother's wearing all the pretty dresses she
had in her drawers, or to her going so often to visit at that
neighbour's; but I couldn't, to my satisfaction, make out how it
was.

Gradually, I became used to seeing the gentleman with the black
whiskers.  I liked him no better than at first, and had the same
uneasy jealousy of him; but if I had any reason for it beyond a
child's instinctive dislike, and a general idea that Peggotty and
I could make much of my mother without any help, it certainly was
not THE reason that I might have found if I had been older.  No
such thing came into my mind, or near it.  I could observe, in
little pieces, as it were; but as to making a net of a number of
these pieces, and catching anybody in it, that was, as yet, beyond
me.

One autumn morning I was with my mother in the front garden, when
Mr. Murdstone - I knew him by that name now - came by, on
horseback.  He reined up his horse to salute my mother, and said he
was going to Lowestoft to see some friends who were there with a
yacht, and merrily proposed to take me on the saddle before him if
I would like the ride.

The air was so clear and pleasant, and the horse seemed to like the
idea of the ride so much himself, as he stood snorting and pawing
at the garden-gate, that I had a great desire to go.  So I was sent
upstairs to Peggotty to be made spruce; and in the meantime Mr.
Murdstone dismounted, and, with his horse's bridle drawn over his
arm, walked slowly up and down on the outer side of the sweetbriar
fence, while my mother walked slowly up and down on the inner to
keep him company.  I recollect Peggotty and I peeping out at them
from my little window; I recollect how closely they seemed to be
examining the sweetbriar between them, as they strolled along; and
how, from being in a perfectly angelic temper, Peggotty turned
cross in a moment, and brushed my hair the wrong way, excessively
hard.

Mr. Murdstone and I were soon off, and trotting along on the green
turf by the side of the road.  He held me quite easily with one
arm, and I don't think I was restless usually; but I could not make
up my mind to sit in front of him without turning my head
sometimes, and looking up in his face.  He had that kind of shallow
black eye - I want a better word to express an eye that has no
depth in it to be looked into - which, when it is abstracted, seems
from some peculiarity of light to be disfigured, for a moment at a
time, by a cast.  Several times when I glanced at him, I observed
that appearance with a sort of awe, and wondered what he was
thinking about so closely.  His hair and whiskers were blacker and
thicker, looked at so near, than even I had given them credit for
being.  A squareness about the lower part of his face, and the
dotted indication of the strong black beard he shaved close every
day, reminded me of the wax-work that had travelled into our
neighbourhood some half-a-year before.  This, his regular eyebrows,
and the rich white, and black, and brown, of his complexion -
confound his complexion, and his memory! - made me think him, in
spite of my misgivings, a very handsome man.  I have no doubt that
my poor dear mother thought him so too.

We went to an hotel by the sea, where two gentlemen were smoking
cigars in a room by themselves.  Each of them was lying on at least
four chairs, and had a large rough jacket on.  In a corner was a
heap of coats and boat-cloaks, and a flag, all bundled up together.

They both rolled on to their feet in an untidy sort of manner, when
we came in, and said, 'Halloa, Murdstone!  We thought you were
dead!'

'Not yet,' said Mr. Murdstone.

'And who's this shaver?' said one of the gentlemen, taking hold of
me.

'That's Davy,' returned Mr. Murdstone.

'Davy who?' said the gentleman.  'Jones?'

'Copperfield,' said Mr. Murdstone.

'What!  Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield's encumbrance?' cried the
gentleman.  'The pretty little widow?'

'Quinion,' said Mr. Murdstone, 'take care, if you please. 
Somebody's sharp.'

'Who is?' asked the gentleman, laughing.
I looked up, quickly; being curious to know.

'Only Brooks of Sheffield,' said Mr. Murdstone.

I was quite relieved to find that it was only Brooks of Sheffield;
for, at first, I really thought it was I.

There seemed to be something very comical in the reputation of Mr.
Brooks of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen laughed heartily when
he was mentioned, and Mr. Murdstone was a good deal amused also. 
After some laughing, the gentleman whom he had called Quinion,
said:

'And what is the opinion of Brooks of Sheffield, in reference to
the projected business?'

'Why, I don't know that Brooks understands much about it at
present,' replied Mr. Murdstone; 'but he is not generally
favourable, I believe.'

There was more laughter at this, and Mr. Quinion said he would ring
the bell for some sherry in which to drink to Brooks.  This he did;
and when the wine came, he made me have a little, with a biscuit,
and, before I drank it, stand up and say, 'Confusion to Brooks of
Sheffield!'  The toast was received with great applause, and such
hearty laughter that it made me laugh too; at which they laughed
the more.  In short, we quite enjoyed ourselves.

We walked about on the cliff after that, and sat on the grass, and
looked at things through a telescope - I could make out nothing
myself when it was put to my eye, but I pretended I could - and
then we came back to the hotel to an early dinner.  All the time we
were out, the two gentlemen smoked incessantly - which, I thought,
if I might judge from the smell of their rough coats, they must
have been doing, ever since the coats had first come home from the
tailor's.  I must not forget that we went on board the yacht, where
they all three descended into the cabin, and were busy with some
papers.  I saw them quite hard at work, when I looked down through
the open skylight.  They left me, during this time, with a very
nice man with a very large head of red hair and a very small shiny
hat upon it, who had got a cross-barred shirt or waistcoat on, with
'Skylark' in capital letters across the chest.  I thought it was
his name; and that as he lived on board ship and hadn't a street
door to put his name on, he put it there instead; but when I called
him Mr. Skylark, he said it meant the vessel.

I observed all day that Mr. Murdstone was graver and steadier than
the two gentlemen.  They were very gay and careless.  They joked
freely with one another, but seldom with him.  It appeared to me
that he was more clever and cold than they were, and that they
regarded him with something of my own feeling.  I remarked that,
once or twice when Mr. Quinion was talking, he looked at Mr.
Murdstone sideways, as if to make sure of his not being displeased;
and that once when Mr. Passnidge (the other gentleman) was in high
spirits, he trod upon his foot, and gave him a secret caution with
his eyes, to observe Mr. Murdstone, who was sitting stern and
silent.  Nor do I recollect that Mr. Murdstone laughed at all that
day, except at the Sheffield joke - and that, by the by, was his
own.

We went home early in the evening.  It was a very fine evening, and
my mother and he had another stroll by the sweetbriar, while I was
sent in to get my tea.  When he was gone, my mother asked me all
about the day I had had, and what they had said and done.  I
mentioned what they had said about her, and she laughed, and told
me they were impudent fellows who talked nonsense - but I knew it
pleased her.  I knew it quite as well as I know it now.  I took the
opportunity of asking if she was at all acquainted with Mr. Brooks
of Sheffield, but she answered No, only she supposed he must be a
manufacturer in the knife and fork way.

Can I say of her face - altered as I have reason to remember it,
perished as I know it is - that it is gone, when here it comes
before me at this instant, as distinct as any face that I may
choose to look on in a crowded street?  Can I say of her innocent
and girlish beauty, that it faded, and was no more, when its breath
falls on my cheek now, as it fell that night?  Can I say she ever
changed, when my remembrance brings her back to life, thus only;
and, truer to its loving youth than I have been, or man ever is,
still holds fast what it cherished then?

I write of her just as she was when I had gone to bed after this
talk, and she came to bid me good night.  She kneeled down
playfully by the side of the bed, and laying her chin upon her
hands, and laughing, said:

'What was it they said, Davy?  Tell me again.  I can't believe it.'

'"Bewitching -"' I began.

My mother put her hands upon my lips to stop me.

'It was never bewitching,' she said, laughing.  'It never could
have been bewitching, Davy.  Now I know it wasn't!'

'Yes, it was.  "Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield",' I repeated stoutly. 
'And, "pretty."'

'No, no, it was never pretty.  Not pretty,' interposed my mother,
laying her fingers on my lips again.

'Yes it was.  "Pretty little widow."'

'What foolish, impudent creatures!' cried my mother, laughing and
covering her face.  'What ridiculous men!  An't they?  Davy dear -'

'Well, Ma.'

'Don't tell Peggotty; she might be angry with them.  I am
dreadfully angry with them myself; but I would rather Peggotty
didn't know.'

I promised, of course; and we kissed one another over and over
again, and I soon fell fast asleep.

It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if it were the next
day when Peggotty broached the striking and adventurous proposition
I am about to mention; but it was probably about two months
afterwards.

We were sitting as before, one evening (when my mother was out as
before), in company with the stocking and the yard-measure, and the
bit of wax, and the box with St. Paul's on the lid, and the
crocodile book, when Peggotty, after looking at me several times,
and opening her mouth as if she were going to speak, without doing
it - which I thought was merely gaping, or I should have been
rather alarmed - said coaxingly:

'Master Davy, how should you like to go along with me and spend a
fortnight at my brother's at Yarmouth?  Wouldn't that be a treat?'

'Is your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty?' I inquired,
provisionally.

'Oh, what an agreeable man he is!' cried Peggotty, holding up her
hands.  'Then there's the sea; and the boats and ships; and the
fishermen; and the beach; and Am to play with -'

Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, mentioned in my first chapter; but
she spoke of him as a morsel of English Grammar.

I was flushed by her summary of delights, and replied that it would
indeed be a treat, but what would my mother say?

'Why then I'll as good as bet a guinea,' said Peggotty, intent upon
my face, 'that she'll let us go.  I'll ask her, if you like, as
soon as ever she comes home.  There now!'

'But what's she to do while we're away?' said I, putting my small
elbows on the table to argue the point.  'She can't live by
herself.'

If Peggotty were looking for a hole, all of a sudden, in the heel
of that stocking, it must have been a very little one indeed, and
not worth darning.

'I say!  Peggotty!  She can't live by herself, you know.'

'Oh, bless you!' said Peggotty, looking at me again at last. 
'Don't you know?  She's going to stay for a fortnight with Mrs.
Grayper.  Mrs. Grayper's going to have a lot of company.'

Oh!  If that was it, I was quite ready to go.  I waited, in the
utmost impatience, until my mother came home from Mrs. Grayper's
(for it was that identical neighbour), to ascertain if we could get
leave to carry out this great idea.  Without being nearly so much
surprised as I had expected, my mother entered into it readily; and
it was all arranged that night, and my board and lodging during the
visit were to be paid for.

The day soon came for our going.  It was such an early day that it
came soon, even to me, who was in a fever of expectation, and half
afraid that an earthquake or a fiery mountain, or some other great
convulsion of nature, might interpose to stop the expedition.  We
were to go in a carrier's cart, which departed in the morning after
breakfast.  I would have given any money to have been allowed to
wrap myself up over-night, and sleep in my hat and boots.

It touches me nearly now, although I tell it lightly, to recollect
how eager I was to leave my happy home; to think how little I
suspected what I did leave for ever.

I am glad to recollect that when the carrier's cart was at the
gate, and my mother stood there kissing me, a grateful fondness for
her and for the old place I had never turned my back upon before,
made me cry.  I am glad to know that my mother cried too, and that
I felt her heart beat against mine.

I am glad to recollect that when the carrier began to move, my
mother ran out at the gate, and called to him to stop, that she
might kiss me once more.  I am glad to dwell upon the earnestness
and love with which she lifted up her face to mine, and did so.

As we left her standing in the road, Mr. Murdstone came up to where
she was, and seemed to expostulate with her for being so moved.  I
was looking back round the awning of the cart, and wondered what
business it was of his.  Peggotty, who was also looking back on the
other side, seemed anything but satisfied; as the face she brought
back in the cart denoted.

I sat looking at Peggotty for some time, in a reverie on this
supposititious case: whether, if she were employed to lose me like
the boy in the fairy tale, I should be able to track my way home
again by the buttons she would shed.

CHAPTER 3
I HAVE A CHANGE

The carrier's horse was the laziest horse in the world, I should
hope, and shuffled along, with his head down, as if he liked to
keep people waiting to whom the packages were directed.  I fancied,
indeed, that he sometimes chuckled audibly over this reflection,
but the carrier said he was only troubled with a cough.
The carrier had a way of keeping his head down, like his horse, and
of drooping sleepily forward as he drove, with one of his arms on
each of his knees.  I say 'drove', but it struck me that the cart
would have gone to Yarmouth quite as well without him, for the
horse did all that; and as to conversation, he had no idea of it
but whistling.

Peggotty had a basket of refreshments on her knee, which would have
lasted us out handsomely, if we had been going to London by the
same conveyance.  We ate a good deal, and slept a good deal. 
Peggotty always went to sleep with her chin upon the handle of the
basket, her hold of which never relaxed; and I could not have
believed unless I had heard her do it, that one defenceless woman
could have snored so much.

We made so many deviations up and down lanes, and were such a long
time delivering a bedstead at a public-house, and calling at other
places, that I was quite tired, and very glad, when we saw
Yarmouth.  It looked rather spongy and soppy, I thought, as I
carried my eye over the great dull waste that lay across the river;
and I could not help wondering, if the world were really as round
as my geography book said, how any part of it came to be so flat. 
But I reflected that Yarmouth might be situated at one of the
poles; which would account for it.

As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect
lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that
a mound or so might have improved it; and also that if the land had
been a little more separated from the sea, and the town and the
tide had not been quite so much mixed up, like toast and water, it
would have been nicer.  But Peggotty said, with greater emphasis
than usual, that we must take things as we found them, and that,
for her part, she was proud to call herself a Yarmouth Bloater.

When we got into the street (which was strange enough to me) and
smelt the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors
walking about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones,
I felt that I had done so busy a place an injustice; and said as
much to Peggotty, who heard my expressions of delight with great
complacency, and told me it was well known (I suppose to those who
had the good fortune to be born Bloaters) that Yarmouth was, upon
the whole, the finest place in the universe.

'Here's my Am!' screamed Peggotty, 'growed out of knowledge!'

He was waiting for us, in fact, at the public-house; and asked me
how I found myself, like an old acquaintance.  I did not feel, at
first, that I knew him as well as he knew me, because he had never
come to our house since the night I was born, and naturally he had
the advantage of me.  But our intimacy was much advanced by his
taking me on his back to carry me home.  He was, now, a huge,
strong fellow of six feet high, broad in proportion, and
round-shouldered; but with a simpering boy's face and curly light
hair that gave him quite a sheepish look.  He was dressed in a
canvas jacket, and a pair of such very stiff trousers that they
would have stood quite as well alone, without any legs in them. 
And you couldn't so properly have said he wore a hat, as that he
was covered in a-top, like an old building, with something pitchy.

Ham carrying me on his back and a small box of ours under his arm,
and Peggotty carrying another small box of ours, we turned down
lanes bestrewn with bits of chips and little hillocks of sand, and
went past gas-works, rope-walks, boat-builders' yards, shipwrights'
yards, ship-breakers' yards, caulkers' yards, riggers' lofts,
smiths' forges, and a great litter of such places, until we came
out upon the dull waste I had already seen at a distance; when Ham
said,

'Yon's our house, Mas'r Davy!'

I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare over the
wilderness, and away at the sea, and away at the river, but no
house could I make out.  There was a black barge, or some other
kind of superannuated boat, not far off, high and dry on the
ground, with an iron funnel sticking out of it for a chimney and
smoking very cosily; but nothing else in the way of a habitation
that was visible to me.

'That's not it?' said I.  'That ship-looking thing?'

'That's it, Mas'r Davy,' returned Ham.

If it had been Aladdin's palace, roc's egg and all, I suppose I
could not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living
in it.  There was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was
roofed in, and there were little windows in it; but the wonderful
charm of it was, that it was a real boat which had no doubt been
upon the water hundreds of times, and which had never been intended
to be lived in, on dry land.  That was the captivation of it to me. 
If it had ever been meant to be lived in, I might have thought it
small, or inconvenient, or lonely; but never having been designed
for any such use, it became a perfect abode.

It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as possible.  There
was a table, and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers, and on the
chest of drawers there was a tea-tray with a painting on it of a
lady with a parasol, taking a walk with a military-looking child
who was trundling a hoop.  The tray was kept from tumbling down, by
a bible; and the tray, if it had tumbled down, would have smashed
a quantity of cups and saucers and a teapot that were grouped
around the book.  On the walls there were some common coloured
pictures, framed and glazed, of scripture subjects; such as I have
never seen since in the hands of pedlars, without seeing the whole
interior of Peggotty's brother's house again, at one view.  Abraham
in red going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow cast
into a den of green lions, were the most prominent of these.  Over
the little mantelshelf, was a picture of the 'Sarah Jane' lugger,
built at Sunderland, with a real little wooden stern stuck on to
it; a work of art, combining composition with carpentry, which I
considered to be one of the most enviable possessions that the
world could afford.  There were some hooks in the beams of the
ceiling, the use of which I did not divine then; and some lockers
and boxes and conveniences of that sort, which served for seats and
eked out the chairs.

All this I saw in the first glance after I crossed the threshold -
child-like, according to my theory - and then Peggotty opened a
little door and showed me my bedroom.  It was the completest and
most desirable bedroom ever seen - in the stern of the vessel; with
a little window, where the rudder used to go through; a little
looking-glass, just the right height for me, nailed against the
wall, and framed with oyster-shells; a little bed, which there was
just room enough to get into; and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue
mug on the table.  The walls were whitewashed as white as milk, and
the patchwork counterpane made my eyes quite ache with its
brightness.  One thing I particularly noticed in this delightful
house, was the smell of fish; which was so searching, that when I
took out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe my nose, I found it smelt
exactly as if it had wrapped up a lobster.  On my imparting this
discovery in confidence to Peggotty, she informed me that her
brother dealt in lobsters, crabs, and crawfish; and I afterwards
found that a heap of these creatures, in a state of wonderful
conglomeration with one another, and never leaving off pinching
whatever they laid hold of, were usually to be found in a little
wooden outhouse where the pots and kettles were kept.

We were welcomed by a very civil woman in a white apron, whom I had
seen curtseying at the door when I was on Ham's back, about a
quarter of a mile off.  Likewise by a most beautiful little girl
(or I thought her so) with a necklace of blue beads on, who
wouldn't let me kiss her when I offered to, but ran away and hid
herself.  By and by, when we had dined in a sumptuous manner off
boiled dabs, melted butter, and potatoes, with a chop for me, a
hairy man with a very good-natured face came home.  As he called
Peggotty 'Lass', and gave her a hearty smack on the cheek, I had no
doubt, from the general propriety of her conduct, that he was her
brother; and so he turned out - being presently introduced to me as
Mr. Peggotty, the master of the house.

'Glad to see you, sir,' said Mr. Peggotty.  'You'll find us rough,
sir, but you'll find us ready.'

I thanked him, and replied that I was sure I should be happy in
such a delightful place.

'How's your Ma, sir?' said Mr. Peggotty.  'Did you leave her pretty
jolly?'

I gave Mr. Peggotty to understand that she was as jolly as I could
wish, and that she desired her compliments - which was a polite
fiction on my part.

'I'm much obleeged to her, I'm sure,' said Mr. Peggotty.  'Well,
sir, if you can make out here, fur a fortnut, 'long wi' her,'
nodding at his sister, 'and Ham, and little Em'ly, we shall be
proud of your company.'

Having done the honours of his house in this hospitable manner, Mr.
Peggotty went out to wash himself in a kettleful of hot water,
remarking that 'cold would never get his muck off'.  He soon
returned, greatly improved in appearance; but so rubicund, that I
couldn't help thinking his face had this in common with the
lobsters, crabs, and crawfish, - that it went into the hot water
very black, and came out very red.

After tea, when the door was shut and all was made snug (the nights
being cold and misty now), it seemed to me the most delicious
retreat that the imagination of man could conceive.  To hear the
wind getting up out at sea, to know that the fog was creeping over
the desolate flat outside, and to look at the fire, and think that
there was no house near but this one, and this one a boat, was like
enchantment.  Little Em'ly had overcome her shyness, and was
sitting by my side upon the lowest and least of the lockers, which
was just large enough for us two, and just fitted into the chimney
corner.  Mrs. Peggotty with the white apron, was knitting on the
opposite side of the fire.  Peggotty at her needlework was as much
at home with St. Paul's and the bit of wax-candle, as if they had
never known any other roof.  Ham, who had been giving me my first
lesson in all-fours, was trying to recollect a scheme of telling
fortunes with the dirty cards, and was printing off fishy
impressions of his thumb on all the cards he turned.  Mr. Peggotty
was smoking his pipe.  I felt it was a time for conversation and
confidence.

'Mr. Peggotty!' says I.

'Sir,' says he.

'Did you give your son the name of Ham, because you lived in a sort
of ark?'

Mr. Peggotty seemed to think it a deep idea, but answered:

'No, sir.  I never giv him no name.'

'Who gave him that name, then?' said I, putting question number two
of the catechism to Mr. Peggotty.

'Why, sir, his father giv it him,' said Mr. Peggotty.

'I thought you were his father!'

'My brother Joe was his father,' said Mr. Peggotty.

'Dead, Mr. Peggotty?' I hinted, after a respectful pause.

'Drowndead,' said Mr. Peggotty.

I was very much surprised that Mr. Peggotty was not Ham's father,
and began to wonder whether I was mistaken about his relationship
to anybody else there.  I was so curious to know, that I made up my
mind to have it out with Mr. Peggotty.

'Little Em'ly,' I said, glancing at her.  'She is your daughter,
isn't she, Mr. Peggotty?'

'No, sir.  My brother-in-law, Tom, was her father.'

I couldn't help it.  '- Dead, Mr. Peggotty?' I hinted, after
another respectful silence.

'Drowndead,' said Mr. Peggotty.

I felt the difficulty of resuming the subject, but had not got to
the bottom of it yet, and must get to the bottom somehow.  So I
said:

'Haven't you ANY children, Mr. Peggotty?'

'No, master,' he answered with a short laugh.  'I'm a bacheldore.'

'A bachelor!' I said, astonished.  'Why, who's that, Mr. Peggotty?'
pointing to the person in the apron who was knitting.

'That's Missis Gummidge,' said Mr. Peggotty.

'Gummidge, Mr. Peggotty?'

But at this point Peggotty - I mean my own peculiar Peggotty - made
such impressive motions to me not to ask any more questions, that
I could only sit and look at all the silent company, until it was
time to go to bed.  Then, in the privacy of my own little cabin,
she informed me that Ham and Em'ly were an orphan nephew and niece,
whom my host had at different times adopted in their childhood,
when they were left destitute: and that Mrs. Gummidge was the widow
of his partner in a boat, who had died very poor.  He was but a
poor man himself, said Peggotty, but as good as gold and as true as
steel - those were her similes.  The only subject, she informed me,
on which he ever showed a violent temper or swore an oath, was this
generosity of his; and if it were ever referred to, by any one of
them, he struck the table a heavy blow with his right hand (had
split it on one such occasion), and swore a dreadful oath that he
would be 'Gormed' if he didn't cut and run for good, if it was ever
mentioned again.  It appeared, in answer to my inquiries, that
nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb
passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as constituting
a most solemn imprecation.

I was very sensible of my entertainer's goodness, and listened to
the women's going to bed in another little crib like mine at the
opposite end of the boat, and to him and Ham hanging up two
hammocks for themselves on the hooks I had noticed in the roof, in
a very luxurious state of mind, enhanced by my being sleepy.  As
slumber gradually stole upon me, I heard the wind howling out at
sea and coming on across the flat so fiercely, that I had a lazy
apprehension of the great deep rising in the night.  But I
bethought myself that I was in a boat, after all; and that a man
like Mr. Peggotty was not a bad person to have on board if anything
did happen.

Nothing happened, however, worse than morning.  Almost as soon as
it shone upon the oyster-shell frame of my mirror I was out of bed,
and out with little Em'ly, picking up stones upon the beach.

'You're quite a sailor, I suppose?' I said to Em'ly.  I don't know
that I supposed anything of the kind, but I felt it an act of
gallantry to say something; and a shining sail close to us made
such a pretty little image of itself, at the moment, in her bright
eye, that it came into my head to say this.

'No,' replied Em'ly, shaking her head, 'I'm afraid of the sea.'

'Afraid!' I said, with a becoming air of boldness, and looking very
big at the mighty ocean.  'I an't!'

'Ah! but it's cruel,' said Em'ly.  'I have seen it very cruel to
some of our men.  I have seen it tear a boat as big as our house,
all to pieces.'

'I hope it wasn't the boat that -'

'That father was drownded in?' said Em'ly.  'No.  Not that one, I
never see that boat.'

'Nor him?' I asked her.

Little Em'ly shook her head.  'Not to remember!'

Here was a coincidence!  I immediately went into an explanation how
I had never seen my own father; and how my mother and I had always
lived by ourselves in the happiest state imaginable, and lived so
then, and always meant to live so; and how my father's grave was in
the churchyard near our house, and shaded by a tree, beneath the
boughs of which I had walked and heard the birds sing many a
pleasant morning.  But there were some differences between Em'ly's
orphanhood and mine, it appeared.  She had lost her mother before
her father; and where her father's grave was no one knew, except
that it was somewhere in the depths of the sea.

'Besides,' said Em'ly, as she looked about for shells and pebbles,
'your father was a gentleman and your mother is a lady; and my
father was a fisherman and my mother was a fisherman's daughter,
and my uncle Dan is a fisherman.'

'Dan is Mr. Peggotty, is he?' said I.

'Uncle Dan - yonder,' answered Em'ly, nodding at the boat-house.

'Yes.  I mean him.  He must be very good, I should think?'

'Good?' said Em'ly.  'If I was ever to be a lady, I'd give him a
sky-blue coat with diamond buttons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet
waistcoat, a cocked hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a
box of money.'

I said I had no doubt that Mr. Peggotty well deserved these
treasures.  I must acknowledge that I felt it difficult to picture
him quite at his ease in the raiment proposed for him by his
grateful little niece, and that I was particularly doubtful of the
policy of the cocked hat; but I kept these sentiments to myself.

Little Em'ly had stopped and looked up at the sky in her
enumeration of these articles, as if they were a glorious vision. 
We went on again, picking up shells and pebbles.

'You would like to be a lady?' I said.

Emily looked at me, and laughed and nodded 'yes'.

'I should like it very much.  We would all be gentlefolks together,
then.  Me, and uncle, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge.  We wouldn't mind
then, when there comes stormy weather.  - Not for our own sakes, I
mean.  We would for the poor fishermen's, to be sure, and we'd help
'em with money when they come to any hurt.'  This seemed to me to
be a very satisfactory and therefore not at all improbable picture. 
I expressed my pleasure in the contemplation of it, and little
Em'ly was emboldened to say, shyly,

'Don't you think you are afraid of the sea, now?'

It was quiet enough to reassure me, but I have no doubt if I had
seen a moderately large wave come tumbling in, I should have taken
to my heels, with an awful recollection of her drowned relations. 
However, I said 'No,' and I added, 'You don't seem to be either,
though you say you are,' - for she was walking much too near the
brink of a sort of old jetty or wooden causeway we had strolled
upon, and I was afraid of her falling over.

'I'm not afraid in this way,' said little Em'ly.  'But I wake when
it blows, and tremble to think of Uncle Dan and Ham and believe I
hear 'em crying out for help.  That's why I should like so much to
be a lady.  But I'm not afraid in this way.  Not a bit.  Look
here!'

She started from my side, and ran along a jagged timber which
protruded from the place we stood upon, and overhung the deep water
at some height, without the least defence.  The incident is so
impressed on my remembrance, that if I were a draughtsman I could
draw its form here, I dare say, accurately as it was that day, and
little Em'ly springing forward to her destruction (as it appeared
to me), with a look that I have never forgotten, directed far out
to sea.

The light, bold, fluttering little figure turned and came back safe
to me, and I soon laughed at my fears, and at the cry I had
uttered; fruitlessly in any case, for there was no one near.  But
there have been times since, in my manhood, many times there have
been, when I have thought, Is it possible, among the possibilities
of hidden things, that in the sudden rashness of the child and her
wild look so far off, there was any merciful attraction of her into
danger, any tempting her towards him permitted on the part of her
dead father, that her life might have a chance of ending that day? 
There has been a time since when I have wondered whether, if the
life before her could have been revealed to me at a glance, and so
revealed as that a child could fully comprehend it, and if her
preservation could have depended on a motion of my hand, I ought to
have held it up to save her.  There has been a time since - I do
not say it lasted long, but it has been - when I have asked myself
the question, would it have been better for little Em'ly to have
had the waters close above her head that morning in my sight; and
when I have answered Yes, it would have been.

This may be premature.  I have set it down too soon, perhaps.  But
let it stand.

We strolled a long way, and loaded ourselves with things that we
thought curious, and put some stranded starfish carefully back into
the water - I hardly know enough of the race at this moment to be
quite certain whether they had reason to feel obliged to us for
doing so, or the reverse - and then made our way home to Mr.
Peggotty's dwelling.  We stopped under the lee of the
lobster-outhouse to exchange an innocent kiss, and went in to
breakfast glowing with health and pleasure.

'Like two young mavishes,' Mr. Peggotty said.  I knew this meant,
in our local dialect, like two young thrushes, and received it as
a compliment.

Of course I was in love with little Em'ly.  I am sure I loved that
baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly, with greater purity and
more disinterestedness, than can enter into the best love of a
later time of life, high and ennobling as it is.  I am sure my
fancy raised up something round that blue-eyed mite of a child,
which etherealized, and made a very angel of her.  If, any sunny
forenoon, she had spread a little pair of wings and flown away
before my eyes, I don't think I should have regarded it as much
more than I had had reason to expect.

We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving
manner, hours and hours.  The days sported by us, as if Time had
not grown up himself yet, but were a child too, and always at play. 
I told Em'ly I adored her, and that unless she confessed she adored
me I should be reduced to the necessity of killing myself with a
sword.  She said she did, and I have no doubt she did.

As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty
in our way, little Em'ly and I had no such trouble, because we had
no future.  We made no more provision for growing older, than we
did for growing younger.  We were the admiration of Mrs. Gummidge
and Peggotty, who used to whisper of an evening when we sat,
lovingly, on our little locker side by side, 'Lor! wasn't it
beautiful!'  Mr. Peggotty smiled at us from behind his pipe, and
Ham grinned all the evening and did nothing else.  They had
something of the sort of pleasure in us, I suppose, that they might
have had in a pretty toy, or a pocket model of the Colosseum.

I soon found out that Mrs. Gummidge did not always make herself so
agreeable as she might have been expected to do, under the
circumstances of her residence with Mr. Peggotty.  Mrs. Gummidge's
was rather a fretful disposition, and she whimpered more sometimes
than was comfortable for other parties in so small an
establishment.  I was very sorry for her; but there were moments
when it would have been more agreeable, I thought, if Mrs. Gummidge
had had a convenient apartment of her own to retire to, and had
stopped there until her spirits revived.

Mr. Peggotty went occasionally to a public-house called The Willing
Mind.  I discovered this, by his being out on the second or third
evening of our visit, and by Mrs. Gummidge's looking up at the
Dutch clock, between eight and nine, and saying he was there, and
that, what was more, she had known in the morning he would go
there.

Mrs. Gummidge had been in a low state all day, and had burst into
tears in the forenoon, when the fire smoked.  'I am a lone lorn
creetur',' were Mrs. Gummidge's words, when that unpleasant
occurrence took place, 'and everythink goes contrary with me.'

'Oh, it'll soon leave off,' said Peggotty - I again mean our
Peggotty - 'and besides, you know, it's not more disagreeable to
you than to us.'

'I feel it more,' said Mrs. Gummidge.

It was a very cold day, with cutting blasts of wind.  Mrs.
Gummidge's peculiar corner of the fireside seemed to me to be the
warmest and snuggest in the place, as her chair was certainly the
easiest, but it didn't suit her that day at all.  She was
constantly complaining of the cold, and of its occasioning a
visitation in her back which she called 'the creeps'.  At last she
shed tears on that subject, and said again that she was 'a lone
lorn creetur' and everythink went contrary with her'.

'It is certainly very cold,' said Peggotty.  'Everybody must feel
it so.'

'I feel it more than other people,' said Mrs. Gummidge.

So at dinner; when Mrs. Gummidge was always helped immediately
after me, to whom the preference was given as a visitor of
distinction.  The fish were small and bony, and the potatoes were
a little burnt.  We all acknowledged that we felt this something of
a disappointment; but Mrs. Gummidge said she felt it more than we
did, and shed tears again, and made that former declaration with
great bitterness.

Accordingly, when Mr. Peggotty came home about nine o'clock, this
unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a very
wretched and miserable condition.  Peggotty had been working
cheerfully.  Ham had been patching up a great pair of waterboots;
and I, with little Em'ly by my side, had been reading to them. 
Mrs. Gummidge had never made any other remark than a forlorn sigh,
and had never raised her eyes since tea.

'Well, Mates,' said Mr. Peggotty, taking his seat, 'and how are
you?'

We all said something, or looked something, to welcome him, except
Mrs. Gummidge, who only shook her head over her knitting.

'What's amiss?' said Mr. Peggotty, with a clap of his hands. 
'Cheer up, old Mawther!'  (Mr. Peggotty meant old girl.)

Mrs. Gummidge did not appear to be able to cheer up.  She took out
an old black silk handkerchief and wiped her eyes; but instead of
putting it in her pocket, kept it out, and wiped them again, and
still kept it out, ready for use.

'What's amiss, dame?' said Mr. Peggotty.

'Nothing,' returned Mrs. Gummidge.  'You've come from The Willing
Mind, Dan'l?'

'Why yes, I've took a short spell at The Willing Mind tonight,'
said Mr. Peggotty.

'I'm sorry I should drive you there,' said Mrs. Gummidge.

'Drive!  I don't want no driving,' returned Mr. Peggotty with an
honest laugh.  'I only go too ready.'

'Very ready,' said Mrs. Gummidge, shaking her head, and wiping her
eyes.  'Yes, yes, very ready.  I am sorry it should be along of me
that you're so ready.'

'Along o' you!  It an't along o' you!' said Mr. Peggotty.  'Don't
ye believe a bit on it.'

'Yes, yes, it is,' cried Mrs. Gummidge.  'I know what I am.  I know
that I am a lone lorn creetur', and not only that everythink goes
contrary with me, but that I go contrary with everybody.  Yes, yes. 
I feel more than other people do, and I show it more.  It's my
misfortun'.'

I really couldn't help thinking, as I sat taking in all this, that
the misfortune extended to some other members of that family
besides Mrs. Gummidge.  But Mr. Peggotty made no such retort, only
answering with another entreaty to Mrs. Gummidge to cheer up.

'I an't what I could wish myself to be,' said Mrs. Gummidge.  'I am
far from it.  I know what I am.  My troubles has made me contrary. 
I feel my troubles, and they make me contrary.  I wish I didn't
feel 'em, but I do.  I wish I could be hardened to 'em, but I an't. 
I make the house uncomfortable.  I don't wonder at it.  I've made
your sister so all day, and Master Davy.'

Here I was suddenly melted, and roared out, 'No, you haven't, Mrs.
Gummidge,' in great mental distress.

'It's far from right that I should do it,' said Mrs. Gummidge.  'It
an't a fit return.  I had better go into the house and die.  I am
a lone lorn creetur', and had much better not make myself contrary
here.  If thinks must go contrary with me, and I must go contrary
myself, let me go contrary in my parish.  Dan'l, I'd better go into
the house, and die and be a riddance!'

Mrs. Gummidge retired with these words, and betook herself to bed. 
When she was gone, Mr. Peggotty, who had not exhibited a trace of
any feeling but the profoundest sympathy, looked round upon us, and
nodding his head with a lively expression of that sentiment still
animating his face, said in a whisper:

'She's been thinking of the old 'un!'

I did not quite understand what old one Mrs. Gummidge was supposed
to have fixed her mind upon, until Peggotty, on seeing me to bed,
explained that it was the late Mr. Gummidge; and that her brother
always took that for a received truth on such occasions, and that
it always had a moving effect upon him.  Some time after he was in
his hammock that night, I heard him myself repeat to Ham, 'Poor
thing!  She's been thinking of the old 'un!'  And whenever Mrs.
Gummidge was overcome in a similar manner during the remainder of
our stay (which happened some few times), he always said the same
thing in extenuation of the circumstance, and always with the
tenderest commiseration.

So the fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the variation
of the tide, which altered Mr. Peggotty's times of going out and
coming in, and altered Ham's engagements also.  When the latter was
unemployed, he sometimes walked with us to show us the boats and
ships, and once or twice he took us for a row.  I don't know why
one slight set of impressions should be more particularly
associated with a place than another, though I believe this obtains
with most people, in reference especially to the associations of
their childhood.  I never hear the name, or read the name, of
Yarmouth, but I am reminded of a certain Sunday morning on the
beach, the bells ringing for church, little Em'ly leaning on my
shoulder, Ham lazily dropping stones into the water, and the sun,
away at sea, just breaking through the heavy mist, and showing us
the ships, like their own shadows.

At last the day came for going home.  I bore up against the
separation from Mr. Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge, but my agony of
mind at leaving little Em'ly was piercing.  We went arm-in-arm to
the public-house where the carrier put up, and I promised, on the
road, to write to her.  (I redeemed that promise afterwards, in
characters larger than those in which apartments are usually
announced in manuscript, as being to let.) We were greatly overcome
at parting; and if ever, in my life, I have had a void made in my
heart, I had one made that day.

Now, all the time I had been on my visit, I had been ungrateful to
my home again, and had thought little or nothing about it.  But I
was no sooner turned towards it, than my reproachful young
conscience seemed to point that way with a ready finger; and I
felt, all the more for the sinking of my spirits, that it was my
nest, and that my mother was my comforter and friend.

This gained upon me as we went along; so that the nearer we drew,
the more familiar the objects became that we passed, the more
excited I was to get there, and to run into her arms.  But
Peggotty, instead of sharing in those transports, tried to check
them (though very kindly), and looked confused and out of sorts.

Blunderstone Rookery would come, however, in spite of her, when the
carrier's horse pleased - and did.  How well I recollect it, on a
cold grey afternoon, with a dull sky, threatening rain!

The door opened, and I looked, half laughing and half crying in my
pleasant agitation, for my mother.  It was not she, but a strange
servant.

'Why, Peggotty!' I said, ruefully, 'isn't she come home?'

'Yes, yes, Master Davy,' said Peggotty.  'She's come home.  Wait a
bit, Master Davy, and I'll - I'll tell you something.'

Between her agitation, and her natural awkwardness in getting out
of the cart, Peggotty was making a most extraordinary festoon of
herself, but I felt too blank and strange to tell her so.  When she
had got down, she took me by the hand; led me, wondering, into the
kitchen; and shut the door.

'Peggotty!' said I, quite frightened.  'What's the matter?'

'Nothing's the matter, bless you, Master Davy dear!' she answered,
assuming an air of sprightliness.

'Something's the matter, I'm sure.  Where's mama?'

'Where's mama, Master Davy?' repeated Peggotty.

'Yes.  Why hasn't she come out to the gate, and what have we come
in here for?  Oh, Peggotty!'  My eyes were full, and I felt as if
I were going to tumble down.

'Bless the precious boy!' cried Peggotty, taking hold of me.  'What
is it?  Speak, my pet!'

'Not dead, too!  Oh, she's not dead, Peggotty?'

Peggotty cried out No! with an astonishing volume of voice; and
then sat down, and began to pant, and said I had given her a turn.

I gave her a hug to take away the turn, or to give her another turn
in the right direction, and then stood before her, looking at her
in anxious inquiry.

'You see, dear, I should have told you before now,' said Peggotty,
'but I hadn't an opportunity.  I ought to have made it, perhaps,
but I couldn't azackly' - that was always the substitute for
exactly, in Peggotty's militia of words - 'bring my mind to it.'

'Go on, Peggotty,' said I, more frightened than before.

'Master Davy,' said Peggotty, untying her bonnet with a shaking
hand, and speaking in a breathless sort of way.  'What do you
think?  You have got a Pa!'

I trembled, and turned white.  Something - I don't know what, or
how - connected with the grave in the churchyard, and the raising
of the dead, seemed to strike me like an unwholesome wind.

'A new one,' said Peggotty.

'A new one?' I repeated.

Peggotty gave a gasp, as if she were swallowing something that was
very hard, and, putting out her hand, said:

'Come and see him.'

'I don't want to see him.'

- 'And your mama,' said Peggotty.

I ceased to draw back, and we went straight to the best parlour,
where she left me.  On one side of the fire, sat my mother; on the
other, Mr. Murdstone.  My mother dropped her work, and arose
hurriedly, but timidly I thought.

'Now, Clara my dear,' said Mr. Murdstone.  'Recollect! control
yourself, always control yourself!  Davy boy, how do you do?'

I gave him my hand.  After a moment of suspense, I went and kissed
my mother: she kissed me, patted me gently on the shoulder, and sat
down again to her work.  I could not look at her, I could not look
at him, I knew quite well that he was looking at us both; and I
turned to the window and looked out there, at some shrubs that were
drooping their heads in the cold.

As soon as I could creep away, I crept upstairs.  My old dear
bedroom was changed, and I was to lie a long way off.  I rambled
downstairs to find anything that was like itself, so altered it all
seemed; and roamed into the yard.  I very soon started back from
there, for the empty dog-kennel was filled up with a great dog -
deep mouthed and black-haired like Him - and he was very angry at
the sight of me, and sprang out to get at me.

CHAPTER 4
I FALL INTO DISGRACE

If the room to which my bed was removed were a sentient thing that
could give evidence, I might appeal to it at this day - who sleeps
there now, I wonder! - to bear witness for me what a heavy heart I
carried to it.  I went up there, hearing the dog in the yard bark
after me all the way while I climbed the stairs; and, looking as
blank and strange upon the room as the room looked upon me, sat
down with my small hands crossed, and thought.

I thought of the oddest things.  Of the shape of the room, of the
cracks in the ceiling, of the paper on the walls, of the flaws in
the window-glass making ripples and dimples on the prospect, of the
washing-stand being rickety on its three legs, and having a
discontented something about it, which reminded me of Mrs. Gummidge
under the influence of the old one.  I was crying all the time,
but, except that I was conscious of being cold and dejected, I am
sure I never thought why I cried.  At last in my desolation I began
to consider that I was dreadfully in love with little Em'ly, and
had been torn away from her to come here where no one seemed to
want me, or to care about me, half as much as she did.  This made
such a very miserable piece of business of it, that I rolled myself
up in a corner of the counterpane, and cried myself to sleep.

I was awoke by somebody saying 'Here he is!' and uncovering my hot
head.  My mother and Peggotty had come to look for me, and it was
one of them who had done it.

'Davy,' said my mother.  'What's the matter?'

I thought it was very strange that she should ask me, and answered,
'Nothing.'  I turned over on my face, I recollect, to hide my
trembling lip, which answered her with greater truth.
'Davy,' said my mother.  'Davy, my child!'

I dare say no words she could have uttered would have affected me
so much, then, as her calling me her child.  I hid my tears in the
bedclothes, and pressed her from me with my hand, when she would
have raised me up.

'This is your doing, Peggotty, you cruel thing!' said my mother. 
'I have no doubt at all about it.  How can you reconcile it to your
conscience, I wonder, to prejudice my own boy against me, or
against anybody who is dear to me?  What do you mean by it,
Peggotty?'

Poor Peggotty lifted up her hands and eyes, and only answered, in
a sort of paraphrase of the grace I usually repeated after dinner,
'Lord forgive you, Mrs. Copperfield, and for what you have said
this minute, may you never be truly sorry!'

'It's enough to distract me,' cried my mother.  'In my honeymoon,
too, when my most inveterate enemy might relent, one would think,
and not envy me a little peace of mind and happiness.  Davy, you
naughty boy!  Peggotty, you savage creature!  Oh, dear me!' cried
my mother, turning from one of us to the other, in her pettish
wilful manner, 'what a troublesome world this is, when one has the
most right to expect it to be as agreeable as possible!'

I felt the touch of a hand that I knew was neither hers nor
Peggotty's, and slipped to my feet at the bed-side.  It was Mr.
Murdstone's hand, and he kept it on my arm as he said:

'What's this?  Clara, my love, have you forgotten? - Firmness, my
dear!'

'I am very sorry, Edward,' said my mother.  'I meant to be very
good, but I am so uncomfortable.'

'Indeed!' he answered.  'That's a bad hearing, so soon, Clara.'

'I say it's very hard I should be made so now,' returned my mother,
pouting; 'and it is - very hard - isn't it?'

He drew her to him, whispered in her ear, and kissed her.  I knew
as well, when I saw my mother's head lean down upon his shoulder,
and her arm touch his neck - I knew as well that he could mould her
pliant nature into any form he chose, as I know, now, that he did
it.

'Go you below, my love,' said Mr. Murdstone.  'David and I will
come down, together.  My friend,' turning a darkening face on
Peggotty, when he had watched my mother out, and dismissed her with
a nod and a smile; 'do you know your mistress's name?'

'She has been my mistress a long time, sir,' answered Peggotty, 'I
ought to know it.'
'That's true,' he answered.  'But I thought I heard you, as I came
upstairs, address her by a name that is not hers.  She has taken
mine, you know.  Will you remember that?'

Peggotty, with some uneasy glances at me, curtseyed herself out of
the room without replying; seeing, I suppose, that she was expected
to go, and had no excuse for remaining.  When we two were left
alone, he shut the door, and sitting on a chair, and holding me
standing before him, looked steadily into my eyes.  I felt my own
attracted, no less steadily, to his.  As I recall our being opposed
thus, face to face, I seem again to hear my heart beat fast and
high.

'David,' he said, making his lips thin, by pressing them together,
'if I have an obstinate horse or dog to deal with, what do you
think I do?'

'I don't know.'

'I beat him.'

I had answered in a kind of breathless whisper, but I felt, in my
silence, that my breath was shorter now.

'I make him wince, and smart.  I say to myself, "I'll conquer that
fellow"; and if it were to cost him all the blood he had, I should
do it.  What is that upon your face?'

'Dirt,' I said.

He knew it was the mark of tears as well as I.  But if he had asked
the question twenty times, each time with twenty blows, I believe
my baby heart would have burst before I would have told him so.

'You have a good deal of intelligence for a little fellow,' he
said, with a grave smile that belonged to him, 'and you understood
me very well, I see.  Wash that face, sir, and come down with me.'

He pointed to the washing-stand, which I had made out to be like
Mrs. Gummidge, and motioned me with his head to obey him directly. 
I had little doubt then, and I have less doubt now, that he would
have knocked me down without the least compunction, if I had
hesitated.

'Clara, my dear,' he said, when I had done his bidding, and he
walked me into the parlour, with his hand still on my arm; 'you
will not be made uncomfortable any more, I hope.  We shall soon
improve our youthful humours.'

God help me, I might have been improved for my whole life, I might
have been made another creature perhaps, for life, by a kind word
at that season.  A word of encouragement and explanation, of pity
for my childish ignorance, of welcome home, of reassurance to me
that it was home, might have made me dutiful to him in my heart
henceforth, instead of in my hypocritical outside, and might have
made me respect instead of hate him.  I thought my mother was sorry
to see me standing in the room so scared and strange, and that,
presently, when I stole to a chair, she followed me with her eyes
more sorrowfully still - missing, perhaps, some freedom in my
childish tread - but the word was not spoken, and the time for it
was gone.

We dined alone, we three together.  He seemed to be very fond of my
mother - I am afraid I liked him none the better for that - and she
was very fond of him.  I gathered from what they said, that an
elder sister of his was coming to stay with them, and that she was
expected that evening.  I am not certain whether I found out then,
or afterwards, that, without being actively concerned in any
business, he had some share in, or some annual charge upon the
profits of, a wine-merchant's house in London, with which his
family had been connected from his great-grandfather's time, and in
which his sister had a similar interest; but I may mention it in
this place, whether or no.

After dinner, when we were sitting by the fire, and I was
meditating an escape to Peggotty without having the hardihood to
slip away, lest it should offend the master of the house, a coach
drove up to the garden-gate and he went out to receive the visitor. 
My mother followed him.  I was timidly following her, when she
turned round at the parlour door, in the dusk, and taking me in her
embrace as she had been used to do, whispered me to love my new
father and be obedient to him.  She did this hurriedly and
secretly, as if it were wrong, but tenderly; and, putting out her
hand behind her, held mine in it, until we came near to where he
was standing in the garden, where she let mine go, and drew hers
through his arm.

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady
she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face
and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her
large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from
wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account.  She
brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her
initials on the lids in hard brass nails.  When she paid the
coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept
the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a
heavy chain, and shut up like a bite.  I had never, at that time,
seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.

She was brought into the parlour with many tokens of welcome, and
there formally recognized my mother as a new and near relation. 
Then she looked at me, and said:

'Is that your boy, sister-in-law?'

My mother acknowledged me.

'Generally speaking,' said Miss Murdstone, 'I don't like boys.  How
d'ye do, boy?'

Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very
well, and that I hoped she was the same; with such an indifferent
grace, that Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words:

'Wants manner!'

Having uttered which, with great distinctness, she begged the
favour of being shown to her room, which became to me from that
time forth a place of awe and dread, wherein the two black boxes
were never seen open or known to be left unlocked, and where (for
I peeped in once or twice when she was out) numerous little steel
fetters and rivets, with which Miss Murdstone embellished herself
when she was dressed, generally hung upon the looking-glass in
formidable array.

As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and had no
intention of ever going again.  She began to 'help' my mother next
morning, and was in and out of the store-closet all day, putting
things to rights, and making havoc in the old arrangements.  Almost
the first remarkable thing I observed in Miss Murdstone was, her
being constantly haunted by a suspicion that the servants had a man
secreted somewhere on the premises.  Under the influence of this
delusion, she dived into the coal-cellar at the most untimely
hours, and scarcely ever opened the door of a dark cupboard without
clapping it to again, in the belief that she had got him.

Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murdstone, she was a
perfect Lark in point of getting up.  She was up (and, as I believe
to this hour, looking for that man) before anybody in the house was
stirring.  Peggotty gave it as her opinion that she even slept with
one eye open; but I could not concur in this idea; for I tried it
myself after hearing the suggestion thrown out, and found it
couldn't be done.

On the very first morning after her arrival she was up and ringing
her bell at cock-crow.  When my mother came down to breakfast and
was going to make the tea, Miss Murdstone gave her a kind of peck
on the cheek, which was her nearest approach to a kiss, and said:

'Now, Clara, my dear, I am come here, you know, to relieve you of
all the trouble I can.  You're much too pretty and thoughtless' -
my mother blushed but laughed, and seemed not to dislike this
character - 'to have any duties imposed upon you that can be
undertaken by me.  If you'll be so good as give me your keys, my
dear, I'll attend to all this sort of thing in future.'

From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys in her own little jail
all day, and under her pillow all night, and my mother had no more
to do with them than I had.

My mother did not suffer her authority to pass from her without a
shadow of protest.  One night when Miss Murdstone had been
developing certain household plans to her brother, of which he
signified his approbation, my mother suddenly began to cry, and
said she thought she might have been consulted.

'Clara!' said Mr. Murdstone sternly.  'Clara!  I wonder at you.'

'Oh, it's very well to say you wonder, Edward!' cried my mother,
'and it's very well for you to talk about firmness, but you
wouldn't like it yourself.'

Firmness, I may observe, was the grand quality on which both Mr.
and Miss Murdstone took their stand.  However I might have
expressed my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called
upon, I nevertheless did clearly comprehend in my own way, that it
was another name for tyranny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant,
devil's humour, that was in them both.  The creed, as I should
state it now, was this.  Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his
world was to be so firm as Mr. Murdstone; nobody else in his world
was to be firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his
firmness.  Miss Murdstone was an exception.  She might be firm, but
only by relationship, and in an inferior and tributary degree.  My
mother was another exception.  She might be firm, and must be; but
only in bearing their firmness, and firmly believing there was no
other firmness upon earth.

'It's very hard,' said my mother, 'that in my own house -'

'My own house?' repeated Mr. Murdstone.  'Clara!'

'OUR own house, I mean,' faltered my mother, evidently frightened
- 'I hope you must know what I mean, Edward - it's very hard that
in YOUR own house I may not have a word to say about domestic
matters.  I am sure I managed very well before we were married. 
There's evidence,' said my mother, sobbing; 'ask Peggotty if I
didn't do very well when I wasn't interfered with!'

'Edward,' said Miss Murdstone, 'let there be an end of this.  I go
tomorrow.'

'Jane Murdstone,' said her brother, 'be silent!  How dare you to
insinuate that you don't know my character better than your words
imply?'

'I am sure,' my poor mother went on, at a grievous disadvantage,
and with many tears, 'I don't want anybody to go.  I should be very
miserable and unhappy if anybody was to go.  I don't ask much.  I
am not unreasonable.  I only want to be consulted sometimes.  I am
very much obliged to anybody who assists me, and I only want to be
consulted as a mere form, sometimes.  I thought you were pleased,
once, with my being a little inexperienced and girlish, Edward - I
am sure you said so - but you seem to hate me for it now, you are
so severe.'

'Edward,' said Miss Murdstone, again, 'let there be an end of this. 
I go tomorrow.'

'Jane Murdstone,' thundered Mr. Murdstone.  'Will you be silent? 
How dare you?'

Miss Murdstone made a jail-delivery of her pocket-handkerchief, and
held it before her eyes.

'Clara,' he continued, looking at my mother, 'you surprise me!  You
astound me!  Yes, I had a satisfaction in the thought of marrying
an inexperienced and artless person, and forming her character, and
infusing into it some amount of that firmness and decision of which
it stood in need.  But when Jane Murdstone is kind enough to come
to my assistance in this endeavour, and to assume, for my sake, a
condition something like a housekeeper's, and when she meets with
a base return -'

'Oh, pray, pray, Edward,' cried my mother, 'don't accuse me of
being ungrateful.  I am sure I am not ungrateful.  No one ever said
I was before.  I have many faults, but not that.  Oh, don't, my
dear!'

'When Jane Murdstone meets, I say,' he went on, after waiting until
my mother was silent, 'with a base return, that feeling of mine is
chilled and altered.'

'Don't, my love, say that!' implored my mother very piteously. 
'Oh, don't, Edward!  I can't bear to hear it.  Whatever I am, I am
affectionate.  I know I am affectionate.  I wouldn't say it, if I
wasn't sure that I am.  Ask Peggotty.  I am sure she'll tell you
I'm affectionate.'

'There is no extent of mere weakness, Clara,' said Mr. Murdstone in
reply, 'that can have the least weight with me.  You lose breath.'

'Pray let us be friends,' said my mother, 'I couldn't live under
coldness or unkindness.  I am so sorry.  I have a great many
defects, I know, and it's very good of you, Edward, with your
strength of mind, to endeavour to correct them for me.  Jane, I
don't object to anything.  I should be quite broken-hearted if you
thought of leaving -' My mother was too much overcome to go on.

'Jane Murdstone,' said Mr. Murdstone to his sister, 'any harsh
words between us are, I hope, uncommon.  It is not my fault that so
unusual an occurrence has taken place tonight.  I was betrayed into
it by another.  Nor is it your fault.  You were betrayed into it by
another.  Let us both try to forget it.  And as this,' he added,
after these magnanimous words, 'is not a fit scene for the boy -
David, go to bed!'

I could hardly find the door, through the tears that stood in my
eyes.  I was so sorry for my mother's distress; but I groped my way
out, and groped my way up to my room in the dark, without even
having the heart to say good night to Peggotty, or to get a candle
from her.  When her coming up to look for me, an hour or so
afterwards, awoke me, she said that my mother had gone to bed
poorly, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were sitting alone.

Going down next morning rather earlier than usual, I paused outside
the parlour door, on hearing my mother's voice.  She was very
earnestly and humbly entreating Miss Murdstone's pardon, which that
lady granted, and a perfect reconciliation took place.  I never
knew my mother afterwards to give an opinion on any matter, without
first appealing to Miss Murdstone, or without having first
ascertained by some sure means, what Miss Murdstone's opinion was;
and I never saw Miss Murdstone, when out of temper (she was infirm
that way), move her hand towards her bag as if she were going to
take out the keys and offer to resign them to my mother, without
seeing that my mother was in a terrible fright.

The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood, darkened the
Murdstone religion, which was austere and wrathful.  I have
thought, since, that its assuming that character was a necessary
consequence of Mr. Murdstone's firmness, which wouldn't allow him
to let anybody off from the utmost weight of the severest penalties
he could find any excuse for.  Be this as it may, I well remember
the tremendous visages with which we used to go to church, and the
changed air of the place.  Again, the dreaded Sunday comes round,
and I file into the old pew first, like a guarded captive brought
to a condemned service.  Again, Miss Murdstone, in a black velvet
gown, that looks as if it had been made out of a pall, follows
close upon me; then my mother; then her husband.  There is no
Peggotty now, as in the old time.  Again, I listen to Miss
Murdstone mumbling the responses, and emphasizing all the dread
words with a cruel relish.  Again, I see her dark eyes roll round
the church when she says 'miserable sinners', as if she were
calling all the congregation names.  Again, I catch rare glimpses
of my mother, moving her lips timidly between the two, with one of
them muttering at each ear like low thunder.  Again, I wonder with
a sudden fear whether it is likely that our good old clergyman can
be wrong, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone right, and that all the angels
in Heaven can be destroying angels.  Again, if I move a finger or
relax a muscle of my face, Miss Murdstone pokes me with her
prayer-book, and makes my side ache.

Yes, and again, as we walk home, I note some neighbours looking at
my mother and at me, and whispering.  Again, as the three go on
arm-in-arm, and I linger behind alone, I follow some of those
looks, and wonder if my mother's step be really not so light as I
have seen it, and if the gaiety of her beauty be really almost
worried away.  Again, I wonder whether any of the neighbours call
to mind, as I do, how we used to walk home together, she and I; and
I wonder stupidly about that, all the dreary dismal day.

There had been some talk on occasions of my going to boarding-
school.  Mr. and Miss Murdstone had originated it, and my mother
had of course agreed with them.  Nothing, however, was concluded on
the subject yet.  In the meantime, I learnt lessons at home.
Shall I ever forget those lessons!  They were presided over
nominally by my mother, but really by Mr. Murdstone and his sister,
who were always present, and found them a favourable occasion for
giving my mother lessons in that miscalled firmness, which was the
bane of both our lives.  I believe I was kept at home for that
purpose.  I had been apt enough to learn, and willing enough, when
my mother and I had lived alone together.  I can faintly remember
learning the alphabet at her knee.  To this day, when I look upon
the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of their
shapes, and the easy good-nature of O and Q and S, seem to present
themselves again before me as they used to do.  But they recall no
feeling of disgust or reluctance.  On the contrary, I seem to have
walked along a path of flowers as far as the crocodile-book, and to
have been cheered by the gentleness of my mother's voice and manner
all the way.  But these solemn lessons which succeeded those, I
remember as the death-blow of my peace, and a grievous daily
drudgery and misery.  They were very long, very numerous, very hard
- perfectly unintelligible, some of them, to me - and I was
generally as much bewildered by them as I believe my poor mother
was herself.

Let me remember how it used to be, and bring one morning back
again.

I come into the second-best parlour after breakfast, with my books,
and an exercise-book, and a slate.  My mother is ready for me at
her writing-desk, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone in his
easy-chair by the window (though he pretends to be reading a book),
or as Miss Murdstone, sitting near my mother stringing steel beads. 
The very sight of these two has such an influence over me, that I
begin to feel the words I have been at infinite pains to get into
my head, all sliding away, and going I don't know where.  I wonder
where they do go, by the by?

I hand the first book to my mother.  Perhaps it is a grammar,
perhaps a history, or geography.  I take a last drowning look at
the page as I give it into her hand, and start off aloud at a
racing pace while I have got it fresh.  I trip over a word.  Mr.
Murdstone looks up.  I trip over another word.  Miss Murdstone
looks up.  I redden, tumble over half-a-dozen words, and stop.  I
think my mother would show me the book if she dared, but she does
not dare, and she says softly:

'Oh, Davy, Davy!'

'Now, Clara,' says Mr. Murdstone, 'be firm with the boy.  Don't
say, "Oh, Davy, Davy!"  That's childish.  He knows his lesson, or
he does not know it.'

'He does NOT know it,' Miss Murdstone interposes awfully.

'I am really afraid he does not,' says my mother.

'Then, you see, Clara,' returns Miss Murdstone, 'you should just
give him the book back, and make him know it.'

'Yes, certainly,' says my mother; 'that is what I intend to do, my
dear Jane.  Now, Davy, try once more, and don't be stupid.'

I obey the first clause of the injunction by trying once more, but
am not so successful with the second, for I am very stupid.  I
tumble down before I get to the old place, at a point where I was
all right before, and stop to think.  But I can't think about the
lesson.  I think of the number of yards of net in Miss Murdstone's
cap, or of the price of Mr. Murdstone's dressing-gown, or any such
ridiculous problem that I have no business with, and don't want to
have anything at all to do with.  Mr. Murdstone makes a movement of
impatience which I have been expecting for a long time.  Miss
Murdstone does the same.  My mother glances submissively at them,
shuts the book, and lays it by as an arrear to be worked out when
my other tasks are done.

There is a pile of these arrears very soon, and it swells like a
rolling snowball.  The bigger it gets, the more stupid I get.  The
case is so hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog
of nonsense, that I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon
myself to my fate.  The despairing way in which my mother and I
look at each other, as I blunder on, is truly melancholy.  But the
greatest effect in these miserable lessons is when my mother
(thinking nobody is observing her) tries to give me the cue by the
motion of her lips.  At that instant, Miss Murdstone, who has been
lying in wait for nothing else all along, says in a deep warning
voice:

'Clara!'

My mother starts, colours, and smiles faintly.  Mr. Murdstone comes
out of his chair, takes the book, throws it at me or boxes my ears
with it, and turns me out of the room by the shoulders.

Even when the lessons are done, the worst is yet to happen, in the
shape of an appalling sum.  This is invented for me, and delivered
to me orally by Mr. Murdstone, and begins, 'If I go into a
cheesemonger's shop, and buy five thousand double-Gloucester
cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny each, present payment' - at which I
see Miss Murdstone secretly overjoyed.  I pore over these cheeses
without any result or enlightenment until dinner-time, when, having
made a Mulatto of myself by getting the dirt of the slate into the
pores of my skin, I have a slice of bread to help me out with the
cheeses, and am considered in disgrace for the rest of the evening.

It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfortunate
studies generally took this course.  I could have done very well if
I had been without the Murdstones; but the influence of the
Murdstones upon me was like the fascination of two snakes on a
wretched young bird.  Even when I did get through the morning with
tolerable credit, there was not much gained but dinner; for Miss
Murdstone never could endure to see me untasked, and if I rashly
made any show of being unemployed, called her brother's attention
to me by saying, 'Clara, my dear, there's nothing like work - give
your boy an exercise'; which caused me to be clapped down to some
new labour, there and then.  As to any recreation with other
children of my age, I had very little of that; for the gloomy
theology of the Murdstones made all children out to be a swarm of
little vipers (though there WAS a child once set in the midst of
the Disciples), and held that they contaminated one another.

The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for
some six months or more, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. 
I was not made the less so by my sense of being daily more and more
shut out and alienated from my mother.  I believe I should have
been almost stupefied but for one circumstance.

It was this.  My father had left a small collection of books in a
little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my
own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled.  From that
blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey
Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas,
and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. 
They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that
place and time, - they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of
the Genii, - and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of
them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it.  It is astonishing
to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and
blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did.  It
is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my
small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating
my favourite characters in them - as I did - and by putting Mr. and
Miss Murdstone into all the bad ones - which I did too.  I have
been Tom Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a
week together.  I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for
a month at a stretch, I verily believe.  I had a greedy relish for
a few volumes of Voyages and Travels - I forget what, now - that
were on those shelves; and for days and days I can remember to have
gone about my region of our house, armed with the centre-piece out
of an old set of boot-trees - the perfect realization of Captain
Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being beset by
savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price.  The
Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the
Latin Grammar.  I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in
despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead
or alive.

This was my only and my constant comfort.  When I think of it, the
picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at
play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for
life.  Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church,
and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own,
in my mind, connected with these books, and stood for some locality
made famous in them.  I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the
church-steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his
back, stopping to rest himself upon the wicket-gate; and I know
that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle, in the
parlour of our little village alehouse.

The reader now understands, as well as I do, what I was when I came
to that point of my youthful history to which I am now coming
again.

One morning when I went into the parlour with my books, I found my
mother looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking firm, and Mr.
Murdstone binding something round the bottom of a cane - a lithe
and limber cane, which he left off binding when I came in, and
poised and switched in the air.

'I tell you, Clara,' said Mr. Murdstone, 'I have been often flogged
myself.'

'To be sure; of course,' said Miss Murdstone.

'Certainly, my dear Jane,' faltered my mother, meekly.  'But - but
do you think it did Edward good?'

'Do you think it did Edward harm, Clara?' asked Mr. Murdstone,
gravely.

'That's the point,' said his sister.

To this my mother returned, 'Certainly, my dear Jane,' and said no
more.

I felt apprehensive that I was personally interested in this
dialogue, and sought Mr. Murdstone's eye as it lighted on mine.

'Now, David,' he said - and I saw that cast again as he said it -
'you must be far more careful today than usual.'  He gave the cane
another poise, and another switch; and having finished his
preparation of it, laid it down beside him, with an impressive
look, and took up his book.

This was a good freshener to my presence of mind, as a beginning. 
I felt the words of my lessons slipping off, not one by one, or
line by line, but by the entire page; I tried to lay hold of them;
but they seemed, if I may so express it, to have put skates on, and
to skim away from me with a smoothness there was no checking.

We began badly, and went on worse.  I had come in with an idea of
distinguishing myself rather, conceiving that I was very well
prepared; but it turned out to be quite a mistake.  Book after book
was added to the heap of failures, Miss Murdstone being firmly
watchful of us all the time.  And when we came at last to the five
thousand cheeses (canes he made it that day, I remember), my mother
burst out crying.

'Clara!' said Miss Murdstone, in her warning voice.

'I am not quite well, my dear Jane, I think,' said my mother.

I saw him wink, solemnly, at his sister, as he rose and said,
taking up the cane:

'Why, Jane, we can hardly expect Clara to bear, with perfect
firmness, the worry and torment that David has occasioned her
today.  That would be stoical.  Clara is greatly strengthened and
improved, but we can hardly expect so much from her.  David, you
and I will go upstairs, boy.'

As he took me out at the door, my mother ran towards us.  Miss
Murdstone said, 'Clara! are you a perfect fool?' and interfered. 
I saw my mother stop her ears then, and I heard her crying.

He walked me up to my room slowly and gravely - I am certain he had
a delight in that formal parade of executing justice - and when we
got there, suddenly twisted my head under his arm.

'Mr. Murdstone!  Sir!' I cried to him.  'Don't!  Pray don't beat
me!  I have tried to learn, sir, but I can't learn while you and
Miss Murdstone are by.  I can't indeed!'

'Can't you, indeed, David?' he said.  'We'll try that.'

He had my head as in a vice, but I twined round him somehow, and
stopped him for a moment, entreating him not to beat me.  It was
only a moment that I stopped him, for he cut me heavily an instant
afterwards, and in the same instant I caught the hand with which he
held me in my mouth, between my teeth, and bit it through.  It sets
my teeth on edge to think of it.

He beat me then, as if he would have beaten me to death.  Above all
the noise we made, I heard them running up the stairs, and crying
out - I heard my mother crying out - and Peggotty.  Then he was
gone; and the door was locked outside; and I was lying, fevered and
hot, and torn, and sore, and raging in my puny way, upon the floor.

How well I recollect, when I became quiet, what an unnatural
stillness seemed to reign through the whole house!  How well I
remember, when my smart and passion began to cool, how wicked I
began to feel!

I sat listening for a long while, but there was not a sound.  I
crawled up from the floor, and saw my face in the glass, so
swollen, red, and ugly that it almost frightened me.  My stripes
were sore and stiff, and made me cry afresh, when I moved; but they
were nothing to the guilt I felt.  It lay heavier on my breast than
if I had been a most atrocious criminal, I dare say.

It had begun to grow dark, and I had shut the window (I had been
lying, for the most part, with my head upon the sill, by turns
crying, dozing, and looking listlessly out), when the key was
turned, and Miss Murdstone came in with some bread and meat, and
milk.  These she put down upon the table without a word, glaring at
me the while with exemplary firmness, and then retired, locking the
door after her.

Long after it was dark I sat there, wondering whether anybody else
would come.  When this appeared improbable for that night, I
undressed, and went to bed; and, there, I began to wonder fearfully
what would be done to me.  Whether it was a criminal act that I had
committed?  Whether I should be taken into custody, and sent to
prison?  Whether I was at all in danger of being hanged?

I never shall forget the waking, next morning; the being cheerful
and fresh for the first moment, and then the being weighed down by
the stale and dismal oppression of remembrance.  Miss Murdstone
reappeared before I was out of bed; told me, in so many words, that
I was free to walk in the garden for half an hour and no longer;
and retired, leaving the door open, that I might avail myself of
that permission.

I did so, and did so every morning of my imprisonment, which lasted
five days.  If I could have seen my mother alone, I should have
gone down on my knees to her and besought her forgiveness; but I
saw no one, Miss Murdstone excepted, during the whole time - except
at evening prayers in the parlour; to which I was escorted by Miss
Murdstone after everybody else was placed; where I was stationed,
a young outlaw, all alone by myself near the door; and whence I was
solemnly conducted by my jailer, before any one arose from the
devotional posture.  I only observed that my mother was as far off
from me as she could be, and kept her face another way so that I
never saw it; and that Mr. Murdstone's hand was bound up in a large
linen wrapper.

The length of those five days I can convey no idea of to any one. 
They occupy the place of years in my remembrance.  The way in which
I listened to all the incidents of the house that made themselves
audible to me; the ringing of bells, the opening and shutting of
doors, the murmuring of voices, the footsteps on the stairs; to any
laughing, whistling, or singing, outside, which seemed more dismal
than anything else to me in my solitude and disgrace - the
uncertain pace of the hours, especially at night, when I would wake
thinking it was morning, and find that the family were not yet gone
to bed, and that all the length of night had yet to come - the
depressed dreams and nightmares I had - the return of day, noon,
afternoon, evening, when the boys played in the churchyard, and I
watched them from a distance within the room, being ashamed to show
myself at the window lest they should know I was a prisoner - the
strange sensation of never hearing myself speak - the fleeting
intervals of something like cheerfulness, which came with eating
and drinking, and went away with it - the setting in of rain one
evening, with a fresh smell, and its coming down faster and faster
between me and the church, until it and gathering night seemed to
quench me in gloom, and fear, and remorse - all this appears to
have gone round and round for years instead of days, it is so
vividly and strongly stamped on my remembrance.
On the last night of my restraint, I was awakened by hearing my own
name spoken in a whisper.  I started up in bed, and putting out my
arms in the dark, said:

'Is that you, Peggotty?'

There was no immediate answer, but presently I heard my name again,
in a tone so very mysterious and awful, that I think I should have
gone into a fit, if it had not occurred to me that it must have
come through the keyhole.

I groped my way to the door, and putting my own lips to the
keyhole, whispered: 'Is that you, Peggotty dear?'

'Yes, my own precious Davy,' she replied.  'Be as soft as a mouse,
or the Cat'll hear us.'

I understood this to mean Miss Murdstone, and was sensible of the
urgency of the case; her room being close by.

'How's mama, dear Peggotty?  Is she very angry with me?'

I could hear Peggotty crying softly on her side of the keyhole, as
I was doing on mine, before she answered.  'No.  Not very.'

'What is going to be done with me, Peggotty dear?  Do you know?'

'School.  Near London,' was Peggotty's answer.  I was obliged to
get her to repeat it, for she spoke it the first time quite down my
throat, in consequence of my having forgotten to take my mouth away
from the keyhole and put my ear there; and though her words tickled
me a good deal, I didn't hear them.

'When, Peggotty?'

'Tomorrow.'

'Is that the reason why Miss Murdstone took the clothes out of my
drawers?' which she had done, though I have forgotten to mention
it.

'Yes,' said Peggotty.  'Box.'

'Shan't I see mama?'

'Yes,' said Peggotty.  'Morning.'

Then Peggotty fitted her mouth close to the keyhole, and delivered
these words through it with as much feeling and earnestness as a
keyhole has ever been the medium of communicating, I will venture
to assert: shooting in each broken little sentence in a convulsive
little burst of its own.

'Davy, dear.  If I ain't been azackly as intimate with you. 
Lately, as I used to be.  It ain't because I don't love you.  just
as well and more, my pretty poppet.  It's because I thought it
better for you.  And for someone else besides.  Davy, my darling,
are you listening?  Can you hear?'

'Ye-ye-ye-yes, Peggotty!' I sobbed.

'My own!' said Peggotty, with infinite compassion.  'What I want to
say, is.  That you must never forget me.  For I'll never forget
you.  And I'll take as much care of your mama, Davy.  As ever I
took of you.  And I won't leave her.  The day may come when she'll
be glad to lay her poor head.  On her stupid, cross old Peggotty's
arm again.  And I'll write to you, my dear.  Though I ain't no
scholar.  And I'll - I'll -' Peggotty fell to kissing the keyhole,
as she couldn't kiss me.

'Thank you, dear Peggotty!' said I.  'Oh, thank you!  Thank you! 
Will you promise me one thing, Peggotty?  Will you write and tell
Mr. Peggotty and little Em'ly, and Mrs. Gummidge and Ham, that I am
not so bad as they might suppose, and that I sent 'em all my love
- especially to little Em'ly?  Will you, if you please, Peggotty?'

The kind soul promised, and we both of us kissed the keyhole with
the greatest affection - I patted it with my hand, I recollect, as
if it had been her honest face - and parted.  From that night there
grew up in my breast a feeling for Peggotty which I cannot very
well define.  She did not replace my mother; no one could do that;
but she came into a vacancy in my heart, which closed upon her, and
I felt towards her something I have never felt for any other human
being.  It was a sort of comical affection, too; and yet if she had
died, I cannot think what I should have done, or how I should have
acted out the tragedy it would have been to me.

In the morning Miss Murdstone appeared as usual, and told me I was
going to school; which was not altogether such news to me as she
supposed.  She also informed me that when I was dressed, I was to
come downstairs into the parlour, and have my breakfast.  There, I
found my mother, very pale and with red eyes: into whose arms I
ran, and begged her pardon from my suffering soul.

'Oh, Davy!' she said.  'That you could hurt anyone I love!  Try to
be better, pray to be better!  I forgive you; but I am so grieved,
Davy, that you should have such bad passions in your heart.'

They had persuaded her that I was a wicked fellow, and she was more
sorry for that than for my going away.  I felt it sorely.  I tried
to eat my parting breakfast, but my tears dropped upon my bread-
and-butter, and trickled into my tea.  I saw my mother look at me
sometimes, and then glance at the watchful Miss Murdstone, and than
look down, or look away.

'Master Copperfield's box there!' said Miss Murdstone, when wheels
were heard at the gate.

I looked for Peggotty, but it was not she; neither she nor Mr.
Murdstone appeared.  My former acquaintance, the carrier, was at
the door.  the box was taken out to his cart, and lifted in.

'Clara!' said Miss Murdstone, in her warning note.

'Ready, my dear Jane,' returned my mother.  'Good-bye, Davy.  You
are going for your own good.  Good-bye, my child.  You will come
home in the holidays, and be a better boy.'

'Clara!' Miss Murdstone repeated.

'Certainly, my dear Jane,' replied my mother, who was holding me. 
'I forgive you, my dear boy.  God bless you!'

'Clara!' Miss Murdstone repeated.

Miss Murdstone was good enough to take me out to the cart, and to
say on the way that she hoped I would repent, before I came to a
bad end; and then I got into the cart, and the lazy horse walked
off with it.

CHAPTER 5
I AM SENT AWAY FROM HOME

We might have gone about half a mile, and my pocket-handkerchief
was quite wet through, when the carrier stopped short.  Looking out
to ascertain for what, I saw, to MY amazement, Peggotty burst from
a hedge and climb into the cart.  She took me in both her arms, and
squeezed me to her stays until the pressure on my nose was
extremely painful, though I never thought of that till afterwards
when I found it very tender.  Not a single word did Peggotty speak. 
Releasing one of her arms, she put it down in her pocket to the
elbow, and brought out some paper bags of cakes which she crammed
into my pockets, and a purse which she put into my hand, but not
one word did she say.  After another and a final squeeze with both
arms, she got down from the cart and ran away; and, my belief is,
and has always been, without a solitary button on her gown.  I
picked up one, of several that were rolling about, and treasured it
as a keepsake for a long time.

The carrier looked at me, as if to inquire if she were coming back. 
I shook my head, and said I thought not.  'Then come up,' said the
carrier to the lazy horse; who came up accordingly.

Having by this time cried as much as I possibly could, I began to
think it was of no use crying any more, especially as neither
Roderick Random, nor that Captain in the Royal British Navy, had
ever cried, that I could remember, in trying situations.  The
carrier, seeing me in this resolution, proposed that my pocket-
handkerchief should be spread upon the horse's back to dry.  I
thanked him, and assented; and particularly small it looked, under
those circumstances.

I had now leisure to examine the purse.  It was a stiff leather
purse, with a snap, and had three bright shillings in it, which
Peggotty had evidently polished up with whitening, for my greater
delight.  But its most precious contents were two half-crowns
folded together in a bit of paper, on which was written, in my
mother's hand, 'For Davy.  With my love.'  I was so overcome by
this, that I asked the carrier to be so good as to reach me my
pocket-handkerchief again; but he said he thought I had better do
without it, and I thought I really had, so I wiped my eyes on my
sleeve and stopped myself.

For good, too; though, in consequence of my previous emotions, I
was still occasionally seized with a stormy sob.  After we had
jogged on for some little time, I asked the carrier if he was going
all the way.

'All the way where?' inquired the carrier.

'There,' I said.

'Where's there?' inquired the carrier.

'Near London,' I said.

'Why that horse,' said the carrier, jerking the rein to point him
out, 'would be deader than pork afore he got over half the ground.'

'Are you only going to Yarmouth then?' I asked.

'That's about it,' said the carrier.  'And there I shall take you
to the stage-cutch, and the stage-cutch that'll take you to -
wherever it is.'

As this was a great deal for the carrier (whose name was Mr.
Barkis) to say - he being, as I observed in a former chapter, of a
phlegmatic temperament, and not at all conversational - I offered
him a cake as a mark of attention, which he ate at one gulp,
exactly like an elephant, and which made no more impression on his
big face than it would have done on an elephant's.

'Did SHE make 'em, now?' said Mr. Barkis, always leaning forward,
in his slouching way, on the footboard of the cart with an arm on
each knee.

'Peggotty, do you mean, sir?'

'Ah!' said Mr. Barkis.  'Her.'

'Yes.  She makes all our pastry, and does all our cooking.'

'Do she though?' said Mr. Barkis.
He made up his mouth as if to whistle, but he didn't whistle.  He
sat looking at the horse's ears, as if he saw something new there;
and sat so, for a considerable time.  By and by, he said:

'No sweethearts, I b'lieve?'

'Sweetmeats did you say, Mr. Barkis?'  For I thought he wanted
something else to eat, and had pointedly alluded to that
description of refreshment.

'Hearts,' said Mr. Barkis.  'Sweet hearts; no person walks with
her!'

'With Peggotty?'

'Ah!' he said.  'Her.'

'Oh, no.  She never had a sweetheart.'

'Didn't she, though!' said Mr. Barkis.

Again he made up his mouth to whistle, and again he didn't whistle,
but sat looking at the horse's ears.

'So she makes,' said Mr. Barkis, after a long interval of
reflection, 'all the apple parsties, and doos all the cooking, do
she?'

I replied that such was the fact.

'Well.  I'll tell you what,' said Mr. Barkis.  'P'raps you might be
writin' to her?'

'I shall certainly write to her,' I rejoined.

'Ah!' he said, slowly turning his eyes towards me.  'Well!  If you
was writin' to her, p'raps you'd recollect to say that Barkis was
willin'; would you?'

'That Barkis is willing,' I repeated, innocently.  'Is that all the
message?'

'Ye-es,' he said, considering.  'Ye-es.  Barkis is willin'.'

'But you will be at Blunderstone again tomorrow, Mr. Barkis,' I
said, faltering a little at the idea of my being far away from it
then, and could give your own message so much better.'

As he repudiated this suggestion, however, with a jerk of his head,
and once more confirmed his previous request by saying, with
profound gravity, 'Barkis is willin'.  That's the message,' I
readily undertook its transmission.  While I was waiting for the
coach in the hotel at Yarmouth that very afternoon, I procured a
sheet of paper and an inkstand, and wrote a note to Peggotty, which
ran thus: 'My dear Peggotty.  I have come here safe.  Barkis is
willing.  My love to mama.  Yours affectionately.  P.S.  He says he
particularly wants you to know - BARKIS IS WILLING.'

When I had taken this commission on myself prospectively, Mr.
Barkis relapsed into perfect silence; and I, feeling quite worn out
by all that had happened lately, lay down on a sack in the cart and
fell asleep.  I slept soundly until we got to Yarmouth; which was
so entirely new and strange to me in the inn-yard to which we
drove, that I at once abandoned a latent hope I had had of meeting
with some of Mr. Peggotty's family there, perhaps even with little
Em'ly herself.

The coach was in the yard, shining very much all over, but without
any horses to it as yet; and it looked in that state as if nothing
was more unlikely than its ever going to London.  I was thinking
this, and wondering what would ultimately become of my box, which
Mr. Barkis had put down on the yard-pavement by the pole (he having
driven up the yard to turn his cart), and also what would
ultimately become of me, when a lady looked out of a bow-window
where some fowls and joints of meat were hanging up, and said:

'Is that the little gentleman from Blunderstone?'

'Yes, ma'am,' I said.

'What name?' inquired the lady.

'Copperfield, ma'am,' I said.

'That won't do,' returned the lady.  'Nobody's dinner is paid for
here, in that name.'

'Is it Murdstone, ma'am?' I said.

'If you're Master Murdstone,' said the lady, 'why do you go and
give another name, first?'

I explained to the lady how it was, who than rang a bell, and
called out, 'William! show the coffee-room!' upon which a waiter
came running out of a kitchen on the opposite side of the yard to
show it, and seemed a good deal surprised when he was only to show
it to me.

It was a large long room with some large maps in it.  I doubt if I
could have felt much stranger if the maps had been real foreign
countries, and I cast away in the middle of them.  I felt it was
taking a liberty to sit down, with my cap in my hand, on the corner
of the chair nearest the door; and when the waiter laid a cloth on
purpose for me, and put a set of castors on it, I think I must have
turned red all over with modesty.

He brought me some chops, and vegetables, and took the covers off
in such a bouncing manner that I was afraid I must have given him
some offence.  But he greatly relieved my mind by putting a chair
for me at the table, and saying, very affably, 'Now, six-foot! come
on!'

I thanked him, and took my seat at the board; but found it
extremely difficult to handle my knife and fork with anything like
dexterity, or to avoid splashing myself with the gravy, while he
was standing opposite, staring so hard, and making me blush in the
most dreadful manner every time I caught his eye.  After watching
me into the second chop, he said:

'There's half a pint of ale for you.  Will you have it now?'

I thanked him and said, 'Yes.'  Upon which he poured it out of a
jug into a large tumbler, and held it up against the light, and
made it look beautiful.

'My eye!' he said.  'It seems a good deal, don't it?'

'It does seem a good deal,' I answered with a smile.  For it was
quite delightful to me, to find him so pleasant.  He was a
twinkling-eyed, pimple-faced man, with his hair standing upright
all over his head; and as he stood with one arm a-kimbo, holding up
the glass to the light with the other hand, he looked quite
friendly.

'There was a gentleman here, yesterday,' he said - 'a stout
gentleman, by the name of Topsawyer - perhaps you know him?'

'No,' I said, 'I don't think -'

'In breeches and gaiters, broad-brimmed hat, grey coat, speckled
choker,' said the waiter.

'No,' I said bashfully, 'I haven't the pleasure -'

'He came in here,' said the waiter, looking at the light through
the tumbler, 'ordered a glass of this ale - WOULD order it - I told
him not - drank it, and fell dead.  It was too old for him.  It
oughtn't to be drawn; that's the fact.'

I was very much shocked to hear of this melancholy accident, and
said I thought I had better have some water.

'Why you see,' said the waiter, still looking at the light through
the tumbler, with one of his eyes shut up, 'our people don't like
things being ordered and left.  It offends 'em.  But I'll drink it,
if you like.  I'm used to it, and use is everything.  I don't think
it'll hurt me, if I throw my head back, and take it off quick. 
Shall I?'

I replied that he would much oblige me by drinking it, if he
thought he could do it safely, but by no means otherwise.  When he
did throw his head back, and take it off quick, I had a horrible
fear, I confess, of seeing him meet the fate of the lamented Mr.
Topsawyer, and fall lifeless on the carpet.  But it didn't hurt
him.  On the contrary, I thought he seemed the fresher for it.

'What have we got here?' he said, putting a fork into my dish. 
'Not chops?'

'Chops,' I said.

'Lord bless my soul!' he exclaimed, 'I didn't know they were chops. 
Why, a chop's the very thing to take off the bad effects of that
beer!  Ain't it lucky?'

So he took a chop by the bone in one hand, and a potato in the
other, and ate away with a very good appetite, to my extreme
satisfaction.  He afterwards took another chop, and another potato;
and after that, another chop and another potato.  When we had done,
he brought me a pudding, and having set it before me, seemed to
ruminate, and to become absent in his mind for some moments.

'How's the pie?' he said, rousing himself.

'It's a pudding,' I made answer.

'Pudding!' he exclaimed.  'Why, bless me, so it is!  What!' looking
at it nearer.  'You don't mean to say it's a batter-pudding!'

'Yes, it is indeed.'

'Why, a batter-pudding,' he said, taking up a table-spoon, 'is my
favourite pudding!  Ain't that lucky?  Come on, little 'un, and
let's see who'll get most.'

The waiter certainly got most.  He entreated me more than once to
come in and win, but what with his table-spoon to my tea-spoon, his
dispatch to my dispatch, and his appetite to my appetite, I was
left far behind at the first mouthful, and had no chance with him. 
I never saw anyone enjoy a pudding so much, I think; and he
laughed, when it was all gone, as if his enjoyment of it lasted
still.

Finding him so very friendly and companionable, it was then that I
asked for the pen and ink and paper, to write to Peggotty.  He not
only brought it immediately, but was good enough to look over me
while I wrote the letter.  When I had finished it, he asked me
where I was going to school.

I said, 'Near London,' which was all I knew.

'Oh! my eye!' he said, looking very low-spirited, 'I am sorry for
that.'

'Why?' I asked him.

'Oh, Lord!' he said, shaking his head, 'that's the school where
they broke the boy's ribs - two ribs - a little boy he was.  I
should say he was - let me see - how old are you, about?'

I told him between eight and nine.

'That's just his age,' he said.  'He was eight years and six months
old when they broke his first rib; eight years and eight months old
when they broke his second, and did for him.'

I could not disguise from myself, or from the waiter, that this was
an uncomfortable coincidence, and inquired how it was done.  His
answer was not cheering to my spirits, for it consisted of two
dismal words, 'With whopping.'

The blowing of the coach-horn in the yard was a seasonable
diversion, which made me get up and hesitatingly inquire, in the
mingled pride and diffidence of having a purse (which I took out of
my pocket), if there were anything to pay.

'There's a sheet of letter-paper,' he returned.  'Did you ever buy
a sheet of letter-paper?'

I could not remember that I ever had.

'It's dear,' he said, 'on account of the duty.  Threepence.  That's
the way we're taxed in this country.  There's nothing else, except
the waiter.  Never mind the ink.  I lose by that.'

'What should you - what should I - how much ought I to - what would
it be right to pay the waiter, if you please?' I stammered,
blushing.

'If I hadn't a family, and that family hadn't the cowpock,' said
the waiter, 'I wouldn't take a sixpence.  If I didn't support a
aged pairint, and a lovely sister,' - here the waiter was greatly
agitated - 'I wouldn't take a farthing.  If I had a good place, and
was treated well here, I should beg acceptance of a trifle, instead
of taking of it.  But I live on broken wittles - and I sleep on the
coals' - here the waiter burst into tears.

I was very much concerned for his misfortunes, and felt that any
recognition short of ninepence would be mere brutality and hardness
of heart.  Therefore I gave him one of my three bright shillings,
which he received with much humility and veneration, and spun up
with his thumb, directly afterwards, to try the goodness of.

It was a little disconcerting to me, to find, when I was being
helped up behind the coach, that I was supposed to have eaten all
the dinner without any assistance.  I discovered this, from
overhearing the lady in the bow-window say to the guard, 'Take care
of that child, George, or he'll burst!' and from observing that the
women-servants who were about the place came out to look and giggle
at me as a young phenomenon.  My unfortunate friend the waiter, who
had quite recovered his spirits, did not appear to be disturbed by
this, but joined in the general admiration without being at all
confused.  If I had any doubt of him, I suppose this half awakened
it; but I am inclined to believe that with the simple confidence of
a child, and the natural reliance of a child upon superior years
(qualities I am very sorry any children should prematurely change
for worldly wisdom), I had no serious mistrust of him on the whole,
even then.

I felt it rather hard, I must own, to be made, without deserving
it, the subject of jokes between the coachman and guard as to the
coach drawing heavy behind, on account of my sitting there, and as
to the greater expediency of my travelling by waggon.  The story of
my supposed appetite getting wind among the outside passengers,
they were merry upon it likewise; and asked me whether I was going
to be paid for, at school, as two brothers or three, and whether I
was contracted for, or went upon the regular terms; with other
pleasant questions.  But the worst of it was, that I knew I should
be ashamed to eat anything, when an opportunity offered, and that,
after a rather light dinner, I should remain hungry all night - for
I had left my cakes behind, at the hotel, in my hurry.  My
apprehensions were realized.  When we stopped for supper I couldn't
muster courage to take any, though I should have liked it very
much, but sat by the fire and said I didn't want anything.  This
did not save me from more jokes, either; for a husky-voiced
gentleman with a rough face, who had been eating out of a
sandwich-box nearly all the way, except when he had been drinking
out of a bottle, said I was like a boa-constrictor who took enough
at one meal to last him a long time; after which, he actually
brought a rash out upon himself with boiled beef.

We had started from Yarmouth at three o'clock in the afternoon, and
we were due in London about eight next morning.  It was Mid-summer
weather, and the evening was very pleasant.  When we passed through
a village, I pictured to myself what the insides of the houses were
like, and what the inhabitants were about; and when boys came
running after us, and got up behind and swung there for a little
way, I wondered whether their fathers were alive, and whether they
Were happy at home.  I had plenty to think of, therefore, besides
my mind running continually on the kind of place I was going to -
which was an awful speculation.  Sometimes, I remember, I resigned
myself to thoughts of home and Peggotty; and to endeavouring, in a
confused blind way, to recall how I had felt, and what sort of boy
I used to be, before I bit Mr. Murdstone: which I couldn't satisfy
myself about by any means, I seemed to have bitten him in such a
remote antiquity.

The night was not so pleasant as the evening, for it got chilly;
and being put between two gentlemen (the rough-faced one and
another) to prevent my tumbling off the coach, I was nearly
smothered by their falling asleep, and completely blocking me up. 
They squeezed me so hard sometimes, that I could not help crying
out, 'Oh!  If you please!' - which they didn't like at all, because
it woke them.  Opposite me was an elderly lady in a great fur
cloak, who looked in the dark more like a haystack than a lady, she
was wrapped up to such a degree.  This lady had a basket with her,
and she hadn't known what to do with it, for a long time, until she
found that on account of my legs being short, it could go
underneath me.  It cramped and hurt me so, that it made me
perfectly miserable; but if I moved in the least, and made a glass
that was in the basket rattle against something else (as it was
sure to do), she gave me the cruellest poke with her foot, and
said, 'Come, don't YOU fidget.  YOUR bones are young enough, I'm
sure!'

At last the sun rose, and then my companions seemed to sleep
easier.  The difficulties under which they had laboured all night,
and which had found utterance in the most terrific gasps and
snorts, are not to be conceived.  As the sun got higher, their
sleep became lighter, and so they gradually one by one awoke.  I
recollect being very much surprised by the feint everybody made,
then, of not having been to sleep at all, and by the uncommon
indignation with which everyone repelled the charge.  I labour
under the same kind of astonishment to this day, having invariably
observed that of all human weaknesses, the one to which our common
nature is the least disposed to confess (I cannot imagine why) is
the weakness of having gone to sleep in a coach.

What an amazing place London was to me when I saw it in the
distance, and how I believed all the adventures of all my favourite
heroes to be constantly enacting and re-enacting there, and how I
vaguely made it out in my own mind to be fuller of wonders and
wickedness than all the cities of the earth, I need not stop here
to relate.  We approached it by degrees, and got, in due time, to
the inn in the Whitechapel district, for which we were bound.  I
forget whether it was the Blue Bull, or the Blue Boar; but I know
it was the Blue Something, and that its likeness was painted up on
the back of the coach.

The guard's eye lighted on me as he was getting down, and he said
at the booking-office door:

'Is there anybody here for a yoongster booked in the name of
Murdstone, from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, to be left till called
for?'

Nobody answered.

'Try Copperfield, if you please, sir,' said I, looking helplessly
down.

'Is there anybody here for a yoongster, booked in the name of
Murdstone, from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, but owning to the name of
Copperfield, to be left till called for?' said the guard.  'Come!
IS there anybody?'

No.  There was nobody.  I looked anxiously around; but the inquiry
made no impression on any of the bystanders, if I except a man in
gaiters, with one eye, who suggested that they had better put a
brass collar round my neck, and tie me up in the stable.

A ladder was brought, and I got down after the lady, who was like
a haystack: not daring to stir, until her basket was removed.  The
coach was clear of passengers by that time, the luggage was very
soon cleared out, the horses had been taken out before the luggage,
and now the coach itself was wheeled and backed off by some
hostlers, out of the way.  Still, nobody appeared, to claim the
dusty youngster from Blunderstone, Suffolk.

More solitary than Robinson Crusoe, who had nobody to look at him
and see that he was solitary, I went into the booking-office, and,
by invitation of the clerk on duty, passed behind the counter, and
sat down on the scale at which they weighed the luggage.  Here, as
I sat looking at the parcels, packages, and books, and inhaling the
smell of stables (ever since associated with that morning), a
procession of most tremendous considerations began to march through
my mind.  Supposing nobody should ever fetch me, how long would
they consent to keep me there?  Would they keep me long enough to
spend seven shillings?  Should I sleep at night in one of those
wooden bins, with the other luggage, and wash myself at the pump in
the yard in the morning; or should I be turned out every night, and
expected to come again to be left till called for, when the office
opened next day?  Supposing there was no mistake in the case, and
Mr. Murdstone had devised this plan to get rid of me, what should
I do?  If they allowed me to remain there until my seven shillings
were spent, I couldn't hope to remain there when I began to starve. 
That would obviously be inconvenient and unpleasant to the
customers, besides entailing on the Blue Whatever-it-was, the risk
of funeral expenses.  If I started off at once, and tried to walk
back home, how could I ever find my way, how could I ever hope to
walk so far, how could I make sure of anyone but Peggotty, even if
I got back?  If I found out the nearest proper authorities, and
offered myself to go for a soldier, or a sailor, I was such a
little fellow that it was most likely they wouldn't take me in. 
These thoughts, and a hundred other such thoughts, turned me
burning hot, and made me giddy with apprehension and dismay.  I was
in the height of my fever when a man entered and whispered to the
clerk, who presently slanted me off the scale, and pushed me over
to him, as if I were weighed, bought, delivered, and paid for.

As I went out of the office, hand in hand with this new
acquaintance, I stole a look at him.  He was a gaunt, sallow young
man, with hollow cheeks, and a chin almost as black as Mr.
Murdstone's; but there the likeness ended, for his whiskers were
shaved off, and his hair, instead of being glossy, was rusty and
dry.  He was dressed in a suit of black clothes which were rather
rusty and dry too, and rather short in the sleeves and legs; and he
had a white neck-kerchief on, that was not over-clean.  I did not,
and do not, suppose that this neck-kerchief was all the linen he
wore, but it was all he showed or gave any hint of.

'You're the new boy?' he said.
'Yes, sir,' I said.

I supposed I was.  I didn't know.

'I'm one of the masters at Salem House,' he said.

I made him a bow and felt very much overawed.  I was so ashamed to
allude to a commonplace thing like my box, to a scholar and a
master at Salem House, that we had gone some little distance from
the yard before I had the hardihood to mention it.  We turned back,
on my humbly insinuating that it might be useful to me hereafter;
and he told the clerk that the carrier had instructions to call for
it at noon.

'If you please, sir,' I said, when we had accomplished about the
same distance as before, 'is it far?'

'It's down by Blackheath,' he said.

'Is that far, sir?' I diffidently asked.

'It's a good step,' he said.  'We shall go by the stage-coach. 
It's about six miles.'

I was so faint and tired, that the idea of holding out for six
miles more, was too much for me.  I took heart to tell him that I
had had nothing all night, and that if he would allow me to buy
something to eat, I should be very much obliged to him.  He
appeared surprised at this - I see him stop and look at me now -
and after considering for a few moments, said he wanted to call on
an old person who lived not far off, and that the best way would be
for me to buy some bread, or whatever I liked best that was
wholesome, and make my breakfast at her house, where we could get
some milk.

Accordingly we looked in at a baker's window, and after I had made
a series of proposals to buy everything that was bilious in the
shop, and he had rejected them one by one, we decided in favour of
a nice little loaf of brown bread, which cost me threepence.  Then,
at a grocer's shop, we bought an egg and a slice of streaky bacon;
which still left what I thought a good deal of change, out of the
second of the bright shillings, and made me consider London a very
cheap place.  These provisions laid in, we went on through a great
noise and uproar that confused my weary head beyond description,
and over a bridge which, no doubt, was London Bridge (indeed I
think he told me so, but I was half asleep), until we came to the
poor person's house, which was a part of some alms-houses, as I
knew by their look, and by an inscription on a stone over the gate
which said they were established for twenty-five poor women.

The Master at Salem House lifted the latch of one of a number of
little black doors that were all alike, and had each a little
diamond-paned window on one side, and another little diamond- paned
window above; and we went into the little house of one of these
poor old women, who was blowing a fire to make a little saucepan
boil.  On seeing the master enter, the old woman stopped with the
bellows on her knee, and said something that I thought sounded like
'My Charley!' but on seeing me come in too, she got up, and rubbing
her hands made a confused sort of half curtsey.

'Can you cook this young gentleman's breakfast for him, if you
please?' said the Master at Salem House.

'Can I?' said the old woman.  'Yes can I, sure!'

'How's Mrs. Fibbitson today?' said the Master, looking at another
old woman in a large chair by the fire, who was such a bundle of
clothes that I feel grateful to this hour for not having sat upon
her by mistake.

'Ah, she's poorly,' said the first old woman.  'It's one of her bad
days.  If the fire was to go out, through any accident, I verily
believe she'd go out too, and never come to life again.'

As they looked at her, I looked at her also.  Although it was a
warm day, she seemed to think of nothing but the fire.  I fancied
she was jealous even of the saucepan on it; and I have reason to
know that she took its impressment into the service of boiling my
egg and broiling my bacon, in dudgeon; for I saw her, with my own
discomfited eyes, shake her fist at me once, when those culinary
operations were going on, and no one else was looking.  The sun
streamed in at the little window, but she sat with her own back and
the back of the large chair towards it, screening the fire as if
she were sedulously keeping IT warm, instead of it keeping her
warm, and watching it in a most distrustful manner.  The completion
of the preparations for my breakfast, by relieving the fire, gave
her such extreme joy that she laughed aloud - and a very
unmelodious laugh she had, I must say.

I sat down to my brown loaf, my egg, and my rasher of bacon, with
a basin of milk besides, and made a most delicious meal.  While I
was yet in the full enjoyment of it, the old woman of the house
said to the Master:

'Have you got your flute with you?'

'Yes,' he returned.

'Have a blow at it,' said the old woman, coaxingly.  'Do!'

The Master, upon this, put his hand underneath the skirts of his
coat, and brought out his flute in three pieces, which he screwed
together, and began immediately to play.  My impression is, after
many years of consideration, that there never can have been anybody
in the world who played worse.  He made the most dismal sounds I
have ever heard produced by any means, natural or artificial.  I
don't know what the tunes were - if there were such things in the
performance at all, which I doubt - but the influence of the strain
upon me was, first, to make me think of all my sorrows until I
could hardly keep my tears back; then to take away my appetite; and
lastly, to make me so sleepy that I couldn't keep my eyes open. 
They begin to close again, and I begin to nod, as the recollection
rises fresh upon me.  Once more the little room, with its open
corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, and its angular
little staircase leading to the room above, and its three peacock's
feathers displayed over the mantelpiece - I remember wondering when
I first went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had
known what his finery was doomed to come to - fades from before me,
and I nod, and sleep.  The flute becomes inaudible, the wheels of
the coach are heard instead, and I am on my journey.  The coach
jolts, I wake with a start, and the flute has come back again, and
the Master at Salem House is sitting with his legs crossed, playing
it dolefully, while the old woman of the house looks on delighted. 
She fades in her turn, and he fades, and all fades, and there is no
flute, no Master, no Salem House, no David Copperfield, no anything
but heavy sleep.

I dreamed, I thought, that once while he was blowing into this
dismal flute, the old woman of the house, who had gone nearer and
nearer to him in her ecstatic admiration, leaned over the back of
his chair and gave him an affectionate squeeze round the neck,
which stopped his playing for a moment.  I was in the middle state
between sleeping and waking, either then or immediately afterwards;
for, as he resumed - it was a real fact that he had stopped playing
- I saw and heard the same old woman ask Mrs. Fibbitson if it
wasn't delicious (meaning the flute), to which Mrs. Fibbitson
replied, 'Ay, ay! yes!' and nodded at the fire: to which, I am
persuaded, she gave the credit of the whole performance.

When I seemed to have been dozing a long while, the Master at Salem
House unscrewed his flute into the three pieces, put them up as
before, and took me away.  We found the coach very near at hand,
and got upon the roof; but I was so dead sleepy, that when we
stopped on the road to take up somebody else, they put me inside
where there were no passengers, and where I slept profoundly, until
I found the coach going at a footpace up a steep hill among green
leaves.  Presently, it stopped, and had come to its destination.

A short walk brought us - I mean the Master and me - to Salem
House, which was enclosed with a high brick wall, and looked very
dull.  Over a door in this wall was a board with SALEM HousE upon
it; and through a grating in this door we were surveyed when we
rang the bell by a surly face, which I found, on the door being
opened, belonged to a stout man with a bull-neck, a wooden leg,
overhanging temples, and his hair cut close all round his head.

'The new boy,' said the Master.

The man with the wooden leg eyed me all over - it didn't take long,
for there was not much of me - and locked the gate behind us, and
took out the key.  We were going up to the house, among some dark
heavy trees, when he called after my conductor.
'Hallo!'

We looked back, and he was standing at the door of a little lodge,
where he lived, with a pair of boots in his hand.

'Here!  The cobbler's been,' he said, 'since you've been out, Mr.
Mell, and he says he can't mend 'em any more.  He says there ain't
a bit of the original boot left, and he wonders you expect it.'

With these words he threw the boots towards Mr. Mell, who went back
a few paces to pick them up, and looked at them (very
disconsolately, I was afraid), as we went on together.  I observed
then, for the first time, that the boots he had on were a good deal
the worse for wear, and that his stocking was just breaking out in
one place, like a bud.

Salem House was a square brick building with wings; of a bare and
unfurnished appearance.  All about it was so very quiet, that I
said to Mr. Mell I supposed the boys were out; but he seemed
surprised at my not knowing that it was holiday-time.  That all the
boys were at their several homes.  That Mr. Creakle, the
proprietor, was down by the sea-side with Mrs. and Miss Creakle;
and that I was sent in holiday-time as a punishment for my
misdoing, all of which he explained to me as we went along.

I gazed upon the schoolroom into which he took me, as the most
forlorn and desolate place I had ever seen.  I see it now.  A long
room with three long rows of desks, and six of forms, and bristling
all round with pegs for hats and slates.  Scraps of old copy-books
and exercises litter the dirty floor.  Some silkworms' houses, made
of the same materials, are scattered over the desks.  Two miserable
little white mice, left behind by their owner, are running up and
down in a fusty castle made of pasteboard and wire, looking in all
the corners with their red eyes for anything to eat.  A bird, in a
cage very little bigger than himself, makes a mournful rattle now
and then in hopping on his perch, two inches high, or dropping from
it; but neither sings nor chirps.  There is a strange unwholesome
smell upon the room, like mildewed corduroys, sweet apples wanting
air, and rotten books.  There could not well be more ink splashed
about it, if it had been roofless from its first construction, and
the skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through the
varying seasons of the year.

Mr. Mell having left me while he took his irreparable boots
upstairs, I went softly to the upper end of the room, observing all
this as I crept along.  Suddenly I came upon a pasteboard placard,
beautifully written, which was lying on the desk, and bore these
words: 'TAKE CARE OF HIM.  HE BITES.'

I got upon the desk immediately, apprehensive of at least a great
dog underneath.  But, though I looked all round with anxious eyes,
I could see nothing of him.  I was still engaged in peering about,
when Mr. Mell came back, and asked me what I did up there?

'I beg your pardon, sir,' says I, 'if you please, I'm looking for
the dog.'

'Dog?' he says.  'What dog?'

'Isn't it a dog, sir?'

'Isn't what a dog?'

'That's to be taken care of, sir; that bites.'

'No, Copperfield,' says he, gravely, 'that's not a dog.  That's a
boy.  My instructions are, Copperfield, to put this placard on your
back.  I am sorry to make such a beginning with you, but I must do
it.'  With that he took me down, and tied the placard, which was
neatly constructed for the purpose, on my shoulders like a
knapsack; and wherever I went, afterwards, I had the consolation of
carrying it.

What I suffered from that placard, nobody can imagine.  Whether it
was possible for people to see me or not, I always fancied that
somebody was reading it.  It was no relief to turn round and find
nobody; for wherever my back was, there I imagined somebody always
to be.  That cruel man with the wooden leg aggravated my
sufferings.  He was in authority; and if he ever saw me leaning
against a tree, or a wall, or the house, he roared out from his
lodge door in a stupendous voice, 'Hallo, you sir!  You
Copperfield!  Show that badge conspicuous, or I'll report you!' 
The playground was a bare gravelled yard, open to all the back of
the house and the offices; and I knew that the servants read it,
and the butcher read it, and the baker read it; that everybody, in
a word, who came backwards and forwards to the house, of a morning
when I was ordered to walk there, read that I was to be taken care
of, for I bit, I recollect that I positively began to have a dread
of myself, as a kind of wild boy who did bite.

There was an old door in this playground, on which the boys had a
custom of carving their names.  It was completely covered with such
inscriptions.  In my dread of the end of the vacation and their
coming back, I could not read a boy's name, without inquiring in
what tone and with what emphasis HE would read, 'Take care of him. 
He bites.'  There was one boy - a certain J. Steerforth - who cut
his name very deep and very often, who, I conceived, would read it
in a rather strong voice, and afterwards pull my hair.  There was
another boy, one Tommy Traddles, who I dreaded would make game of
it, and pretend to be dreadfully frightened of me.  There was a
third, George Demple, who I fancied would sing it.  I have looked,
a little shrinking creature, at that door, until the owners of all
the names - there were five-and-forty of them in the school then,
Mr. Mell said - seemed to send me to Coventry by general
acclamation, and to cry out, each in his own way, 'Take care of
him.  He bites!'

It was the same with the places at the desks and forms.  It was the
same with the groves of deserted bedsteads I peeped at, on my way
to, and when I was in, my own bed.  I remember dreaming night after
night, of being with my mother as she used to be, or of going to a
party at Mr. Peggotty's, or of travelling outside the stage-coach,
or of dining again with my unfortunate friend the waiter, and in
all these circumstances making people scream and stare, by the
unhappy disclosure that I had nothing on but my little night-shirt,
and that placard.

In the monotony of my life, and in my constant apprehension of the
re-opening of the school, it was such an insupportable affliction!
I had long tasks every day to do with Mr. Mell; but I did them,
there being no Mr. and Miss Murdstone here, and got through them
without disgrace.  Before, and after them, I walked about -
supervised, as I have mentioned, by the man with the wooden leg. 
How vividly I call to mind the damp about the house, the green
cracked flagstones in the court, an old leaky water-butt, and the
discoloured trunks of some of the grim trees, which seemed to have
dripped more in the rain than other trees, and to have blown less
in the sun!  At one we dined, Mr. Mell and I, at the upper end of
a long bare dining-room, full of deal tables, and smelling of fat. 
Then, we had more tasks until tea, which Mr. Mell drank out of a
blue teacup, and I out of a tin pot.  All day long, and until seven
or eight in the evening, Mr. Mell, at his own detached desk in the
schoolroom, worked hard with pen, ink, ruler, books, and writing-
paper, making out the bills (as I found) for last half-year.  When
he had put up his things for the night he took out his flute, and
blew at it, until I almost thought he would gradually blow his
whole being into the large hole at the top, and ooze away at the
keys.

I picture my small self in the dimly-lighted rooms, sitting with my
head upon my hand, listening to the doleful performance of Mr.
Mell, and conning tomorrow's lessons.  I picture myself with my
books shut up, still listening to the doleful performance of Mr.
Mell, and listening through it to what used to be at home, and to
the blowing of the wind on Yarmouth flats, and feeling very sad and
solitary.  I picture myself going up to bed, among the unused
rooms, and sitting on my bed-side crying for a comfortable word
from Peggotty.  I picture myself coming downstairs in the morning,
and looking through a long ghastly gash of a staircase window at
the school-bell hanging on the top of an out-house with a
weathercock above it; and dreading the time when it shall ring J.
Steerforth and the rest to work: which is only second, in my
foreboding apprehensions, to the time when the man with the wooden
leg shall unlock the rusty gate to give admission to the awful Mr.
Creakle.  I cannot think I was a very dangerous character in any of
these aspects, but in all of them I carried the same warning on my
back.

Mr. Mell never said much to me, but he was never harsh to me.  I
suppose we were company to each other, without talking.  I forgot
to mention that he would talk to himself sometimes, and grin, and
clench his fist, and grind his teeth, and pull his hair in an
unaccountable manner.  But he had these peculiarities: and at first
they frightened me, though I soon got used to them.

CHAPTER 6
I ENLARGE MY CIRCLE OF ACQUAINTANCE

I HAD led this life about a month, when the man with the wooden leg
began to stump about with a mop and a bucket of water, from which
I inferred that preparations were making to receive Mr. Creakle and
the boys.  I was not mistaken; for the mop came into the schoolroom
before long, and turned out Mr. Mell and me, who lived where we
could, and got on how we could, for some days, during which we were
always in the way of two or three young women, who had rarely shown
themselves before, and were so continually in the midst of dust
that I sneezed almost as much as if Salem House had been a great
snuff-box.

One day I was informed by Mr. Mell that Mr. Creakle would be home
that evening.  In the evening, after tea, I heard that he was come. 
Before bedtime, I was fetched by the man with the wooden leg to
appear before him.

Mr. Creakle's part of the house was a good deal more comfortable
than ours, and he had a snug bit of garden that looked pleasant
after the dusty playground, which was such a desert in miniature,
that I thought no one but a camel, or a dromedary, could have felt
at home in it.  It seemed to me a bold thing even to take notice
that the passage looked comfortable, as I went on my way,
trembling, to Mr. Creakle's presence: which so abashed me, when I
was ushered into it, that I hardly saw Mrs. Creakle or Miss Creakle
(who were both there, in the parlour), or anything but Mr. Creakle,
a stout gentleman with a bunch of watch-chain and seals, in an
arm-chair, with a tumbler and bottle beside him.

'So!' said Mr. Creakle.  'This is the young gentleman whose teeth
are to be filed!  Turn him round.'

The wooden-legged man turned me about so as to exhibit the placard;
and having afforded time for a full survey of it, turned me about
again, with my face to Mr. Creakle, and posted himself at Mr.
Creakle's side.  Mr. Creakle's face was fiery, and his eyes were
small, and deep in his head; he had thick veins in his forehead, a
little nose, and a large chin.  He was bald on the top of his head;
and had some thin wet-looking hair that was just turning grey,
brushed across each temple, so that the two sides interlaced on his
forehead.  But the circumstance about him which impressed me most,
was, that he had no voice, but spoke in a whisper.  The exertion
this cost him, or the consciousness of talking in that feeble way,
made his angry face so much more angry, and his thick veins so much
thicker, when he spoke, that I am not surprised, on looking back,
at this peculiarity striking me as his chief one.
'Now,' said Mr. Creakle.  'What's the report of this boy?'

'There's nothing against him yet,' returned the man with the wooden
leg.  'There has been no opportunity.'

I thought Mr. Creakle was disappointed.  I thought Mrs. and Miss
Creakle (at whom I now glanced for the first time, and who were,
both, thin and quiet) were not disappointed.

'Come here, sir!' said Mr. Creakle, beckoning to me.

'Come here!' said the man with the wooden leg, repeating the
gesture.

'I have the happiness of knowing your father-in-law,' whispered Mr.
Creakle, taking me by the ear; 'and a worthy man he is, and a man
of a strong character.  He knows me, and I know him.  Do YOU know
me?  Hey?' said Mr. Creakle, pinching my ear with ferocious
playfulness.

'Not yet, sir,' I said, flinching with the pain.

'Not yet?  Hey?' repeated Mr. Creakle.  'But you will soon.  Hey?'

'You will soon.  Hey?' repeated the man with the wooden leg.  I
afterwards found that he generally acted, with his strong voice, as
Mr. Creakle's interpreter to the boys.

I was very much frightened, and said, I hoped so, if he pleased. 
I felt, all this while, as if my ear were blazing; he pinched it so
hard.

'I'll tell you what I am,' whispered Mr. Creakle, letting it go at
last, with a screw at parting that brought the water into my eyes. 
'I'm a Tartar.'

'A Tartar,' said the man with the wooden leg.

'When I say I'll do a thing, I do it,' said Mr. Creakle; 'and when
I say I will have a thing done, I will have it done.'

'- Will have a thing done, I will have it done,' repeated the man
with the wooden leg.

'I am a determined character,' said Mr. Creakle.  'That's what I
am.  I do my duty.  That's what I do.  My flesh and blood' - he
looked at Mrs. Creakle as he said this - 'when it rises against me,
is not my flesh and blood.  I discard it.  Has that fellow' - to
the man with the wooden leg -'been here again?'

'No,' was the answer.

'No,' said Mr. Creakle.  'He knows better.  He knows me.  Let him
keep away.  I say let him keep away,' said Mr. Creakle, striking
his hand upon the table, and looking at Mrs. Creakle, 'for he knows
me.  Now you have begun to know me too, my young friend, and you
may go.  Take him away.'

I was very glad to be ordered away, for Mrs. and Miss Creakle were
both wiping their eyes, and I felt as uncomfortable for them as I
did for myself.  But I had a petition on my mind which concerned me
so nearly, that I couldn't help saying, though I wondered at my own
courage:

'If you please, sir -'

Mr. Creakle whispered, 'Hah!  What's this?' and bent his eyes upon
me, as if he would have burnt me up with them.

'If you please, sir,' I faltered, 'if I might be allowed (I am very
sorry indeed, sir, for what I did) to take this writing off, before
the boys come back -'

Whether Mr. Creakle was in earnest, or whether he only did it to
frighten me, I don't know, but he made a burst out of his chair,
before which I precipitately retreated, without waiting for the
escort Of the man with the wooden leg, and never once stopped until
I reached my own bedroom, where, finding I was not pursued, I went
to bed, as it was time, and lay quaking, for a couple of hours.

Next morning Mr. Sharp came back.  Mr. Sharp was the first master,
and superior to Mr. Mell.  Mr. Mell took his meals with the boys,
but Mr. Sharp dined and supped at Mr. Creakle's table.  He was a
limp, delicate-looking gentleman, I thought, with a good deal of
nose, and a way of carrying his head on one side, as if it were a
little too heavy for him.  His hair was very smooth and wavy; but
I was informed by the very first boy who came back that it was a
wig (a second-hand one HE said), and that Mr. Sharp went out every
Saturday afternoon to get it curled.

It was no other than Tommy Traddles who gave me this piece of
intelligence.  He was the first boy who returned.  He introduced
himself by informing me that I should find his name on the right-
hand corner of the gate, over the top-bolt; upon that I said,
'Traddles?' to which he replied, 'The same,' and then he asked me
for a full account of myself and family.

It was a happy circumstance for me that Traddles came back first. 
He enjoyed my placard so much, that he saved me from the
embarrassment of either disclosure or concealment, by presenting me
to every other boy who came back, great or small, immediately on
his arrival, in this form of introduction, 'Look here!  Here's a
game!'  Happily, too, the greater part of the boys came back
low-spirited, and were not so boisterous at my expense as I had
expected.  Some of them certainly did dance about me like wild
Indians, and the greater part could not resist the temptation of
pretending that I was a dog, and patting and soothing me, lest I
should bite, and saying, 'Lie down, sir!' and calling me Towzer. 
This was naturally confusing, among so many strangers, and cost me
some tears, but on the whole it was much better than I had
anticipated.

I was not considered as being formally received into the school,
however, until J. Steerforth arrived.  Before this boy, who was
reputed to be a great scholar, and was very good-looking, and at
least half-a-dozen years my senior, I was carried as before a
magistrate.  He inquired, under a shed in the playground, into the
particulars of my punishment, and was pleased to express his
opinion that it was 'a jolly shame'; for which I became bound to
him ever afterwards.

'What money have you got, Copperfield?' he said, walking aside with
me when he had disposed of my affair in these terms.  I told him
seven shillings.

'You had better give it to me to take care of,' he said.  'At
least, you can if you like.  You needn't if you don't like.'

I hastened to comply with his friendly suggestion, and opening
Peggotty's purse, turned it upside down into his hand.

'Do you want to spend anything now?' he asked me.

'No thank you,' I replied.

'You can, if you like, you know,' said Steerforth.  'Say the word.'

'No, thank you, sir,' I repeated.

'Perhaps you'd like to spend a couple of shillings or so, in a
bottle of currant wine by and by, up in the bedroom?' said
Steerforth.  'You belong to my bedroom, I find.'

It certainly had not occurred to me before, but I said, Yes, I
should like that.

'Very good,' said Steerforth.  'You'll be glad to spend another
shilling or so, in almond cakes, I dare say?'

I said, Yes, I should like that, too.

'And another shilling or so in biscuits, and another in fruit, eh?'
said Steerforth.  'I say, young Copperfield, you're going it!'

I smiled because he smiled, but I was a little troubled in my mind,
too.

'Well!' said Steerforth.  'We must make it stretch as far as we
can; that's all.  I'll do the best in my power for you.  I can go
out when I like, and I'll smuggle the prog in.'  With these words
he put the money in his pocket, and kindly told me not to make
myself uneasy; he would take care it should be all right.
He was as good as his word, if that were all right which I had a
secret misgiving was nearly all wrong - for I feared it was a waste
of my mother's two half-crowns - though I had preserved the piece
of paper they were wrapped in: which was a precious saving.  When
we went upstairs to bed, he produced the whole seven
shillings'worth, and laid it out on my bed in the moonlight,
saying:

'There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you've got.'

I couldn't think of doing the honours of the feast, at my time of
life, while he was by; my hand shook at the very thought of it.  I
begged him to do me the favour of presiding; and my request being
seconded by the other boys who were in that room, he acceded to it,
and sat upon my pillow, handing round the viands - with perfect
fairness, I must say - and dispensing the currant wine in a little
glass without a foot, which was his own property.  As to me, I sat
on his left hand, and the rest were grouped about us, on the
nearest beds and on the floor.

How well I recollect our sitting there, talking in whispers; or
their talking, and my respectfully listening, I ought rather to
say; the moonlight falling a little way into the room, through the
window, painting a pale window on the floor, and the greater part
of us in shadow, except when Steerforth dipped a match into a
phosphorus-box, when he wanted to look for anything on the board,
and shed a blue glare over us that was gone directly!  A certain
mysterious feeling, consequent on the darkness, the secrecy of the
revel, and the whisper in which everything was said, steals over me
again, and I listen to all they tell me with a vague feeling of
solemnity and awe, which makes me glad that they are all so near,
and frightens me (though I feign to laugh) when Traddles pretends
to see a ghost in the corner.

I heard all kinds of things about the school and all belonging to
it.  I heard that Mr. Creakle had not preferred his claim to being
a Tartar without reason; that he was the sternest and most severe
of masters; that he laid about him, right and left, every day of
his life, charging in among the boys like a trooper, and slashing
away, unmercifully.  That he knew nothing himself, but the art of
slashing, being more ignorant (J. Steerforth said) than the lowest
boy in the school; that he had been, a good many years ago, a small
hop-dealer in the Borough, and had taken to the schooling business
after being bankrupt in hops, and making away with Mrs. Creakle's
money.  With a good deal more of that sort, which I wondered how
they knew.

I heard that the man with the wooden leg, whose name was Tungay,
was an obstinate barbarian who had formerly assisted in the hop
business, but had come into the scholastic line with Mr. Creakle,
in consequence, as was supposed among the boys, of his having
broken his leg in Mr. Creakle's service, and having done a deal of
dishonest work for him, and knowing his secrets.  I heard that with
the single exception of Mr. Creakle, Tungay considered the whole
establishment, masters and boys, as his natural enemies, and that
the only delight of his life was to be sour and malicious.  I heard
that Mr. Creakle had a son, who had not been Tungay's friend, and
who, assisting in the school, had once held some remonstrance with
his father on an occasion when its discipline was very cruelly
exercised, and was supposed, besides, to have protested against his
father's usage of his mother.  I heard that Mr. Creakle had turned
him out of doors, in consequence; and that Mrs. and Miss Creakle
had been in a sad way, ever since.

But the greatest wonder that I heard of Mr. Creakle was, there
being one boy in the school on whom he never ventured to lay a
hand, and that boy being J. Steerforth.  Steerforth himself
confirmed this when it was stated, and said that he should like to
begin to see him do it.  On being asked by a mild boy (not me) how
he would proceed if he did begin to see him do it, he dipped a
match into his phosphorus-box on purpose to shed a glare over his
reply, and said he would commence by knocking him down with a blow
on the forehead from the seven-and-sixpenny ink-bottle that was
always on the mantelpiece.  We sat in the dark for some time,
breathless.

I heard that Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both supposed to be
wretchedly paid; and that when there was hot and cold meat for
dinner at Mr. Creakle's table, Mr. Sharp was always expected to say
he preferred cold; which was again corroborated by J. Steerforth,
the only parlour-boarder.  I heard that Mr. Sharp's wig didn't fit
him; and that he needn't be so 'bounceable' - somebody else said
'bumptious' - about it, because his own red hair was very plainly
to be seen behind.

I heard that one boy, who was a coal-merchant's son, came as a
set-off against the coal-bill, and was called, on that account,
'Exchange or Barter' - a name selected from the arithmetic book as
expressing this arrangement.  I heard that the table beer was a
robbery of parents, and the pudding an imposition.  I heard that
Miss Creakle was regarded by the school in general as being in love
with Steerforth; and I am sure, as I sat in the dark, thinking of
his nice voice, and his fine face, and his easy manner, and his
curling hair, I thought it very likely.  I heard that Mr. Mell was
not a bad sort of fellow, but hadn't a sixpence to bless himself
with; and that there was no doubt that old Mrs. Mell, his mother,
was as poor as job.  I thought of my breakfast then, and what had
sounded like 'My Charley!' but I was, I am glad to remember, as
mute as a mouse about it.

The hearing of all this, and a good deal more, outlasted the
banquet some time.  The greater part of the guests had gone to bed
as soon as the eating and drinking were over; and we, who had
remained whispering and listening half-undressed, at last betook
ourselves to bed, too.

'Good night, young Copperfield,' said Steerforth.  'I'll take care
of you.'
'You're very kind,' I gratefully returned.  'I am very much obliged
to you.'

'You haven't got a sister, have you?' said Steerforth, yawning.

'No,' I answered.

'That's a pity,' said Steerforth.  'If you had had one, I should
think she would have been a pretty, timid, little, bright-eyed sort
of girl.  I should have liked to know her.  Good night, young
Copperfield.'

'Good night, sir,' I replied.

I thought of him very much after I went to bed, and raised myself,
I recollect, to look at him where he lay in the moonlight, with his
handsome face turned up, and his head reclining easily on his arm. 
He was a person of great power in my eyes; that was, of course, the
reason of my mind running on him.  No veiled future dimly glanced
upon him in the moonbeams.  There was no shadowy picture of his
footsteps, in the garden that I dreamed of walking in all night.

CHAPTER 7
MY 'FIRST HALF' AT SALEM HOUSE

School began in earnest next day.  A profound impression was made
upon me, I remember, by the roar of voices in the schoolroom
suddenly becoming hushed as death when Mr. Creakle entered after
breakfast, and stood in the doorway looking round upon us like a
giant in a story-book surveying his captives.

Tungay stood at Mr. Creakle's elbow.  He had no occasion, I
thought, to cry out 'Silence!' so ferociously, for the boys were
all struck speechless and motionless.

Mr. Creakle was seen to speak, and Tungay was heard, to this
effect.

'Now, boys, this is a new half.  Take care what you're about, in
this new half.  Come fresh up to the lessons, I advise you, for I
come fresh up to the punishment.  I won't flinch.  It will be of no
use your rubbing yourselves; you won't rub the marks out that I
shall give you.  Now get to work, every boy!'

When this dreadful exordium was over, and Tungay had stumped out
again, Mr. Creakle came to where I sat, and told me that if I were
famous for biting, he was famous for biting, too.  He then showed
me the cane, and asked me what I thought of THAT, for a tooth?  Was
it a sharp tooth, hey?  Was it a double tooth, hey?  Had it a deep
prong, hey?  Did it bite, hey?  Did it bite?  At every question he
gave me a fleshy cut with it that made me writhe; so I was very
soon made free of Salem House (as Steerforth said), and was very
soon in tears also.

Not that I mean to say these were special marks of distinction,
which only I received.  On the contrary, a large majority of the
boys (especially the smaller ones) were visited with similar
instances of notice, as Mr. Creakle made the round of the
schoolroom.  Half the establishment was writhing and crying, before
the day's work began; and how much of it had writhed and cried
before the day's work was over, I am really afraid to recollect,
lest I should seem to exaggerate.

I should think there never can have been a man who enjoyed his
profession more than Mr. Creakle did.  He had a delight in cutting
at the boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving appetite. 
I am confident that he couldn't resist a chubby boy, especially;
that there was a fascination in such a subject, which made him
restless in his mind, until he had scored and marked him for the
day.  I was chubby myself, and ought to know.  I am sure when I
think of the fellow now, my blood rises against him with the
disinterested indignation I should feel if I could have known all
about him without having ever been in his power; but it rises
hotly, because I know him to have been an incapable brute, who had
no more right to be possessed of the great trust he held, than to
be Lord High Admiral, or Commander-in-Chief - in either of which
capacities it is probable that he would have done infinitely less
mischief.

Miserable little propitiators of a remorseless Idol, how abject we
were to him!  What a launch in life I think it now, on looking
back, to be so mean and servile to a man of such parts and
pretensions!

Here I sit at the desk again, watching his eye - humbly watching
his eye, as he rules a ciphering-book for another victim whose
hands have just been flattened by that identical ruler, and who is
trying to wipe the sting out with a pocket-handkerchief.  I have
plenty to do.  I don't watch his eye in idleness, but because I am
morbidly attracted to it, in a dread desire to know what he will do
next, and whether it will be my turn to suffer, or somebody else's. 
A lane of small boys beyond me, with the same interest in his eye,
watch it too.  I think he knows it, though he pretends he don't. 
He makes dreadful mouths as he rules the ciphering-book; and now he
throws his eye sideways down our lane, and we all droop over our
books and tremble.  A moment afterwards we are again eyeing him. 
An unhappy culprit, found guilty of imperfect exercise, approaches
at his command.  The culprit falters excuses, and professes a
determination to do better tomorrow.  Mr. Creakle cuts a joke
before he beats him, and we laugh at it, - miserable little dogs,
we laugh, with our visages as white as ashes, and our hearts
sinking into our boots.

Here I sit at the desk again, on a drowsy summer afternoon.  A buzz
and hum go up around me, as if the boys were so many bluebottles. 
A cloggy sensation of the lukewarm fat of meat is upon me (we dined
an hour or two ago), and my head is as heavy as so much lead.  I
would give the world to go to sleep.  I sit with my eye on Mr.
Creakle, blinking at him like a young owl; when sleep overpowers me
for a minute, he still looms through my slumber, ruling those
ciphering-books, until he softly comes behind me and wakes me to
plainer perception of him, with a red ridge across my back.

Here I am in the playground, with my eye still fascinated by him,
though I can't see him.  The window at a little distance from which
I know he is having his dinner, stands for him, and I eye that
instead.  If he shows his face near it, mine assumes an imploring
and submissive expression.  If he looks out through the glass, the
boldest boy (Steerforth excepted) stops in the middle of a shout or
yell, and becomes contemplative.  One day, Traddles (the most
unfortunate boy in the world) breaks that window accidentally, with
a ball.  I shudder at this moment with the tremendous sensation of
seeing it done, and feeling that the ball has bounded on to Mr.
Creakle's sacred head.

Poor Traddles!  In a tight sky-blue suit that made his arms and
legs like German sausages, or roly-poly puddings, he was the
merriest and most miserable of all the boys.  He was always being
caned - I think he was caned every day that half-year, except one
holiday Monday when he was only ruler'd on both hands - and was
always going to write to his uncle about it, and never did.  After
laying his head on the desk for a little while, he would cheer up,
somehow, begin to laugh again, and draw skeletons all over his
slate, before his eyes were dry.  I used at first to wonder what
comfort Traddles found in drawing skeletons; and for some time
looked upon him as a sort of hermit, who reminded himself by those
symbols of mortality that caning couldn't last for ever.  But I
believe he only did it because they were easy, and didn't want any
features.

He was very honourable, Traddles was, and held it as a solemn duty
in the boys to stand by one another.  He suffered for this on
several occasions; and particularly once, when Steerforth laughed
in church, and the Beadle thought it was Traddles, and took him
out.  I see him now, going away in custody, despised by the
congregation.  He never said who was the real offender, though he
smarted for it next day, and was imprisoned so many hours that he
came forth with a whole churchyard-full of skeletons swarming all
over his Latin Dictionary.  But he had his reward.  Steerforth said
there was nothing of the sneak in Traddles, and we all felt that to
be the highest praise.  For my part, I could have gone through a
good deal (though I was much less brave than Traddles, and nothing
like so old) to have won such a recompense.

To see Steerforth walk to church before us, arm-in-arm with Miss
Creakle, was one of the great sights of my life.  I didn't think
Miss Creakle equal to little Em'ly in point of beauty, and I didn't
love her (I didn't dare); but I thought her a young lady of
extraordinary attractions, and in point of gentility not to be
surpassed.  When Steerforth, in white trousers, carried her parasol
for her, I felt proud to know him; and believed that she could not
choose but adore him with all her heart.  Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell
were both notable personages in my eyes; but Steerforth was to them
what the sun was to two stars.

Steerforth continued his protection of me, and proved a very useful
friend; since nobody dared to annoy one whom he honoured with his
countenance.  He couldn't - or at all events he didn't - defend me
from Mr. Creakle, who was very severe with me; but whenever I had
been treated worse than usual, he always told me that I wanted a
little of his pluck, and that he wouldn't have stood it himself;
which I felt he intended for encouragement, and considered to be
very kind of him.  There was one advantage, and only one that I
know of, in Mr. Creakle's severity.  He found my placard in his way
when he came up or down behind the form on which I sat, and wanted
to make a cut at me in passing; for this reason it was soon taken
off, and I saw it no more.

An accidental circumstance cemented the intimacy between Steerforth
and me, in a manner that inspired me with great pride and
satisfaction, though it sometimes led to inconvenience.  It
happened on one occasion, when he was doing me the honour of
talking to me in the playground, that I hazarded the observation
that something or somebody - I forget what now - was like something
or somebody in Peregrine Pickle.  He said nothing at the time; but
when I was going to bed at night, asked me if I had got that book?

I told him no, and explained how it was that I had read it, and all
those other books of which I have made mention.

'And do you recollect them?' Steerforth said.

'Oh yes,' I replied; I had a good memory, and I believed I
recollected them very well.

'Then I tell you what, young Copperfield,' said Steerforth, 'you
shall tell 'em to me.  I can't get to sleep very early at night,
and I generally wake rather early in the morning.  We'll go over
'em one after another.  We'll make some regular Arabian Nights of
it.'

I felt extremely flattered by this arrangement, and we commenced
carrying it into execution that very evening.  What ravages I
committed on my favourite authors in the course of my
interpretation of them, I am not in a condition to say, and should
be very unwilling to know; but I had a profound faith in them, and
I had, to the best of my belief, a simple, earnest manner of
narrating what I did narrate; and these qualities went a long way.

The drawback was, that I was often sleepy at night, or out of
spirits and indisposed to resume the story; and then it was rather
hard work, and it must be done; for to disappoint or to displease
Steerforth was of course out of the question.  In the morning, too,
when I felt weary, and should have enjoyed another hour's repose
very much, it was a tiresome thing to be roused, like the Sultana
Scheherazade, and forced into a long story before the getting-up
bell rang; but Steerforth was resolute; and as he explained to me,
in return, my sums and exercises, and anything in my tasks that was
too hard for me, I was no loser by the transaction.  Let me do
myself justice, however.  I was moved by no interested or selfish
motive, nor was I moved by fear of him.  I admired and loved him,
and his approval was return enough.  It was so precious to me that
I look back on these trifles, now, with an aching heart.

Steerforth was considerate, too; and showed his consideration, in
one particular instance, in an unflinching manner that was a little
tantalizing, I suspect, to poor Traddles and the rest.  Peggotty's
promised letter - what a comfortable letter it was! - arrived
before 'the half' was many weeks old; and with it a cake in a
perfect nest of oranges, and two bottles of cowslip wine.  This
treasure, as in duty bound, I laid at the feet of Steerforth, and
begged him to dispense.

'Now, I'll tell you what, young Copperfield,' said he: 'the wine
shall be kept to wet your whistle when you are story-telling.'

I blushed at the idea, and begged him, in my modesty, not to think
of it.  But he said he had observed I was sometimes hoarse - a
little roopy was his exact expression - and it should be, every
drop, devoted to the purpose he had mentioned.  Accordingly, it was
locked up in his box, and drawn off by himself in a phial, and
administered to me through a piece of quill in the cork, when I was
supposed to be in want of a restorative.  Sometimes, to make it a
more sovereign specific, he was so kind as to squeeze orange juice
into it, or to stir it up with ginger, or dissolve a peppermint
drop in it; and although I cannot assert that the flavour was
improved by these experiments, or that it was exactly the compound
one would have chosen for a stomachic, the last thing at night and
the first thing in the morning, I drank it gratefully and was very
sensible of his attention.

We seem, to me, to have been months over Peregrine, and months more
over the other stories.  The institution never flagged for want of
a story, I am certain; and the wine lasted out almost as well as
the matter.  Poor Traddles - I never think of that boy but with a
strange disposition to laugh, and with tears in my eyes - was a
sort of chorus, in general; and affected to be convulsed with mirth
at the comic parts, and to be overcome with fear when there was any
passage of an alarming character in the narrative.  This rather put
me out, very often.  It was a great jest of his, I recollect, to
pretend that he couldn't keep his teeth from chattering, whenever
mention was made of an Alguazill in connexion with the adventures
of Gil Blas; and I remember that when Gil Blas met the captain of
the robbers in Madrid, this unlucky joker counterfeited such an
ague of terror, that he was overheard by Mr. Creakle, who was
prowling about the passage, and handsomely flogged for disorderly
conduct in the bedroom.
Whatever I had within me that was romantic and dreamy, was
encouraged by so much story-telling in the dark; and in that
respect the pursuit may not have been very profitable to me.  But
the being cherished as a kind of plaything in my room, and the
consciousness that this accomplishment of mine was bruited about
among the boys, and attracted a good deal of notice to me though I
was the youngest there, stimulated me to exertion.  In a school
carried on by sheer cruelty, whether it is presided over by a dunce
or not, there is not likely to be much learnt.  I believe our boys
were, generally, as ignorant a set as any schoolboys in existence;
they were too much troubled and knocked about to learn; they could
no more do that to advantage, than any one can do anything to
advantage in a life of constant misfortune, torment, and worry. 
But my little vanity, and Steerforth's help, urged me on somehow;
and without saving me from much, if anything, in the way of
punishment, made me, for the time I was there, an exception to the
general body, insomuch that I did steadily pick up some crumbs of
knowledge.

In this I was much assisted by Mr. Mell, who had a liking for me
that I am grateful to remember.  It always gave me pain to observe
that Steerforth treated him with systematic disparagement, and
seldom lost an occasion of wounding his feelings, or inducing
others to do so.  This troubled me the more for a long time,
because I had soon told Steerforth, from whom I could no more keep
such a secret, than I could keep a cake or any other tangible
possession, about the two old women Mr. Mell had taken me to see;
and I was always afraid that Steerforth would let it out, and twit
him with it.

We little thought, any one of us, I dare say, when I ate my
breakfast that first morning, and went to sleep under the shadow of
the peacock's feathers to the sound of the flute, what consequences
would come of the introduction into those alms-houses of my
insignificant person.  But the visit had its unforeseen
consequences; and of a serious sort, too, in their way.

One day when Mr. Creakle kept the house from indisposition, which
naturally diffused a lively joy through the school, there was a
good deal of noise in the course of the morning's work.  The great
relief and satisfaction experienced by the boys made them difficult
to manage; and though the dreaded Tungay brought his wooden leg in
twice or thrice, and took notes of the principal offenders' names,
no great impression was made by it, as they were pretty sure of
getting into trouble tomorrow, do what they would, and thought it
wise, no doubt, to enjoy themselves today.

It was, properly, a half-holiday; being Saturday.  But as the noise
in the playground would have disturbed Mr. Creakle, and the weather
was not favourable for going out walking, we were ordered into
school in the afternoon, and set some lighter tasks than usual,
which were made for the occasion.  It was the day of the week on
which Mr. Sharp went out to get his wig curled; so Mr. Mell, who
always did the drudgery, whatever it was, kept school by himself.
If I could associate the idea of a bull or a bear with anyone so
mild as Mr. Mell, I should think of him, in connexion with that
afternoon when the uproar was at its height, as of one of those
animals, baited by a thousand dogs.  I recall him bending his
aching head, supported on his bony hand, over the book on his desk,
and wretchedly endeavouring to get on with his tiresome work,
amidst an uproar that might have made the Speaker of the House of
Commons giddy.  Boys started in and out of their places, playing at
puss in the corner with other boys; there were laughing boys,
singing boys, talking boys, dancing boys, howling boys; boys
shuffled with their feet, boys whirled about him, grinning, making
faces, mimicking him behind his back and before his eyes; mimicking
his poverty, his boots, his coat, his mother, everything belonging
to him that they should have had consideration for.

'Silence!' cried Mr. Mell, suddenly rising up, and striking his
desk with the book.  'What does this mean!  It's impossible to bear
it.  It's maddening.  How can you do it to me, boys?'

It was my book that he struck his desk with; and as I stood beside
him, following his eye as it glanced round the room, I saw the boys
all stop, some suddenly surprised, some half afraid, and some sorry
perhaps.

Steerforth's place was at the bottom of the school, at the opposite
end of the long room.  He was lounging with his back against the
wall, and his hands in his pockets, and looked at Mr. Mell with his
mouth shut up as if he were whistling, when Mr. Mell looked at him.

'Silence, Mr. Steerforth!' said Mr. Mell.

'Silence yourself,' said Steerforth, turning red.  'Whom are you
talking to?'

'Sit down,' said Mr. Mell.

'Sit down yourself,' said Steerforth, 'and mind your business.'

There was a titter, and some applause; but Mr. Mell was so white,
that silence immediately succeeded; and one boy, who had darted out
behind him to imitate his mother again, changed his mind, and
pretended to want a pen mended.

'If you think, Steerforth,' said Mr. Mell, 'that I am not
acquainted with the power you can establish over any mind here' -
he laid his hand, without considering what he did (as I supposed),
upon my head - 'or that I have not observed you, within a few
minutes, urging your juniors on to every sort of outrage against
me, you are mistaken.'

'I don't give myself the trouble of thinking at all about you,'
said Steerforth, coolly; 'so I'm not mistaken, as it happens.'

'And when you make use of your position of favouritism here, sir,'
pursued Mr. Mell, with his lip trembling very much, 'to insult a
gentleman -'

'A what? - where is he?' said Steerforth.

Here somebody cried out, 'Shame, J. Steerforth!  Too bad!'  It was
Traddles; whom Mr. Mell instantly discomfited by bidding him hold
his tongue.

- 'To insult one who is not fortunate in life, sir, and who never
gave you the least offence, and the many reasons for not insulting
whom you are old enough and wise enough to understand,' said Mr.
Mell, with his lips trembling more and more, 'you commit a mean and
base action.  You can sit down or stand up as you please, sir. 
Copperfield, go on.'

'Young Copperfield,' said Steerforth, coming forward up the room,
'stop a bit.  I tell you what, Mr. Mell, once for all.  When you
take the liberty of calling me mean or base, or anything of that
sort, you are an impudent beggar.  You are always a beggar, you
know; but when you do that, you are an impudent beggar.'

I am not clear whether he was going to strike Mr. Mell, or Mr. Mell
was going to strike him, or there was any such intention on either
side.  I saw a rigidity come upon the whole school as if they had
been turned into stone, and found Mr. Creakle in the midst of us,
with Tungay at his side, and Mrs. and Miss Creakle looking in at
the door as if they were frightened.  Mr. Mell, with his elbows on
his desk and his face in his hands, sat, for some moments, quite
still.

'Mr. Mell,' said Mr. Creakle, shaking him by the arm; and his
whisper was so audible now, that Tungay felt it unnecessary to
repeat his words; 'you have not forgotten yourself, I hope?'

'No, sir, no,' returned the Master, showing his face, and shaking
his head, and rubbing his hands in great agitation.  'No, sir.  No. 
I have remembered myself, I - no, Mr. Creakle, I have not forgotten
myself, I - I have remembered myself, sir.  I - I - could wish you
had remembered me a little sooner, Mr. Creakle.  It - it - would
have been more kind, sir, more just, sir.  It would have saved me
something, sir.'

Mr. Creakle, looking hard at Mr. Mell, put his hand on Tungay's
shoulder, and got his feet upon the form close by, and sat upon the
desk.  After still looking hard at Mr. Mell from his throne, as he
shook his head, and rubbed his hands, and remained in the same
state of agitation, Mr. Creakle turned to Steerforth, and said:

'Now, sir, as he don't condescend to tell me, what is this?'

Steerforth evaded the question for a little while; looking in scorn
and anger on his opponent, and remaining silent.  I could not help
thinking even in that interval, I remember, what a noble fellow he
was in appearance, and how homely and plain Mr. Mell looked opposed
to him.

'What did he mean by talking about favourites, then?' said
Steerforth at length.

'Favourites?' repeated Mr. Creakle, with the veins in his forehead
swelling quickly.  'Who talked about favourites?'

'He did,' said Steerforth.

'And pray, what did you mean by that, sir?' demanded Mr. Creakle,
turning angrily on his assistant.

'I meant, Mr. Creakle,' he returned in a low voice, 'as I said;
that no pupil had a right to avail himself of his position of
favouritism to degrade me.'

'To degrade YOU?' said Mr. Creakle.  'My stars!  But give me leave
to ask you, Mr. What's-your-name'; and here Mr. Creakle folded his
arms, cane and all, upon his chest, and made such a knot of his
brows that his little eyes were hardly visible below them;
'whether, when you talk about favourites, you showed proper respect
to me?  To me, sir,' said Mr. Creakle, darting his head at him
suddenly, and drawing it back again, 'the principal of this
establishment, and your employer.'

'It was not judicious, sir, I am willing to admit,' said Mr. Mell. 
'I should not have done so, if I had been cool.'

Here Steerforth struck in.

'Then he said I was mean, and then he said I was base, and then I
called him a beggar.  If I had been cool, perhaps I shouldn't have
called him a beggar.  But I did, and I am ready to take the
consequences of it.'

Without considering, perhaps, whether there were any consequences
to be taken, I felt quite in a glow at this gallant speech.  It
made an impression on the boys too, for there was a low stir among
them, though no one spoke a word.

'I am surprised, Steerforth - although your candour does you
honour,' said Mr. Creakle, 'does you honour, certainly - I am
surprised, Steerforth, I must say, that you should attach such an
epithet to any person employed and paid in Salem House, sir.'

Steerforth gave a short laugh.

'That's not an answer, sir,' said Mr. Creakle, 'to my remark.  I
expect more than that from you, Steerforth.'

If Mr. Mell looked homely, in my eyes, before the handsome boy, it
would be quite impossible to say how homely Mr. Creakle looked.
'Let him deny it,' said Steerforth.

'Deny that he is a beggar, Steerforth?' cried Mr. Creakle.  'Why,
where does he go a-begging?'

'If he is not a beggar himself, his near relation's one,' said
Steerforth.  'It's all the same.'

He glanced at me, and Mr. Mell's hand gently patted me upon the
shoulder.  I looked up with a flush upon my face and remorse in my
heart, but Mr. Mell's eyes were fixed on Steerforth.  He continued
to pat me kindly on the shoulder, but he looked at him.

'Since you expect me, Mr. Creakle, to justify myself,' said
Steerforth, 'and to say what I mean, - what I have to say is, that
his mother lives on charity in an alms-house.'

Mr. Mell still looked at him, and still patted me kindly on the
shoulder, and said to himself, in a whisper, if I heard right:
'Yes, I thought so.'

Mr. Creakle turned to his assistant, with a severe frown and
laboured politeness:

'Now, you hear what this gentleman says, Mr. Mell.  Have the
goodness, if you please, to set him right before the assembled
school.'

'He is right, sir, without correction,' returned Mr. Mell, in the
midst of a dead silence; 'what he has said is true.'

'Be so good then as declare publicly, will you,' said Mr. Creakle,
putting his head on one side, and rolling his eyes round the
school, 'whether it ever came to my knowledge until this moment?'

'I believe not directly,' he returned.

'Why, you know not,' said Mr. Creakle.  'Don't you, man?'

'I apprehend you never supposed my worldly circumstances to be very
good,' replied the assistant.  'You know what my position is, and
always has been, here.'

'I apprehend, if you come to that,' said Mr. Creakle, with his
veins swelling again bigger than ever, 'that you've been in a wrong
position altogether, and mistook this for a charity school.  Mr.
Mell, we'll part, if you please.  The sooner the better.'

'There is no time,' answered Mr. Mell, rising, 'like the present.'

'Sir, to you!' said Mr. Creakle.

'I take my leave of you, Mr. Creakle, and all of you,' said Mr.
Mell, glancing round the room, and again patting me gently on the
shoulders.  'James Steerforth, the best wish I can leave you is
that you may come to be ashamed of what you have done today.  At
present I would prefer to see you anything rather than a friend, to
me, or to anyone in whom I feel an interest.'

Once more he laid his hand upon my shoulder; and then taking his
flute and a few books from his desk, and leaving the key in it for
his successor, he went out of the school, with his property under
his arm.  Mr. Creakle then made a speech, through Tungay, in which
he thanked Steerforth for asserting (though perhaps too warmly) the
independence and respectability of Salem House; and which he wound
up by shaking hands with Steerforth, while we gave three cheers -
I did not quite know what for, but I supposed for Steerforth, and
so joined in them ardently, though I felt miserable.  Mr. Creakle
then caned Tommy Traddles for being discovered in tears, instead of
cheers, on account of Mr. Mell's departure; and went back to his
sofa, or his bed, or wherever he had come from.

We were left to ourselves now, and looked very blank, I recollect,
on one another.  For myself, I felt so much self-reproach and
contrition for my part in what had happened, that nothing would
have enabled me to keep back my tears but the fear that Steerforth,
who often looked at me, I saw, might think it unfriendly - or, I
should rather say, considering our relative ages, and the feeling
with which I regarded him, undutiful - if I showed the emotion
which distressed me.  He was very angry with Traddles, and said he
was glad he had caught it.

Poor Traddles, who had passed the stage of lying with his head upon
the desk, and was relieving himself as usual with a burst of
skeletons, said he didn't care.  Mr. Mell was ill-used.

'Who has ill-used him, you girl?' said Steerforth.

'Why, you have,' returned Traddles.

'What have I done?' said Steerforth.

'What have you done?' retorted Traddles.  'Hurt his feelings, and
lost him his situation.'

'His feelings?' repeated Steerforth disdainfully.  'His feelings
will soon get the better of it, I'll be bound.  His feelings are
not like yours, Miss Traddles.  As to his situation - which was a
precious one, wasn't it? - do you suppose I am not going to write
home, and take care that he gets some money?  Polly?'

We thought this intention very noble in Steerforth, whose mother
was a widow, and rich, and would do almost anything, it was said,
that he asked her.  We were all extremely glad to see Traddles so
put down, and exalted Steerforth to the skies: especially when he
told us, as he condescended to do, that what he had done had been
done expressly for us, and for our cause; and that he had conferred
a great boon upon us by unselfishly doing it.
But I must say that when I was going on with a story in the dark
that night, Mr. Mell's old flute seemed more than once to sound
mournfully in my ears; and that when at last Steerforth was tired,
and I lay down in my bed, I fancied it playing so sorrowfully
somewhere, that I was quite wretched.

I soon forgot him in the contemplation of Steerforth, who, in an
easy amateur way, and without any book (he seemed to me to know
everything by heart), took some of his classes until a new master
was found.  The new master came from a grammar school; and before
he entered on his duties, dined in the parlour one day, to be
introduced to Steerforth.  Steerforth approved of him highly, and
told us he was a Brick.  Without exactly understanding what learned
distinction was meant by this, I respected him greatly for it, and
had no doubt whatever of his superior knowledge: though he never
took the pains with me - not that I was anybody - that Mr. Mell had
taken.

There was only one other event in this half-year, out of the daily
school-life, that made an impression upon me which still survives. 
It survives for many reasons.

One afternoon, when we were all harassed into a state of dire
confusion, and Mr. Creakle was laying about him dreadfully, Tungay
came in, and called out in his usual strong way: 'Visitors for
Copperfield!'

A few words were interchanged between him and Mr. Creakle, as, who
the visitors were, and what room they were to be shown into; and
then I, who had, according to custom, stood up on the announcement
being made, and felt quite faint with astonishment, was told to go
by the back stairs and get a clean frill on, before I repaired to
the dining-room.  These orders I obeyed, in such a flutter and
hurry of my young spirits as I had never known before; and when I
got to the parlour door, and the thought came into my head that it
might be my mother - I had only thought of Mr. or Miss Murdstone
until then - I drew back my hand from the lock, and stopped to have
a sob before I went in.

At first I saw nobody; but feeling a pressure against the door, I
looked round it, and there, to my amazement, were Mr. Peggotty and
Ham, ducking at me with their hats, and squeezing one another
against the wall.  I could not help laughing; but it was much more
in the pleasure of seeing them, than at the appearance they made. 
We shook hands in a very cordial way; and I laughed and laughed,
until I pulled out my pocket-handkerchief and wiped my eyes.

Mr. Peggotty (who never shut his mouth once, I remember, during the
visit) showed great concern when he saw me do this, and nudged Ham
to say something.

'Cheer up, Mas'r Davy bor'!' said Ham, in his simpering way.  'Why,
how you have growed!'

'Am I grown?' I said, drying my eyes.  I was not crying at anything
in particular that I know of; but somehow it made me cry, to see
old friends.

'Growed, Mas'r Davy bor'?  Ain't he growed!' said Ham.

'Ain't he growed!' said Mr. Peggotty.

They made me laugh again by laughing at each other, and then we all
three laughed until I was in danger of crying again.

'Do you know how mama is, Mr. Peggotty?' I said.  'And how my dear,
dear, old Peggotty is?'

'Oncommon,' said Mr. Peggotty.

'And little Em'ly, and Mrs. Gummidge?'

'On - common,' said Mr. Peggotty.

There was a silence.  Mr. Peggotty, to relieve it, took two
prodigious lobsters, and an enormous crab, and a large canvas bag
of shrimps, out of his pockets, and piled them up in Ham's arms.

'You see,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'knowing as you was partial to a
little relish with your wittles when you was along with us, we took
the liberty.  The old Mawther biled 'em, she did.  Mrs. Gummidge
biled 'em.  Yes,' said Mr. Peggotty, slowly, who I thought appeared
to stick to the subject on account of having no other subject
ready, 'Mrs. Gummidge, I do assure you, she biled 'em.'

I expressed my thanks; and Mr. Peggotty, after looking at Ham, who
stood smiling sheepishly over the shellfish, without making any
attempt to help him, said:

'We come, you see, the wind and tide making in our favour, in one
of our Yarmouth lugs to Gravesen'.  My sister she wrote to me the
name of this here place, and wrote to me as if ever I chanced to
come to Gravesen', I was to come over and inquire for Mas'r Davy
and give her dooty, humbly wishing him well and reporting of the
fam'ly as they was oncommon toe-be-sure.  Little Em'ly, you see,
she'll write to my sister when I go back, as I see you and as you
was similarly oncommon, and so we make it quite a merry-
go-rounder.'

I was obliged to consider a little before I understood what Mr.
Peggotty meant by this figure, expressive of a complete circle of
intelligence.  I then thanked him heartily; and said, with a
consciousness of reddening, that I supposed little Em'ly was
altered too, since we used to pick up shells and pebbles on the
beach?

'She's getting to be a woman, that's wot she's getting to be,' said
Mr. Peggotty.  'Ask HIM.'
He meant Ham, who beamed with delight and assent over the bag of
shrimps.

'Her pretty face!' said Mr. Peggotty, with his own shining like a
light.

'Her learning!' said Ham.

'Her writing!' said Mr. Peggotty.  'Why it's as black as jet!  And
so large it is, you might see it anywheres.'

It was perfectly delightful to behold with what enthusiasm Mr.
Peggotty became inspired when he thought of his little favourite. 
He stands before me again, his bluff hairy face irradiating with a
joyful love and pride, for which I can find no description.  His
honest eyes fire up, and sparkle, as if their depths were stirred
by something bright.  His broad chest heaves with pleasure.  His
strong loose hands clench themselves, in his earnestness; and he
emphasizes what he says with a right arm that shows, in my pigmy
view, like a sledge-hammer.

Ham was quite as earnest as he.  I dare say they would have said
much more about her, if they had not been abashed by the unexpected
coming in of Steerforth, who, seeing me in a corner speaking with
two strangers, stopped in a song he was singing, and said: 'I
didn't know you were here, young Copperfield!' (for it was not the
usual visiting room) and crossed by us on his way out.

I am not sure whether it was in the pride of having such a friend
as Steerforth, or in the desire to explain to him how I came to
have such a friend as Mr. Peggotty, that I called to him as he was
going away.  But I said, modestly - Good Heaven, how it all comes
back to me this long time afterwards! -

'Don't go, Steerforth, if you please.  These are two Yarmouth
boatmen - very kind, good people - who are relations of my nurse,
and have come from Gravesend to see me.'

'Aye, aye?' said Steerforth, returning.  'I am glad to see them. 
How are you both?'

There was an ease in his manner - a gay and light manner it was,
but not swaggering - which I still believe to have borne a kind of
enchantment with it.  I still believe him, in virtue of this
carriage, his animal spirits, his delightful voice, his handsome
face and figure, and, for aught I know, of some inborn power of
attraction besides (which I think a few people possess), to have
carried a spell with him to which it was a natural weakness to
yield, and which not many persons could withstand.  I could not but
see how pleased they were with him, and how they seemed to open
their hearts to him in a moment.

'You must let them know at home, if you please, Mr. Peggotty,' I
said, 'when that letter is sent, that Mr. Steerforth is very kind
to me, and that I don't know what I should ever do here without
him.'

'Nonsense!' said Steerforth, laughing.  'You mustn't tell them
anything of the sort.'

'And if Mr. Steerforth ever comes into Norfolk or Suffolk, Mr.
Peggotty,' I said, 'while I am there, you may depend upon it I
shall bring him to Yarmouth, if he will let me, to see your house. 
You never saw such a good house, Steerforth.  It's made out of a
boat!'

'Made out of a boat, is it?' said Steerforth.  'It's the right sort
of a house for such a thorough-built boatman.'

'So 'tis, sir, so 'tis, sir,' said Ham, grinning.  'You're right,
young gen'l'm'n!  Mas'r Davy bor', gen'l'm'n's right.  A thorough-
built boatman!  Hor, hor!  That's what he is, too!'

Mr. Peggotty was no less pleased than his nephew, though his
modesty forbade him to claim a personal compliment so vociferously.

'Well, sir,' he said, bowing and chuckling, and tucking in the ends
of his neckerchief at his breast: 'I thankee, sir, I thankee!  I do
my endeavours in my line of life, sir.'

'The best of men can do no more, Mr. Peggotty,' said Steerforth. 
He had got his name already.

'I'll pound it, it's wot you do yourself, sir,' said Mr. Peggotty,
shaking his head, 'and wot you do well - right well!  I thankee,
sir.  I'm obleeged to you, sir, for your welcoming manner of me. 
I'm rough, sir, but I'm ready - least ways, I hope I'm ready, you
unnerstand.  My house ain't much for to see, sir, but it's hearty
at your service if ever you should come along with Mas'r Davy to
see it.  I'm a reg'lar Dodman, I am,' said Mr. Peggotty, by which
he meant snail, and this was in allusion to his being slow to go,
for he had attempted to go after every sentence, and had somehow or
other come back again; 'but I wish you both well, and I wish you
happy!'

Ham echoed this sentiment, and we parted with them in the heartiest
manner.  I was almost tempted that evening to tell Steerforth about
pretty little Em'ly, but I was too timid of mentioning her name,
and too much afraid of his laughing at me.  I remember that I
thought a good deal, and in an uneasy sort of way, about Mr.
Peggotty having said that she was getting on to be a woman; but I
decided that was nonsense.

We transported the shellfish, or the 'relish' as Mr. Peggotty had
modestly called it, up into our room unobserved, and made a great
supper that evening.  But Traddles couldn't get happily out of it. 
He was too unfortunate even to come through a supper like anybody
else.  He was taken ill in the night - quite prostrate he was - in
consequence of Crab; and after being drugged with black draughts
and blue pills, to an extent which Demple (whose father was a
doctor) said was enough to undermine a horse's constitution,
received a caning and six chapters of Greek Testament for refusing
to confess.

The rest of the half-year is a jumble in my recollection of the
daily strife and struggle of our lives; of the waning summer and
the changing season; of the frosty mornings when we were rung out
of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the dark nights when we were
rung into bed again; of the evening schoolroom dimly lighted and
indifferently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which was nothing
but a great shivering-machine; of the alternation of boiled beef
with roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mutton; of clods of
bread-and-butter, dog's-eared lesson-books, cracked slates,
tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy
Sundays, suet-puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink, surrounding
all.

I well remember though, how the distant idea of the holidays, after
seeming for an immense time to be a stationary speck, began to come
towards us, and to grow and grow.  How from counting months, we
came to weeks, and then to days; and how I then began to be afraid
that I should not be sent for and when I learnt from Steerforth
that I had been sent for, and was certainly to go home, had dim
forebodings that I might break my leg first.  How the breaking-up
day changed its place fast, at last, from the week after next to
next week, this week, the day after tomorrow, tomorrow, today,
tonight - when I was inside the Yarmouth mail, and going home.

I had many a broken sleep inside the Yarmouth mail, and many an
incoherent dream of all these things.  But when I awoke at
intervals, the ground outside the window was not the playground of
Salem House, and the sound in my ears was not the sound of Mr.
Creakle giving it to Traddles, but the sound of the coachman
touching up the horses.

CHAPTER 8
MY HOLIDAYS.  ESPECIALLY ONE HAPPY AFTERNOON

When we arrived before day at the inn where the mail stopped, which
was not the inn where my friend the waiter lived, I was shown up to
a nice little bedroom, with DOLPHIN painted on the door.  Very cold
I was, I know, notwithstanding the hot tea they had given me before
a large fire downstairs; and very glad I was to turn into the
Dolphin's bed, pull the Dolphin's blankets round my head, and go to
sleep.

Mr. Barkis the carrier was to call for me in the morning at nine
o'clock.  I got up at eight, a little giddy from the shortness of
my night's rest, and was ready for him before the appointed time. 
He received me exactly as if not five minutes had elapsed since we
were last together, and I had only been into the hotel to get
change for sixpence, or something of that sort.

As soon as I and my box were in the cart, and the carrier seated,
the lazy horse walked away with us all at his accustomed pace.

'You look very well, Mr. Barkis,' I said, thinking he would like to
know it.

Mr. Barkis rubbed his cheek with his cuff, and then looked at his
cuff as if he expected to find some of the bloom upon it; but made
no other acknowledgement of the compliment.

'I gave your message, Mr. Barkis,' I said: 'I wrote to Peggotty.'

'Ah!' said Mr. Barkis.

Mr. Barkis seemed gruff, and answered drily.

'Wasn't it right, Mr. Barkis?' I asked, after a little hesitation.

'Why, no,' said Mr. Barkis.

'Not the message?'

'The message was right enough, perhaps,' said Mr. Barkis; 'but it
come to an end there.'

Not understanding what he meant, I repeated inquisitively: 'Came to
an end, Mr. Barkis?'

'Nothing come of it,' he explained, looking at me sideways.  'No
answer.'

'There was an answer expected, was there, Mr. Barkis?' said I,
opening my eyes.  For this was a new light to me.

'When a man says he's willin',' said Mr. Barkis, turning his glance
slowly on me again, 'it's as much as to say, that man's a-waitin'
for a answer.'

'Well, Mr. Barkis?'

'Well,' said Mr. Barkis, carrying his eyes back to his horse's
ears; 'that man's been a-waitin' for a answer ever since.'

'Have you told her so, Mr. Barkis?'

'No - no,' growled Mr. Barkis, reflecting about it.  'I ain't got
no call to go and tell her so.  I never said six words to her
myself, I ain't a-goin' to tell her so.'

'Would you like me to do it, Mr. Barkis?' said I, doubtfully.
'You might tell her, if you would,' said Mr. Barkis, with another
slow look at me, 'that Barkis was a-waitin' for a answer.  Says you
- what name is it?'

'Her name?'

'Ah!' said Mr. Barkis, with a nod of his head.

'Peggotty.'

'Chrisen name?  Or nat'ral name?' said Mr. Barkis.

'Oh, it's not her Christian name.  Her Christian name is Clara.'

'Is it though?' said Mr. Barkis.

He seemed to find an immense fund of reflection in this
circumstance, and sat pondering and inwardly whistling for some
time.

'Well!' he resumed at length.  'Says you, "Peggotty!  Barkis is
waitin' for a answer."  Says she, perhaps, "Answer to what?"  Says
you, "To what I told you."  "What is that?" says she.  "Barkis is
willin'," says you.'

This extremely artful suggestion Mr. Barkis accompanied with a
nudge of his elbow that gave me quite a stitch in my side.  After
that, he slouched over his horse in his usual manner; and made no
other reference to the subject except, half an hour afterwards,
taking a piece of chalk from his pocket, and writing up, inside the
tilt of the cart, 'Clara Peggotty' - apparently as a private
memorandum.

Ah, what a strange feeling it was to be going home when it was not
home, and to find that every object I looked at, reminded me of the
happy old home, which was like a dream I could never dream again!
The days when my mother and I and Peggotty were all in all to one
another, and there was no one to come between us, rose up before me
so sorrowfully on the road, that I am not sure I was glad to be
there - not sure but that I would rather have remained away, and
forgotten it in Steerforth's company.  But there I was; and soon I
was at our house, where the bare old elm-trees wrung their many
hands in the bleak wintry air, and shreds of the old rooks'-nests
drifted away upon the wind.

The carrier put my box down at the garden-gate, and left me.  I
walked along the path towards the house, glancing at the windows,
and fearing at every step to see Mr. Murdstone or Miss Murdstone
lowering out of one of them.  No face appeared, however; and being
come to the house, and knowing how to open the door, before dark,
without knocking, I went in with a quiet, timid step.

God knows how infantine the memory may have been, that was awakened
within me by the sound of my mother's voice in the old parlour,
when I set foot in the hall.  She was singing in a low tone.  I
think I must have lain in her arms, and heard her singing so to me
when I was but a baby.  The strain was new to me, and yet it was so
old that it filled my heart brim-full; like a friend come back from
a long absence.

I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother
murmured her song, that she was alone.  And I went softly into the
room.  She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny
hand she held against her neck.  Her eyes were looking down upon
its face, and she sat singing to it.  I was so far right, that she
had no other companion.

I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out.  But seeing me, she
called me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the
room to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and
laid my head down on her bosom near the little creature that was
nestling there, and put its hand to my lips.

I wish I had died.  I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my
heart!  I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have
been since.

'He is your brother,' said my mother, fondling me.  'Davy, my
pretty boy!  My poor child!'  Then she kissed me more and more, and
clasped me round the neck.  This she was doing when Peggotty came
running in, and bounced down on the ground beside us, and went mad
about us both for a quarter of an hour.

It seemed that I had not been expected so soon, the carrier being
much before his usual time.  It seemed, too, that Mr. and Miss
Murdstone had gone out upon a visit in the neighbourhood, and would
not return before night.  I had never hoped for this.  I had never
thought it possible that we three could be together undisturbed,
once more; and I felt, for the time, as if the old days were come
back.

We dined together by the fireside.  Peggotty was in attendance to
wait upon us, but my mother wouldn't let her do it, and made her
dine with us.  I had my own old plate, with a brown view of a
man-of-war in full sail upon it, which Peggotty had hoarded
somewhere all the time I had been away, and would not have had
broken, she said, for a hundred pounds.  I had my own old mug with
David on it, and my own old little knife and fork that wouldn't
cut.

While we were at table, I thought it a favourable occasion to tell
Peggotty about Mr. Barkis, who, before I had finished what I had to
tell her, began to laugh, and throw her apron over her face.

'Peggotty,' said my mother.  'What's the matter?'

Peggotty only laughed the more, and held her apron tight over her
face when my mother tried to pull it away, and sat as if her head
were in a bag.

'What are you doing, you stupid creature?' said my mother,
laughing.

'Oh, drat the man!' cried Peggotty.  'He wants to marry me.'

'It would be a very good match for you; wouldn't it?' said my
mother.

'Oh!  I don't know,' said Peggotty.  'Don't ask me.  I wouldn't
have him if he was made of gold.  Nor I wouldn't have anybody.'

'Then, why don't you tell him so, you ridiculous thing?' said my
mother.

'Tell him so,' retorted Peggotty, looking out of her apron.  'He
has never said a word to me about it.  He knows better.  If he was
to make so bold as say a word to me, I should slap his face.'

Her own was as red as ever I saw it, or any other face, I think;
but she only covered it again, for a few moments at a time, when
she was taken with a violent fit of laughter; and after two or
three of those attacks, went on with her dinner.

I remarked that my mother, though she smiled when Peggotty looked
at her, became more serious and thoughtful.  I had seen at first
that she was changed.  Her face was very pretty still, but it
looked careworn, and too delicate; and her hand was so thin and
white that it seemed to me to be almost transparent.  But the
change to which I now refer was superadded to this: it was in her
manner, which became anxious and fluttered.  At last she said,
putting out her hand, and laying it affectionately on the hand of
her old servant,

'Peggotty, dear, you are not going to be married?'

'Me, ma'am?' returned Peggotty, staring.  'Lord bless you, no!'

'Not just yet?' said my mother, tenderly.

'Never!' cried Peggotty.

My mother took her hand, and said:

'Don't leave me, Peggotty.  Stay with me.  It will not be for long,
perhaps.  What should I ever do without you!'

'Me leave you, my precious!' cried Peggotty.  'Not for all the
world and his wife.  Why, what's put that in your silly little
head?' - For Peggotty had been used of old to talk to my mother
sometimes like a child.

But my mother made no answer, except to thank her, and Peggotty
went running on in her own fashion.

'Me leave you?  I think I see myself.  Peggotty go away from you? 
I should like to catch her at it!  No, no, no,' said Peggotty,
shaking her head, and folding her arms; 'not she, my dear.  It
isn't that there ain't some Cats that would be well enough pleased
if she did, but they sha'n't be pleased.  They shall be aggravated. 
I'll stay with you till I am a cross cranky old woman.  And when
I'm too deaf, and too lame, and too blind, and too mumbly for want
of teeth, to be of any use at all, even to be found fault with,
than I shall go to my Davy, and ask him to take me in.'

'And, Peggotty,' says I, 'I shall be glad to see you, and I'll make
you as welcome as a queen.'

'Bless your dear heart!' cried Peggotty.  'I know you will!'  And
she kissed me beforehand, in grateful acknowledgement of my
hospitality.  After that, she covered her head up with her apron
again and had another laugh about Mr. Barkis.  After that, she took
the baby out of its little cradle, and nursed it.  After that, she
cleared the dinner table; after that, came in with another cap on,
and her work-box, and the yard-measure, and the bit of wax-candle,
all just the same as ever.

We sat round the fire, and talked delightfully.  I told them what
a hard master Mr. Creakle was, and they pitied me very much.  I
told them what a fine fellow Steerforth was, and what a patron of
mine, and Peggotty said she would walk a score of miles to see him. 
I took the little baby in my arms when it was awake, and nursed it
lovingly.  When it was asleep again, I crept close to my mother's
side according to my old custom, broken now a long time, and sat
with my arms embracing her waist, and my little red cheek on her
shoulder, and once more felt her beautiful hair drooping over me -
like an angel's wing as I used to think, I recollect - and was very
happy indeed.

While I sat thus, looking at the fire, and seeing pictures in the
red-hot coals, I almost believed that I had never been away; that
Mr. and Miss Murdstone were such pictures, and would vanish when
the fire got low; and that there was nothing real in all that I
remembered, save my mother, Peggotty, and I.

Peggotty darned away at a stocking as long as she could see, and
then sat with it drawn on her left hand like a glove, and her
needle in her right, ready to take another stitch whenever there
was a blaze.  I cannot conceive whose stockings they can have been
that Peggotty was always darning, or where such an unfailing supply
of stockings in want of darning can have come from.  From my
earliest infancy she seems to have been always employed in that
class of needlework, and never by any chance in any other.

'I wonder,' said Peggotty, who was sometimes seized with a fit of
wondering on some most unexpected topic, 'what's become of Davy's
great-aunt?'
'Lor, Peggotty!' observed my mother, rousing herself from a
reverie, 'what nonsense you talk!'

'Well, but I really do wonder, ma'am,' said Peggotty.

'What can have put such a person in your head?' inquired my mother. 
'Is there nobody else in the world to come there?'

'I don't know how it is,' said Peggotty, 'unless it's on account of
being stupid, but my head never can pick and choose its people. 
They come and they go, and they don't come and they don't go, just
as they like.  I wonder what's become of her?'

'How absurd you are, Peggotty!' returned my mother.  'One would
suppose you wanted a second visit from her.'

'Lord forbid!' cried Peggotty.

'Well then, don't talk about such uncomfortable things, there's a
good soul,' said my mother.  'Miss Betsey is shut up in her cottage
by the sea, no doubt, and will remain there.  At all events, she is
not likely ever to trouble us again.'

'No!' mused Peggotty.  'No, that ain't likely at all.  - I wonder,
if she was to die, whether she'd leave Davy anything?'

'Good gracious me, Peggotty,' returned my mother, 'what a
nonsensical woman you are! when you know that she took offence at
the poor dear boy's ever being born at all.'

'I suppose she wouldn't be inclined to forgive him now,' hinted
Peggotty.

'Why should she be inclined to forgive him now?' said my mother,
rather sharply.

'Now that he's got a brother, I mean,' said Peggotty.

MY mother immediately began to cry, and wondered how Peggotty dared
to say such a thing.

'As if this poor little innocent in its cradle had ever done any
harm to you or anybody else, you jealous thing!' said she.  'You
had much better go and marry Mr. Barkis, the carrier.  Why don't
you?'

'I should make Miss Murdstone happy, if I was to,' said Peggotty.

'What a bad disposition you have, Peggotty!' returned my mother. 
'You are as jealous of Miss Murdstone as it is possible for a
ridiculous creature to be.  You want to keep the keys yourself, and
give out all the things, I suppose?  I shouldn't be surprised if
you did.  When you know that she only does it out of kindness and
the best intentions!  You know she does, Peggotty - you know it
well.'

Peggotty muttered something to the effect of 'Bother the best
intentions!' and something else to the effect that there was a
little too much of the best intentions going on.

'I know what you mean, you cross thing,' said my mother.  'I
understand you, Peggotty, perfectly.  You know I do, and I wonder
you don't colour up like fire.  But one point at a time.  Miss
Murdstone is the point now, Peggotty, and you sha'n't escape from
it.  Haven't you heard her say, over and over again, that she
thinks I am too thoughtless and too - a - a -'

'Pretty,' suggested Peggotty.

'Well,' returned my mother, half laughing, 'and if she is so silly
as to say so, can I be blamed for it?'

'No one says you can,' said Peggotty.

'No, I should hope not, indeed!' returned my mother.  'Haven't you
heard her say, over and over again, that on this account she wished
to spare me a great deal of trouble, which she thinks I am not
suited for, and which I really don't know myself that I AM suited
for; and isn't she up early and late, and going to and fro
continually - and doesn't she do all sorts of things, and grope
into all sorts of places, coal-holes and pantries and I don't know
where, that can't be very agreeable - and do you mean to insinuate
that there is not a sort of devotion in that?'

'I don't insinuate at all,' said Peggotty.

'You do, Peggotty,' returned my mother.  'You never do anything
else, except your work.  You are always insinuating.  You revel in
it.  And when you talk of Mr. Murdstone's good intentions -'

'I never talked of 'em,' said Peggotty.

'No, Peggotty,' returned my mother, 'but you insinuated.  That's
what I told you just now.  That's the worst of you.  You WILL
insinuate.  I said, at the moment, that I understood you, and you
see I did.  When you talk of Mr. Murdstone's good intentions, and
pretend to slight them (for I don't believe you really do, in your
heart, Peggotty), you must be as well convinced as I am how good
they are, and how they actuate him in everything.  If he seems to
have been at all stern with a certain person, Peggotty - you
understand, and so I am sure does Davy, that I am not alluding to
anybody present - it is solely because he is satisfied that it is
for a certain person's benefit.  He naturally loves a certain
person, on my account; and acts solely for a certain person's good. 
He is better able to judge of it than I am; for I very well know
that I am a weak, light, girlish creature, and that he is a firm,
grave, serious man.  And he takes,' said my mother, with the tears
which were engendered in her affectionate nature, stealing down her
face, 'he takes great pains with me; and I ought to be very
thankful to him, and very submissive to him even in my thoughts;
and when I am not, Peggotty, I worry and condemn myself, and feel
doubtful of my own heart, and don't know what to do.'

Peggotty sat with her chin on the foot of the stocking, looking
silently at the fire.

'There, Peggotty,' said my mother, changing her tone, 'don't let us
fall out with one another, for I couldn't bear it.  You are my true
friend, I know, if I have any in the world.  When I call you a
ridiculous creature, or a vexatious thing, or anything of that
sort, Peggotty, I only mean that you are my true friend, and always
have been, ever since the night when Mr. Copperfield first brought
me home here, and you came out to the gate to meet me.'

Peggotty was not slow to respond, and ratify the treaty of
friendship by giving me one of her best hugs.  I think I had some
glimpses of the real character of this conversation at the time;
but I am sure, now, that the good creature originated it, and took
her part in it, merely that my mother might comfort herself with
the little contradictory summary in which she had indulged.  The
design was efficacious; for I remember that my mother seemed more
at ease during the rest of the evening, and that Peggotty observed
her less.

When we had had our tea, and the ashes were thrown up, and the
candles snuffed, I read Peggotty a chapter out of the Crocodile
Book, in remembrance of old times - she took it out of her pocket:
I don't know whether she had kept it there ever since - and then we
talked about Salem House, which brought me round again to
Steerforth, who was my great subject.  We were very happy; and that
evening, as the last of its race, and destined evermore to close
that volume of my life, will never pass out of my memory.

It was almost ten o'clock before we heard the sound of wheels.  We
all got up then; and my mother said hurriedly that, as it was so
late, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone approved of early hours for young
people, perhaps I had better go to bed.  I kissed her, and went
upstairs with my candle directly, before they came in.  It appeared
to my childish fancy, as I ascended to the bedroom where I had been
imprisoned, that they brought a cold blast of air into the house
which blew away the old familiar feeling like a feather.

I felt uncomfortable about going down to breakfast in the morning,
as I had never set eyes on Mr. Murdstone since the day when I
committed my memorable offence.  However, as it must be done, I
went down, after two or three false starts half-way, and as many
runs back on tiptoe to my own room, and presented myself in the
parlour.

He was standing before the fire with his back to it, while Miss
Murdstone made the tea.  He looked at me steadily as I entered, but
made no sign of recognition whatever.
I went up to him, after a moment of confusion, and said: 'I beg
your pardon, sir.  I am very sorry for what I did, and I hope you
will forgive me.'

'I am glad to hear you are sorry, David,' he replied.

The hand he gave me was the hand I had bitten.  I could not
restrain my eye from resting for an instant on a red spot upon it;
but it was not so red as I turned, when I met that sinister
expression in his face.

'How do you do, ma'am?' I said to Miss Murdstone.

'Ah, dear me!' sighed Miss Murdstone, giving me the tea-caddy scoop
instead of her fingers.  'How long are the holidays?'

'A month, ma'am.'

'Counting from when?'

'From today, ma'am.'

'Oh!' said Miss Murdstone.  'Then here's one day off.'

She kept a calendar of the holidays in this way, and every morning
checked a day off in exactly the same manner.  She did it gloomily
until she came to ten, but when she got into two figures she became
more hopeful, and, as the time advanced, even jocular.

It was on this very first day that I had the misfortune to throw
her, though she was not subject to such weakness in general, into
a state of violent consternation.  I came into the room where she
and my mother were sitting; and the baby (who was only a few weeks
old) being on my mother's lap, I took it very carefully in my arms. 
Suddenly Miss Murdstone gave such a scream that I all but dropped
it.

'My dear Jane!' cried my mother.

'Good heavens, Clara, do you see?' exclaimed Miss Murdstone.

'See what, my dear Jane?' said my mother; 'where?'

'He's got it!' cried Miss Murdstone.  'The boy has got the baby!'

She was limp with horror; but stiffened herself to make a dart at
me, and take it out of my arms.  Then, she turned faint; and was so
very ill that they were obliged to give her cherry brandy.  I was
solemnly interdicted by her, on her recovery, from touching my
brother any more on any pretence whatever; and my poor mother, who,
I could see, wished otherwise, meekly confirmed the interdict, by
saying: 'No doubt you are right, my dear Jane.'

On another occasion, when we three were together, this same dear
baby - it was truly dear to me, for our mother's sake - was the
innocent occasion of Miss Murdstone's going into a passion.  My
mother, who had been looking at its eyes as it lay upon her lap,
said:

'Davy! come here!' and looked at mine.

I saw Miss Murdstone lay her beads down.

'I declare,' said my mother, gently, 'they are exactly alike.  I
suppose they are mine.  I think they are the colour of mine.  But
they are wonderfully alike.'

'What are you talking about, Clara?' said Miss Murdstone.

'My dear Jane,' faltered my mother, a little abashed by the harsh
tone of this inquiry, 'I find that the baby's eyes and Davy's are
exactly alike.'

'Clara!' said Miss Murdstone, rising angrily, 'you are a positive
fool sometimes.'

'My dear Jane,' remonstrated my mother.

'A positive fool,' said Miss Murdstone.  'Who else could compare my
brother's baby with your boy?  They are not at all alike.  They are
exactly unlike.  They are utterly dissimilar in all respects.  I
hope they will ever remain so.  I will not sit here, and hear such
comparisons made.'  With that she stalked out, and made the door
bang after her.

In short, I was not a favourite with Miss Murdstone.  In short, I
was not a favourite there with anybody, not even with myself; for
those who did like me could not show it, and those who did not,
showed it so plainly that I had a sensitive consciousness of always
appearing constrained, boorish, and dull.

I felt that I made them as uncomfortable as they made me.  If I
came into the room where they were, and they were talking together
and my mother seemed cheerful, an anxious cloud would steal over
her face from the moment of my entrance.  If Mr. Murdstone were in
his best humour, I checked him.  If Miss Murdstone were in her
worst, I intensified it.  I had perception enough to know that my
mother was the victim always; that she was afraid to speak to me or
to be kind to me, lest she should give them some offence by her
manner of doing so, and receive a lecture afterwards; that she was
not only ceaselessly afraid of her own offending, but of my
offending, and uneasily watched their looks if I only moved. 
Therefore I resolved to keep myself as much out of their way as I
could; and many a wintry hour did I hear the church clock strike,
when I was sitting in my cheerless bedroom, wrapped in my little
great-coat, poring over a book.

In the evening, sometimes, I went and sat with Peggotty in the
kitchen.  There I was comfortable, and not afraid of being myself. 
But neither of these resources was approved of in the parlour.  The
tormenting humour which was dominant there stopped them both.  I
was still held to be necessary to my poor mother's training, and,
as one of her trials, could not be suffered to absent myself.

'David,' said Mr. Murdstone, one day after dinner when I was going
to leave the room as usual; 'I am sorry to observe that you are of
a sullen disposition.'

'As sulky as a bear!' said Miss Murdstone.

I stood still, and hung my head.

'Now, David,' said Mr. Murdstone, 'a sullen obdurate disposition
is, of all tempers, the worst.'

'And the boy's is, of all such dispositions that ever I have seen,'
remarked his sister, 'the most confirmed and stubborn.  I think, my
dear Clara, even you must observe it?'

'I beg your pardon, my dear Jane,' said my mother, 'but are you
quite sure - I am certain you'll excuse me, my dear Jane - that you
understand Davy?'

'I should be somewhat ashamed of myself, Clara,' returned Miss
Murdstone, 'if I could not understand the boy, or any boy.  I don't
profess to be profound; but I do lay claim to common sense.'

'No doubt, my dear Jane,' returned my mother, 'your understanding
is very vigorous -'

'Oh dear, no!  Pray don't say that, Clara,' interposed Miss
Murdstone, angrily.

'But I am sure it is,' resumed my mother; 'and everybody knows it
is.  I profit so much by it myself, in many ways - at least I ought
to - that no one can be more convinced of it than myself; and
therefore I speak with great diffidence, my dear Jane, I assure
you.'

'We'll say I don't understand the boy, Clara,' returned Miss
Murdstone, arranging the little fetters on her wrists.  'We'll
agree, if you please, that I don't understand him at all.  He is
much too deep for me.  But perhaps my brother's penetration may
enable him to have some insight into his character.  And I believe
my brother was speaking on the subject when we - not very decently
- interrupted him.'

'I think, Clara,' said Mr. Murdstone, in a low grave voice, 'that
there may be better and more dispassionate judges of such a
question than you.'

'Edward,' replied my mother, timidly, 'you are a far better judge
of all questions than I pretend to be.  Both you and Jane are.  I
only said -'

'You only said something weak and inconsiderate,' he replied.  'Try
not to do it again, my dear Clara, and keep a watch upon yourself.'

MY mother's lips moved, as if she answered 'Yes, my dear Edward,'
but she said nothing aloud.

'I was sorry, David, I remarked,' said Mr. Murdstone, turning his
head and his eyes stiffly towards me, 'to observe that you are of
a sullen disposition.  This is not a character that I can suffer to
develop itself beneath my eyes without an effort at improvement. 
You must endeavour, sir, to change it.  We must endeavour to change
it for you.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' I faltered.  'I have never meant to be
sullen since I came back.'

'Don't take refuge in a lie, sir!' he returned so fiercely, that I
saw my mother involuntarily put out her trembling hand as if to
interpose between us.  'You have withdrawn yourself in your
sullenness to your own room.  You have kept your own room when you
ought to have been here.  You know now, once for all, that I
require you to be here, and not there.  Further, that I require you
to bring obedience here.  You know me, David.  I will have it
done.'

Miss Murdstone gave a hoarse chuckle.

'I will have a respectful, prompt, and ready bearing towards
myself,' he continued, 'and towards Jane Murdstone, and towards
your mother.  I will not have this room shunned as if it were
infected, at the pleasure of a child.  Sit down.'

He ordered me like a dog, and I obeyed like a dog.

'One thing more,' he said.  'I observe that you have an attachment
to low and common company.  You are not to associate with servants. 
The kitchen will not improve you, in the many respects in which you
need improvement.  Of the woman who abets you, I say nothing -
since you, Clara,' addressing my mother in a lower voice, 'from old
associations and long-established fancies, have a weakness
respecting her which is not yet overcome.'

'A most unaccountable delusion it is!' cried Miss Murdstone.

'I only say,' he resumed, addressing me, 'that I disapprove of your
preferring such company as Mistress Peggotty, and that it is to be
abandoned.  Now, David, you understand me, and you know what will
be the consequence if you fail to obey me to the letter.'

I knew well - better perhaps than he thought, as far as my poor
mother was concerned - and I obeyed him to the letter.  I retreated
to my own room no more; I took refuge with Peggotty no more; but
sat wearily in the parlour day after day, looking forward to night,
and bedtime.

What irksome constraint I underwent, sitting in the same attitude
hours upon hours, afraid to move an arm or a leg lest Miss
Murdstone should complain (as she did on the least pretence) of my
restlessness, and afraid to move an eye lest she should light on
some look of dislike or scrutiny that would find new cause for
complaint in mine!  What intolerable dulness to sit listening to
the ticking of the clock; and watching Miss Murdstone's little
shiny steel beads as she strung them; and wondering whether she
would ever be married, and if so, to what sort of unhappy man; and
counting the divisions in the moulding of the chimney-piece; and
wandering away, with my eyes, to the ceiling, among the curls and
corkscrews in the paper on the wall!

What walks I took alone, down muddy lanes, in the bad winter
weather, carrying that parlour, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone in it,
everywhere: a monstrous load that I was obliged to bear, a daymare
that there was no possibility of breaking in, a weight that brooded
on my wits, and blunted them!

What meals I had in silence and embarrassment, always feeling that
there were a knife and fork too many, and that mine; an appetite
too many, and that mine; a plate and chair too many, and those
mine; a somebody too many, and that I!

What evenings, when the candles came, and I was expected to employ
myself, but, not daring to read an entertaining book, pored over
some hard-headed, harder-hearted treatise on arithmetic; when the
tables of weights and measures set themselves to tunes, as 'Rule
Britannia', or 'Away with Melancholy'; when they wouldn't stand
still to be learnt, but would go threading my grandmother's needle
through my unfortunate head, in at one ear and out at the other! 
What yawns and dozes I lapsed into, in spite of all my care; what
starts I came out of concealed sleeps with; what answers I never
got, to little observations that I rarely made; what a blank space
I seemed, which everybody overlooked, and yet was in everybody's
way; what a heavy relief it was to hear Miss Murdstone hail the
first stroke of nine at night, and order me to bed!

Thus the holidays lagged away, until the morning came when Miss
Murdstone said: 'Here's the last day off!' and gave me the closing
cup of tea of the vacation.

I was not sorry to go.  I had lapsed into a stupid state; but I was
recovering a little and looking forward to Steerforth, albeit Mr.
Creakle loomed behind him.  Again Mr. Barkis appeared at the gate,
and again Miss Murdstone in her warning voice, said: 'Clara!' when
my mother bent over me, to bid me farewell.

I kissed her, and my baby brother, and was very sorry then; but not
sorry to go away, for the gulf between us was there, and the
parting was there, every day.  And it is not so much the embrace
she gave me, that lives in my mind, though it was as fervent as
could be, as what followed the embrace.

I was in the carrier's cart when I heard her calling to me.  I
looked out, and she stood at the garden-gate alone, holding her
baby up in her arms for me to see.  It was cold still weather; and
not a hair of her head, nor a fold of her dress, was stirred, as
she looked intently at me, holding up her child.

So I lost her.  So I saw her afterwards, in my sleep at school - a
silent presence near my bed - looking at me with the same intent
face - holding up her baby in her arms.

CHAPTER 9
I HAVE A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY

I PASS over all that happened at school, until the anniversary of
my birthday came round in March.  Except that Steerforth was more
to be admired than ever, I remember nothing.  He was going away at
the end of the half-year, if not sooner, and was more spirited and
independent than before in my eyes, and therefore more engaging
than before; but beyond this I remember nothing.  The great
remembrance by which that time is marked in my mind, seems to have
swallowed up all lesser recollections, and to exist alone.

It is even difficult for me to believe that there was a gap of full
two months between my return to Salem House and the arrival of that
birthday.  I can only understand that the fact was so, because I
know it must have been so; otherwise I should feel convinced that
there was no interval, and that the one occasion trod upon the
other's heels.

How well I recollect the kind of day it was!  I smell the fog that
hung about the place; I see the hoar frost, ghostly, through it; I
feel my rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim
perspective of the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and
there to light up the foggy morning, and the breath of the boys
wreathing and smoking in the raw cold as they blow upon their
fingers, and tap their feet upon the floor.  It was after
breakfast, and we had been summoned in from the playground, when
Mr. Sharp entered and said:

'David Copperfield is to go into the parlour.'

I expected a hamper from Peggotty, and brightened at the order. 
Some of the boys about me put in their claim not to be forgotten in
the distribution of the good things, as I got out of my seat with
great alacrity.

'Don't hurry, David,' said Mr. Sharp.  'There's time enough, my
boy, don't hurry.'

I might have been surprised by the feeling tone in which he spoke,
if I had given it a thought; but I gave it none until afterwards. 
I hurried away to the parlour; and there I found Mr. Creakle,
sitting at his breakfast with the cane and a newspaper before him,
and Mrs. Creakle with an opened letter in her hand.  But no hamper.

'David Copperfield,' said Mrs. Creakle, leading me to a sofa, and
sitting down beside me.  'I want to speak to you very particularly. 
I have something to tell you, my child.'

Mr. Creakle, at whom of course I looked, shook his head without
looking at me, and stopped up a sigh with a very large piece of
buttered toast.

'You are too young to know how the world changes every day,' said
Mrs. Creakle, 'and how the people in it pass away.  But we all have
to learn it, David; some of us when we are young, some of us when
we are old, some of us at all times of our lives.'

I looked at her earnestly.

'When you came away from home at the end of the vacation,' said
Mrs. Creakle, after a pause, 'were they all well?'  After another
pause, 'Was your mama well?'

I trembled without distinctly knowing why, and still looked at her
earnestly, making no attempt to answer.

'Because,' said she, 'I grieve to tell you that I hear this morning
your mama is very ill.'

A mist rose between Mrs. Creakle and me, and her figure seemed to
move in it for an instant.  Then I felt the burning tears run down
my face, and it was steady again.

'She is very dangerously ill,' she added.

I knew all now.

'She is dead.'

There was no need to tell me so.  I had already broken out into a
desolate cry, and felt an orphan in the wide world.

She was very kind to me.  She kept me there all day, and left me
alone sometimes; and I cried, and wore myself to sleep, and awoke
and cried again.  When I could cry no more, I began to think; and
then the oppression on my breast was heaviest, and my grief a dull
pain that there was no ease for.

And yet my thoughts were idle; not intent on the calamity that
weighed upon my heart, but idly loitering near it.  I thought of
our house shut up and hushed.  I thought of the little baby, who,
Mrs. Creakle said, had been pining away for some time, and who,
they believed, would die too.  I thought of my father's grave in
the churchyard, by our house, and of my mother lying there beneath
the tree I knew so well.  I stood upon a chair when I was left
alone, and looked into the glass to see how red my eyes were, and
how sorrowful my face.  I considered, after some hours were gone,
if my tears were really hard to flow now, as they seemed to be,
what, in connexion with my loss, it would affect me most to think
of when I drew near home - for I was going home to the funeral.  I
am sensible of having felt that a dignity attached to me among the
rest of the boys, and that I was important in my affliction.

If ever child were stricken with sincere grief, I was.  But I
remember that this importance was a kind of satisfaction to me,
when I walked in the playground that afternoon while the boys were
in school.  When I saw them glancing at me out of the windows, as
they went up to their classes, I felt distinguished, and looked
more melancholy, and walked slower.  When school was over, and they
came out and spoke to me, I felt it rather good in myself not to be
proud to any of them, and to take exactly the same notice of them
all, as before.

I was to go home next night; not by the mail, but by the heavy
night-coach, which was called the Farmer, and was principally used
by country-people travelling short intermediate distances upon the
road.  We had no story-telling that evening, and Traddles insisted
on lending me his pillow.  I don't know what good he thought it
would do me, for I had one of my own: but it was all he had to
lend, poor fellow, except a sheet of letter-paper full of
skeletons; and that he gave me at parting, as a soother of my
sorrows and a contribution to my peace of mind.

I left Salem House upon the morrow afternoon.  I little thought
then that I left it, never to return.  We travelled very slowly all
night, and did not get into Yarmouth before nine or ten o'clock in
the morning.  I looked out for Mr. Barkis, but he was not there;
and instead of him a fat, short-winded, merry-looking, little old
man in black, with rusty little bunches of ribbons at the knees of
his breeches, black stockings, and a broad-brimmed hat, came
puffing up to the coach window, and said:

'Master Copperfield?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Will you come with me, young sir, if you please,' he said, opening
the door, 'and I shall have the pleasure of taking you home.'

I put my hand in his, wondering who he was, and we walked away to
a shop in a narrow street, on which was written OMER, DRAPER,
TAILOR, HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER, &c.  It was a close and
stifling little shop; full of all sorts of clothing, made and
unmade, including one window full of beaver-hats and bonnets.  We
went into a little back-parlour behind the shop, where we found
three young women at work on a quantity of black materials, which
were heaped upon the table, and little bits and cuttings of which
were littered all over the floor.  There was a good fire in the
room, and a breathless smell of warm black crape - I did not know
what the smell was then, but I know now.

The three young women, who appeared to be very industrious and
comfortable, raised their heads to look at me, and then went on
with their work.  Stitch, stitch, stitch.  At the same time there
came from a workshop across a little yard outside the window, a
regular sound of hammering that kept a kind of tune: RAT - tat-tat,
RAT - tat-tat, RAT - tat-tat, without any variation.

'Well,' said my conductor to one of the three young women.  'How do
you get on, Minnie?'

'We shall be ready by the trying-on time,' she replied gaily,
without looking up.  'Don't you be afraid, father.'

Mr. Omer took off his broad-brimmed hat, and sat down and panted. 
He was so fat that he was obliged to pant some time before he could
say:

'That's right.'

'Father!' said Minnie, playfully.  'What a porpoise you do grow!'

'Well, I don't know how it is, my dear,' he replied, considering
about it.  'I am rather so.'

'You are such a comfortable man, you see,' said Minnie.  'You take
things so easy.'

'No use taking 'em otherwise, my dear,' said Mr. Omer.

'No, indeed,' returned his daughter.  'We are all pretty gay here,
thank Heaven!  Ain't we, father?'

'I hope so, my dear,' said Mr. Omer.  'As I have got my breath now,
I think I'll measure this young scholar.  Would you walk into the
shop, Master Copperfield?'

I preceded Mr. Omer, in compliance with his request; and after
showing me a roll of cloth which he said was extra super, and too
good mourning for anything short of parents, he took my various
dimensions, and put them down in a book.  While he was recording
them he called my attention to his stock in trade, and to certain
fashions which he said had 'just come up', and to certain other
fashions which he said had 'just gone out'.

'And by that sort of thing we very often lose a little mint of
money,' said Mr. Omer.  'But fashions are like human beings.  They
come in, nobody knows when, why, or how; and they go out, nobody
knows when, why, or how.  Everything is like life, in my opinion,
if you look at it in that point of view.'

I was too sorrowful to discuss the question, which would possibly
have been beyond me under any circumstances; and Mr. Omer took me
back into the parlour, breathing with some difficulty on the way.

He then called down a little break-neck range of steps behind a
door: 'Bring up that tea and bread-and-butter!' which, after some
time, during which I sat looking about me and thinking, and
listening to the stitching in the room and the tune that was being
hammered across the yard, appeared on a tray, and turned out to be
for me.

'I have been acquainted with you,' said Mr. Omer, after watching me
for some minutes, during which I had not made much impression on
the breakfast, for the black things destroyed my appetite, 'I have
been acquainted with you a long time, my young friend.'

'Have you, sir?'

'All your life,' said Mr. Omer.  'I may say before it.  I knew your
father before you.  He was five foot nine and a half, and he lays
in five-and-twen-ty foot of ground.'

'RAT - tat-tat, RAT - tat-tat, RAT - tat-tat,' across the yard.

'He lays in five and twen-ty foot of ground, if he lays in a
fraction,' said Mr. Omer, pleasantly.  'It was either his request
or her direction, I forget which.'

'Do you know how my little brother is, sir?' I inquired.

Mr. Omer shook his head.

'RAT - tat-tat, RAT - tat-tat, RAT - tat-tat.'

'He is in his mother's arms,' said he.

'Oh, poor little fellow!  Is he dead?'

'Don't mind it more than you can help,' said Mr. Omer.  'Yes.  The
baby's dead.'

My wounds broke out afresh at this intelligence.  I left the
scarcely-tasted breakfast, and went and rested my head on another
table, in a corner of the little room, which Minnie hastily
cleared, lest I should spot the mourning that was lying there with
my tears.  She was a pretty, good-natured girl, and put my hair
away from my eyes with a soft, kind touch; but she was very
cheerful at having nearly finished her work and being in good time,
and was so different from me!

Presently the tune left off, and a good-looking young fellow came
across the yard into the room.  He had a hammer in his hand, and
his mouth was full of little nails, which he was obliged to take
out before he could speak.

'Well, Joram!' said Mr. Omer.  'How do you get on?'

'All right,' said Joram.  'Done, sir.'

Minnie coloured a little, and the other two girls smiled at one
another.

'What! you were at it by candle-light last night, when I was at the
club, then?  Were you?' said Mr. Omer, shutting up one eye.

'Yes,' said Joram.  'As you said we could make a little trip of it,
and go over together, if it was done, Minnie and me - and you.'

'Oh!  I thought you were going to leave me out altogether,' said
Mr. Omer, laughing till he coughed.

'- As you was so good as to say that,' resumed the young man, 'why
I turned to with a will, you see.  Will you give me your opinion of
it?'

'I will,' said Mr. Omer, rising.  'My dear'; and he stopped and
turned to me: 'would you like to see your -'

'No, father,' Minnie interposed.

'I thought it might be agreeable, my dear,' said Mr. Omer.  'But
perhaps you're right.'

I can't say how I knew it was my dear, dear mother's coffin that
they went to look at.  I had never heard one making; I had never
seen one that I know of.- but it came into my mind what the noise
was, while it was going on; and when the young man entered, I am
sure I knew what he had been doing.

The work being now finished, the two girls, whose names I had not
heard, brushed the shreds and threads from their dresses, and went
into the shop to put that to rights, and wait for customers. 
Minnie stayed behind to fold up what they had made, and pack it in
two baskets.  This she did upon her knees, humming a lively little
tune the while.  Joram, who I had no doubt was her lover, came in
and stole a kiss from her while she was busy (he didn't appear to
mind me, at all), and said her father was gone for the chaise, and
he must make haste and get himself ready.  Then he went out again;
and then she put her thimble and scissors in her pocket, and stuck
a needle threaded with black thread neatly in the bosom of her
gown, and put on her outer clothing smartly, at a little glass
behind the door, in which I saw the reflection of her pleased face.

All this I observed, sitting at the table in the corner with my
head leaning on my hand, and my thoughts running on very different
things.  The chaise soon came round to the front of the shop, and
the baskets being put in first, I was put in next, and those three
followed.  I remember it as a kind of half chaise-cart, half
pianoforte-van, painted of a sombre colour, and drawn by a black
horse with a long tail.  There was plenty of room for us all.

I do not think I have ever experienced so strange a feeling in my
life (I am wiser now, perhaps) as that of being with them,
remembering how they had been employed, and seeing them enjoy the
ride.  I was not angry with them; I was more afraid of them, as if
I were cast away among creatures with whom I had no community of
nature.  They were very cheerful.  The old man sat in front to
drive, and the two young people sat behind him, and whenever he
spoke to them leaned forward, the one on one side of his chubby
face and the other on the other, and made a great deal of him. 
They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and moped in my
corner; scared by their love-making and hilarity, though it was far
from boisterous, and almost wondering that no judgement came upon
them for their hardness of heart.

So, when they stopped to bait the horse, and ate and drank and
enjoyed themselves, I could touch nothing that they touched, but
kept my fast unbroken.  So, when we reached home, I dropped out of
the chaise behind, as quickly as possible, that I might not be in
their company before those solemn windows, looking blindly on me
like closed eyes once bright.  And oh, how little need I had had to
think what would move me to tears when I came back - seeing the
window of my mother's room, and next it that which, in the better
time, was mine!

I was in Peggotty's arms before I got to the door, and she took me
into the house.  Her grief burst out when she first saw me; but she
controlled it soon, and spoke in whispers, and walked softly, as if
the dead could be disturbed.  She had not been in bed, I found, for
a long time.  She sat up at night still, and watched.  As long as
her poor dear pretty was above the ground, she said, she would
never desert her.

Mr. Murdstone took no heed of me when I went into the parlour where
he was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silently, and pondering in
his elbow-chair.  Miss Murdstone, who was busy at her writing-desk,
which was covered with letters and papers, gave me her cold
finger-nails, and asked me, in an iron whisper, if I had been
measured for my mourning.

I said: 'Yes.'

'And your shirts,' said Miss Murdstone; 'have you brought 'em
home?'

'Yes, ma'am.  I have brought home all my clothes.'

This was all the consolation that her firmness administered to me. 
I do not doubt that she had a choice pleasure in exhibiting what
she called her self-command, and her firmness, and her strength of
mind, and her common sense, and the whole diabolical catalogue of
her unamiable qualities, on such an occasion.  She was particularly
proud of her turn for business; and she showed it now in reducing
everything to pen and ink, and being moved by nothing.  All the
rest of that day, and from morning to night afterwards, she sat at
that desk, scratching composedly with a hard pen, speaking in the
same imperturbable whisper to everybody; never relaxing a muscle of
her face, or softening a tone of her voice, or appearing with an
atom of her dress astray.

Her brother took a book sometimes, but never read it that I saw. 
He would open it and look at it as if he were reading, but would
remain for a whole hour without turning the leaf, and then put it
down and walk to and fro in the room.  I used to sit with folded
hands watching him, and counting his footsteps, hour after hour. 
He very seldom spoke to her, and never to me.  He seemed to be the
only restless thing, except the clocks, in the whole motionless
house.

In these days before the funeral, I saw but little of Peggotty,
except that, in passing up or down stairs, I always found her close
to the room where my mother and her baby lay, and except that she
came to me every night, and sat by my bed's head while I went to
sleep.  A day or two before the burial - I think it was a day or
two before, but I am conscious of confusion in my mind about that
heavy time, with nothing to mark its progress - she took me into
the room.  I only recollect that underneath some white covering on
the bed, with a beautiful cleanliness and freshness all around it,
there seemed to me to lie embodied the solemn stillness that was in
the house; and that when she would have turned the cover gently
back, I cried: 'Oh no!  oh no!' and held her hand.

If the funeral had been yesterday, I could not recollect it better. 
The very air of the best parlour, when I went in at the door, the
bright condition of the fire, the shining of the wine in the
decanters, the patterns of the glasses and plates, the faint sweet
smell of cake, the odour of Miss Murdstone's dress, and our black
clothes.  Mr. Chillip is in the room, and comes to speak to me.

'And how is Master David?' he says, kindly.

I cannot tell him very well.  I give him my hand, which he holds in
his.

'Dear me!' says Mr. Chillip, meekly smiling, with something shining
in his eye.  'Our little friends grow up around us.  They grow out
of our knowledge, ma'am?'  This is to Miss Murdstone, who makes no
reply.

'There is a great improvement here, ma'am?' says Mr. Chillip.

Miss Murdstone merely answers with a frown and a formal bend: Mr.
Chillip, discomfited, goes into a corner, keeping me with him, and
opens his mouth no more.

I remark this, because I remark everything that happens, not
because I care about myself, or have done since I came home.  And
now the bell begins to sound, and Mr. Omer and another come to make
us ready.  As Peggotty was wont to tell me, long ago, the followers
of my father to the same grave were made ready in the same room.

There are Mr. Murdstone, our neighbour Mr. Grayper, Mr. Chillip,
and I.  When we go out to the door, the Bearers and their load are
in the garden; and they move before us down the path, and past the
elms, and through the gate, and into the churchyard, where I have
so often heard the birds sing on a summer morning.

We stand around the grave.  The day seems different to me from
every other day, and the light not of the same colour - of a sadder
colour.  Now there is a solemn hush, which we have brought from
home with what is resting in the mould; and while we stand
bareheaded, I hear the voice of the clergyman, sounding remote in
the open air, and yet distinct and plain, saying: 'I am the
Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord!'  Then I hear sobs; and,
standing apart among the lookers-on, I see that good and faithful
servant, whom of all the people upon earth I love the best, and
unto whom my childish heart is certain that the Lord will one day
say: 'Well done.'

There are many faces that I know, among the little crowd; faces
that I knew in church, when mine was always wondering there; faces
that first saw my mother, when she came to the village in her
youthful bloom.  I do not mind them - I mind nothing but my grief
- and yet I see and know them all; and even in the background, far
away, see Minnie looking on, and her eye glancing on her
sweetheart, who is near me.

It is over, and the earth is filled in, and we turn to come away. 
Before us stands our house, so pretty and unchanged, so linked in
my mind with the young idea of what is gone, that all my sorrow has
been nothing to the sorrow it calls forth.  But they take me on;
and Mr. Chillip talks to me; and when we get home, puts some water
to my lips; and when I ask his leave to go up to my room, dismisses
me with the gentleness of a woman.

All this, I say, is yesterday's event.  Events of later date have
floated from me to the shore where all forgotten things will
reappear, but this stands like a high rock in the ocean.

I knew that Peggotty would come to me in my room.  The Sabbath
stillness of the time (the day was so like Sunday!  I have
forgotten that) was suited to us both.  She sat down by my side
upon my little bed; and holding my hand, and sometimes putting it
to her lips, and sometimes smoothing it with hers, as she might
have comforted my little brother, told me, in her way, all that she
had to tell concerning what had happened.

'She was never well,' said Peggotty, 'for a long time.  She was
uncertain in her mind, and not happy.  When her baby was born, I
thought at first she would get better, but she was more delicate,
and sunk a little every day.  She used to like to sit alone before
her baby came, and then she cried; but afterwards she used to sing
to it - so soft, that I once thought, when I heard her, it was like
a voice up in the air, that was rising away.

'I think she got to be more timid, and more frightened-like, of
late; and that a hard word was like a blow to her.  But she was
always the same to me.  She never changed to her foolish Peggotty,
didn't my sweet girl.'

Here Peggotty stopped, and softly beat upon my hand a little while.

'The last time that I saw her like her own old self, was the night
when you came home, my dear.  The day you went away, she said to
me, "I never shall see my pretty darling again.  Something tells me
so, that tells the truth, I know."

'She tried to hold up after that; and many a time, when they told
her she was thoughtless and light-hearted, made believe to be so;
but it was all a bygone then.  She never told her husband what she
had told me - she was afraid of saying it to anybody else - till
one night, a little more than a week before it happened, when she
said to him: "My dear, I think I am dying."

'"It's off my mind now, Peggotty," she told me, when I laid her in
her bed that night.  "He will believe it more and more, poor
fellow, every day for a few days to come; and then it will be past. 
I am very tired.  If this is sleep, sit by me while I sleep: don't
leave me.  God bless both my children!  God protect and keep my
fatherless boy!"

'I never left her afterwards,' said Peggotty.  'She often talked to
them two downstairs - for she loved them; she couldn't bear not to
love anyone who was about her - but when they went away from her
bed-side, she always turned to me, as if there was rest where
Peggotty was, and never fell asleep in any other way.

'On the last night, in the evening, she kissed me, and said: "If my
baby should die too, Peggotty, please let them lay him in my arms,
and bury us together."  (It was done; for the poor lamb lived but
a day beyond her.) "Let my dearest boy go with us to our
resting-place," she said, "and tell him that his mother, when she
lay here, blessed him not once, but a thousand times."'

Another silence followed this, and another gentle beating on my
hand.

'It was pretty far in the night,' said Peggotty, 'when she asked me
for some drink; and when she had taken it, gave me such a patient
smile, the dear! - so beautiful!

'Daybreak had come, and the sun was rising, when she said to me,
how kind and considerate Mr. Copperfield had always been to her,
and how he had borne with her, and told her, when she doubted
herself, that a loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom,
and that he was a happy man in hers.  "Peggotty, my dear," she said
then, "put me nearer to you," for she was very weak.  "Lay your
good arm underneath my neck," she said, "and turn me to you, for
your face is going far off, and I want it to be near."  I put it as
she asked; and oh Davy! the time had come when my first parting
words to you were true - when she was glad to lay her poor head on
her stupid cross old Peggotty's arm - and she died like a child
that had gone to sleep!'

Thus ended Peggotty's narration.  From the moment of my knowing of
the death of my mother, the idea of her as she had been of late had
vanished from me.  I remembered her, from that instant, only as the
young mother of my earliest impressions, who had been used to wind
her bright curls round and round her finger, and to dance with me
at twilight in the parlour.  What Peggotty had told me now, was so
far from bringing me back to the later period, that it rooted the
earlier image in my mind.  It may be curious, but it is true.  In
her death she winged her way back to her calm untroubled youth, and
cancelled all the rest.

The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the
little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed
for ever on her bosom.

CHAPTER 10
I BECOME NEGLECTED, AND AM PROVIDED FOR

The first act of business Miss Murdstone performed when the day of
the solemnity was over, and light was freely admitted into the
house, was to give Peggotty a month's warning.  Much as Peggotty
would have disliked such a service, I believe she would have
retained it, for my sake, in preference to the best upon earth. 
She told me we must part, and told me why; and we condoled with one
another, in all sincerity.

As to me or my future, not a word was said, or a step taken.  Happy
they would have been, I dare say, if they could have dismissed me
at a month's warning too.  I mustered courage once, to ask Miss
Murdstone when I was going back to school; and she answered dryly,
she believed I was not going back at all.  I was told nothing more. 
I was very anxious to know what was going to be done with me, and
so was Peggotty; but neither she nor I could pick up any
information on the subject.

There was one change in my condition, which, while it relieved me
of a great deal of present uneasiness, might have made me, if I had
been capable of considering it closely, yet more uncomfortable
about the future.  It was this.  The constraint that had been put
upon me, was quite abandoned.  I was so far from being required to
keep my dull post in the parlour, that on several occasions, when
I took my seat there, Miss Murdstone frowned to me to go away.  I
was so far from being warned off from Peggotty's society, that,
provided I was not in Mr. Murdstone's, I was never sought out or
inquired for.  At first I was in daily dread of his taking my
education in hand again, or of Miss Murdstone's devoting herself to
it; but I soon began to think that such fears were groundless, and
that all I had to anticipate was neglect.

I do not conceive that this discovery gave me much pain then.  I
was still giddy with the shock of my mother's death, and in a kind
of stunned state as to all tributary things.  I can recollect,
indeed, to have speculated, at odd times, on the possibility of my
not being taught any more, or cared for any more; and growing up to
be a shabby, moody man, lounging an idle life away, about the
village; as well as on the feasibility of my getting rid of this
picture by going away somewhere, like the hero in a story, to seek
my fortune: but these were transient visions, daydreams I sat
looking at sometimes, as if they were faintly painted or written on
the wall of my room, and which, as they melted away, left the wall
blank again.

'Peggotty,' I said in a thoughtful whisper, one evening, when I was
warming my hands at the kitchen fire, 'Mr. Murdstone likes me less
than he used to.  He never liked me much, Peggotty; but he would
rather not even see me now, if he can help it.'

'Perhaps it's his sorrow,' said Peggotty, stroking my hair.

'I am sure, Peggotty, I am sorry too.  If I believed it was his
sorrow, I should not think of it at all.  But it's not that; oh,
no, it's not that.'

'How do you know it's not that?' said Peggotty, after a silence.

'Oh, his sorrow is another and quite a different thing.  He is
sorry at this moment, sitting by the fireside with Miss Murdstone;
but if I was to go in, Peggotty, he would be something besides.'

'What would he be?' said Peggotty.

'Angry,' I answered, with an involuntary imitation of his dark
frown.  'If he was only sorry, he wouldn't look at me as he does. 
I am only sorry, and it makes me feel kinder.'

Peggotty said nothing for a little while; and I warmed my hands, as
silent as she.

'Davy,' she said at length.

'Yes, Peggotty?'
'I have tried, my dear, all ways I could think of - all the ways
there are, and all the ways there ain't, in short - to get a
suitable service here, in Blunderstone; but there's no such a
thing, my love.'

'And what do you mean to do, Peggotty,' says I, wistfully.  'Do you
mean to go and seek your fortune?'

'I expect I shall be forced to go to Yarmouth,' replied Peggotty,
'and live there.'

'You might have gone farther off,' I said, brightening a little,
'and been as bad as lost.  I shall see you sometimes, my dear old
Peggotty, there.  You won't be quite at the other end of the world,
will you?'

'Contrary ways, please God!' cried Peggotty, with great animation. 
'As long as you are here, my pet, I shall come over every week of
my life to see you.  One day, every week of my life!'

I felt a great weight taken off my mind by this promise: but even
this was not all, for Peggotty went on to say:

'I'm a-going, Davy, you see, to my brother's, first, for another
fortnight's visit - just till I have had time to look about me, and
get to be something like myself again.  Now, I have been thinking
that perhaps, as they don't want you here at present, you might be
let to go along with me.'

If anything, short of being in a different relation to every one
about me, Peggotty excepted, could have given me a sense of
pleasure at that time, it would have been this project of all
others.  The idea of being again surrounded by those honest faces,
shining welcome on me; of renewing the peacefulness of the sweet
Sunday morning, when the bells were ringing, the stones dropping in
the water, and the shadowy ships breaking through the mist; of
roaming up and down with little Em'ly, telling her my troubles, and
finding charms against them in the shells and pebbles on the beach;
made a calm in my heart.  It was ruffled next moment, to be sure,
by a doubt of Miss Murdstone's giving her consent; but even that
was set at rest soon, for she came out to take an evening grope in
the store-closet while we were yet in conversation, and Peggotty,
with a boldness that amazed me, broached the topic on the spot.

'The boy will be idle there,' said Miss Murdstone, looking into a
pickle-jar, 'and idleness is the root of all evil.  But, to be
sure, he would be idle here - or anywhere, in my opinion.'

Peggotty had an angry answer ready, I could see; but she swallowed
it for my sake, and remained silent.

'Humph!' said Miss Murdstone, still keeping her eye on the pickles;
'it is of more importance than anything else - it is of paramount
importance - that my brother should not be disturbed or made
uncomfortable.  I suppose I had better say yes.'

I thanked her, without making any demonstration of joy, lest it
should induce her to withdraw her assent.  Nor could I help
thinking this a prudent course, since she looked at me out of the
pickle-jar, with as great an access of sourness as if her black
eyes had absorbed its contents.  However, the permission was given,
and was never retracted; for when the month was out, Peggotty and
I were ready to depart.

Mr. Barkis came into the house for Peggotty's boxes.  I had never
known him to pass the garden-gate before, but on this occasion he
came into the house.  And he gave me a look as he shouldered the
largest box and went out, which I thought had meaning in it, if
meaning could ever be said to find its way into Mr. Barkis's
visage.

Peggotty was naturally in low spirits at leaving what had been her
home so many years, and where the two strong attachments of her
life - for my mother and myself - had been formed.  She had been
walking in the churchyard, too, very early; and she got into the
cart, and sat in it with her handkerchief at her eyes.

So long as she remained in this condition, Mr. Barkis gave no sign
of life whatever.  He sat in his usual place and attitude like a
great stuffed figure.  But when she began to look about her, and to
speak to me, he nodded his head and grinned several times.  I have
not the least notion at whom, or what he meant by it.

'It's a beautiful day, Mr. Barkis!' I said, as an act of
politeness.

'It ain't bad,' said Mr. Barkis, who generally qualified his
speech, and rarely committed himself.

'Peggotty is quite comfortable now, Mr. Barkis,' I remarked, for
his satisfaction.

'Is she, though?' said Mr. Barkis.

After reflecting about it, with a sagacious air, Mr. Barkis eyed
her, and said:

'ARE you pretty comfortable?'

Peggotty laughed, and answered in the affirmative.

'But really and truly, you know.  Are you?' growled Mr. Barkis,
sliding nearer to her on the seat, and nudging her with his elbow. 
'Are you?  Really and truly pretty comfortable?  Are you?  Eh?'

At each of these inquiries Mr. Barkis shuffled nearer to her, and
gave her another nudge; so that at last we were all crowded
together in the left-hand corner of the cart, and I was so squeezed
that I could hardly bear it.

Peggotty calling his attention to my sufferings, Mr. Barkis gave me
a little more room at once, and got away by degrees.  But I could
not help observing that he seemed to think he had hit upon a
wonderful expedient for expressing himself in a neat, agreeable,
and pointed manner, without the inconvenience of inventing
conversation.  He manifestly chuckled over it for some time.  By
and by he turned to Peggotty again, and repeating, 'Are you pretty
comfortable though?' bore down upon us as before, until the breath
was nearly edged out of my body.  By and by he made another descent
upon us with the same inquiry, and the same result.  At length, I
got up whenever I saw him coming, and standing on the foot-board,
pretended to look at the prospect; after which I did very well.

He was so polite as to stop at a public-house, expressly on our
account, and entertain us with broiled mutton and beer.  Even when
Peggotty was in the act of drinking, he was seized with one of
those approaches, and almost choked her.  But as we drew nearer to
the end of our journey, he had more to do and less time for
gallantry; and when we got on Yarmouth pavement, we were all too
much shaken and jolted, I apprehend, to have any leisure for
anything else.

Mr. Peggotty and Ham waited for us at the old place.  They received
me and Peggotty in an affectionate manner, and shook hands with Mr.
Barkis, who, with his hat on the very back of his head, and a
shame-faced leer upon his countenance, and pervading his very legs,
presented but a vacant appearance, I thought.  They each took one
of Peggotty's trunks, and we were going away, when Mr. Barkis
solemnly made a sign to me with his forefinger to come under an
archway.

'I say,' growled Mr. Barkis, 'it was all right.'

I looked up into his face, and answered, with an attempt to be very
profound: 'Oh!'

'It didn't come to a end there,' said Mr. Barkis, nodding
confidentially.  'It was all right.'

Again I answered, 'Oh!'

'You know who was willin',' said my friend.  'It was Barkis, and
Barkis only.'

I nodded assent.

'It's all right,' said Mr. Barkis, shaking hands; 'I'm a friend of
your'n.  You made it all right, first.  It's all right.'

In his attempts to be particularly lucid, Mr. Barkis was so
extremely mysterious, that I might have stood looking in his face
for an hour, and most assuredly should have got as much information
out of it as out of the face of a clock that had stopped, but for
Peggotty's calling me away.  As we were going along, she asked me
what he had said; and I told her he had said it was all right.

'Like his impudence,' said Peggotty, 'but I don't mind that!  Davy
dear, what should you think if I was to think of being married?'

'Why - I suppose you would like me as much then, Peggotty, as you
do now?' I returned, after a little consideration.

Greatly to the astonishment of the passengers in the street, as
well as of her relations going on before, the good soul was obliged
to stop and embrace me on the spot, with many protestations of her
unalterable love.

'Tell me what should you say, darling?' she asked again, when this
was over, and we were walking on.

'If you were thinking of being married - to Mr. Barkis, Peggotty?'

'Yes,' said Peggotty.

'I should think it would be a very good thing.  For then you know,
Peggotty, you would always have the horse and cart to bring you
over to see me, and could come for nothing, and be sure of coming.'

'The sense of the dear!' cried Peggotty.  'What I have been
thinking of, this month back!  Yes, my precious; and I think I
should be more independent altogether, you see; let alone my
working with a better heart in my own house, than I could in
anybody else's now.  I don't know what I might be fit for, now, as
a servant to a stranger.  And I shall be always near my pretty's
resting-place,' said Peggotty, musing, 'and be able to see it when
I like; and when I lie down to rest, I may be laid not far off from
my darling girl!'

We neither of us said anything for a little while.

'But I wouldn't so much as give it another thought,' said Peggotty,
cheerily 'if my Davy was anyways against it - not if I had been
asked in church thirty times three times over, and was wearing out
the ring in my pocket.'

'Look at me, Peggotty,' I replied; 'and see if I am not really
glad, and don't truly wish it!'  As indeed I did, with all my
heart.

'Well, my life,' said Peggotty, giving me a squeeze, 'I have
thought of it night and day, every way I can, and I hope the right
way; but I'll think of it again, and speak to my brother about it,
and in the meantime we'll keep it to ourselves, Davy, you and me. 
Barkis is a good plain creature,' said Peggotty, 'and if I tried to
do my duty by him, I think it would be my fault if I wasn't - if I
wasn't pretty comfortable,' said Peggotty, laughing heartily.
This quotation from Mr. Barkis was so appropriate, and tickled us
both so much, that we laughed again and again, and were quite in a
pleasant humour when we came within view of Mr. Peggotty's cottage.

It looked just the same, except that it may, perhaps, have shrunk
a little in my eyes; and Mrs. Gummidge was waiting at the door as
if she had stood there ever since.  All within was the same, down
to the seaweed in the blue mug in my bedroom.  I went into the
out-house to look about me; and the very same lobsters, crabs, and
crawfish possessed by the same desire to pinch the world in
general, appeared to be in the same state of conglomeration in the

same old corner.

But there was no little Em'ly to be seen, so I asked Mr. Peggotty
where she was.

'She's at school, sir,' said Mr. Peggotty, wiping the heat
consequent on the porterage of Peggotty's box from his forehead;
'she'll be home,' looking at the Dutch clock, 'in from twenty
minutes to half-an-hour's time.  We all on us feel the loss of her,
bless ye!'

Mrs. Gummidge moaned.

'Cheer up, Mawther!' cried Mr. Peggotty.

'I feel it more than anybody else,' said Mrs. Gummidge; 'I'm a lone
lorn creetur', and she used to be a'most the only thing that didn't
go contrary with me.'

Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head, applied herself to
blowing the fire.  Mr. Peggotty, looking round upon us while she
was so engaged, said in a low voice, which he shaded with his hand:
'The old 'un!'  From this I rightly conjectured that no improvement
had taken place since my last visit in the state of Mrs. Gummidge's
spirits.

Now, the whole place was, or it should have been, quite as
delightful a place as ever; and yet it did not impress me in the
same way.  I felt rather disappointed with it.  Perhaps it was
because little Em'ly was not at home.  I knew the way by which she
would come, and presently found myself strolling along the path to
meet her.

A figure appeared in the distance before long, and I soon knew it
to be Em'ly, who was a little creature still in stature, though she
was grown.  But when she drew nearer, and I saw her blue eyes
looking bluer, and her dimpled face looking brighter, and her whole
self prettier and gayer, a curious feeling came over me that made
me pretend not to know her, and pass by as if I were looking at
something a long way off.  I have done such a thing since in later
life, or I am mistaken.

Little Em'ly didn't care a bit.  She saw me well enough; but
instead of turning round and calling after me, ran away laughing. 
This obliged me to run after her, and she ran so fast that we were
very near the cottage before I caught her.

'Oh, it's you, is it?' said little Em'ly.

'Why, you knew who it was, Em'ly,' said I.

'And didn't YOU know who it was?' said Em'ly.  I was going to kiss
her, but she covered her cherry lips with her hands, and said she
wasn't a baby now, and ran away, laughing more than ever, into the
house.

She seemed to delight in teasing me, which was a change in her I
wondered at very much.  The tea table was ready, and our little
locker was put out in its old place, but instead of coming to sit
by me, she went and bestowed her company upon that grumbling Mrs.
Gummidge: and on Mr. Peggotty's inquiring why, rumpled her hair all
over her face to hide it, and could do nothing but laugh.

'A little puss, it is!' said Mr. Peggotty, patting her with his
great hand.

'So sh' is!  so sh' is!' cried Ham.  'Mas'r Davy bor', so sh' is!'
and he sat and chuckled at her for some time, in a state of mingled
admiration and delight, that made his face a burning red.

Little Em'ly was spoiled by them all, in fact; and by no one more
than Mr. Peggotty himself, whom she could have coaxed into
anything, by only going and laying her cheek against his rough
whisker.  That was my opinion, at least, when I saw her do it; and
I held Mr. Peggotty to be thoroughly in the right.  But she was so
affectionate and sweet-natured, and had such a pleasant manner of
being both sly and shy at once, that she captivated me more than
ever.

She was tender-hearted, too; for when, as we sat round the fire
after tea, an allusion was made by Mr. Peggotty over his pipe to
the loss I had sustained, the tears stood in her eyes, and she
looked at me so kindly across the table, that I felt quite thankful
to her.

'Ah!' said Mr. Peggotty, taking up her curls, and running them over
his hand like water, 'here's another orphan, you see, sir.  And
here,' said Mr. Peggotty, giving Ham a backhanded knock in the
chest, 'is another of 'em, though he don't look much like it.'

'If I had you for my guardian, Mr. Peggotty,' said I, shaking my
head, 'I don't think I should FEEL much like it.'

'Well said, Mas'r Davy bor'!' cried Ham, in an ecstasy.  'Hoorah! 
Well said!  Nor more you wouldn't!  Hor!  Hor!' - Here he returned
Mr. Peggotty's back-hander, and little Em'ly got up and kissed Mr.
Peggotty.  'And how's your friend, sir?' said Mr. Peggotty to me.

'Steerforth?' said I.

'That's the name!' cried Mr. Peggotty, turning to Ham.  'I knowed
it was something in our way.'

'You said it was Rudderford,' observed Ham, laughing.

'Well!' retorted Mr. Peggotty.  'And ye steer with a rudder, don't
ye?  It ain't fur off.  How is he, sir?'

'He was very well indeed when I came away, Mr. Peggotty.'

'There's a friend!' said Mr. Peggotty, stretching out his pipe. 
'There's a friend, if you talk of friends!  Why, Lord love my heart
alive, if it ain't a treat to look at him!'

'He is very handsome, is he not?' said I, my heart warming with
this praise.

'Handsome!' cried Mr. Peggotty.  'He stands up to you like - like
a - why I don't know what he don't stand up to you like.  He's so
bold!'

'Yes!  That's just his character,' said I.  'He's as brave as a
lion, and you can't think how frank he is, Mr. Peggotty.'

'And I do suppose, now,' said Mr. Peggotty, looking at me through
the smoke of his pipe, 'that in the way of book-larning he'd take
the wind out of a'most anything.'

'Yes,' said I, delighted; 'he knows everything.  He is
astonishingly clever.'

'There's a friend!' murmured Mr. Peggotty, with a grave toss of his
head.

'Nothing seems to cost him any trouble,' said I.  'He knows a task
if he only looks at it.  He is the best cricketer you ever saw.  He
will give you almost as many men as you like at draughts, and beat
you easily.'

Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: 'Of
course he will.'

'He is such a speaker,' I pursued, 'that he can win anybody over;
and I don't know what you'd say if you were to hear him sing, Mr.
Peggotty.'

Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: 'I have
no doubt of it.'

'Then, he's such a generous, fine, noble fellow,' said I, quite
carried away by my favourite theme, 'that it's hardly possible to
give him as much praise as he deserves.  I am sure I can never feel
thankful enough for the generosity with which he has protected me,
so much younger and lower in the school than himself.'

I was running on, very fast indeed, when my eyes rested on little
Em'ly's face, which was bent forward over the table, listening with
the deepest attention, her breath held, her blue eyes sparkling
like jewels, and the colour mantling in her cheeks.  She looked so
extraordinarily earnest and pretty, that I stopped in a sort of
wonder; and they all observed her at the same time, for as I
stopped, they laughed and looked at her.

'Em'ly is like me,' said Peggotty, 'and would like to see him.'

Em'ly was confused by our all observing her, and hung down her
head, and her face was covered with blushes.  Glancing up presently
through her stray curls, and seeing that we were all looking at her
still (I am sure I, for one, could have looked at her for hours),
she ran away, and kept away till it was nearly bedtime.

I lay down in the old little bed in the stern of the boat, and the
wind came moaning on across the flat as it had done before.  But I
could not help fancying, now, that it moaned of those who were
gone; and instead of thinking that the sea might rise in the night
and float the boat away, I thought of the sea that had risen, since
I last heard those sounds, and drowned my happy home.  I recollect,
as the wind and water began to sound fainter in my ears, putting a
short clause into my prayers, petitioning that I might grow up to
marry little Em'ly, and so dropping lovingly asleep.

The days passed pretty much as they had passed before, except - it
was a great exception- that little Em'ly and I seldom wandered on
the beach now.  She had tasks to learn, and needle-work to do; and
was absent during a great part of each day.  But I felt that we
should not have had those old wanderings, even if it had been
otherwise.  Wild and full of childish whims as Em'ly was, she was
more of a little woman than I had supposed.  She seemed to have got
a great distance away from me, in little more than a year.  She
liked me, but she laughed at me, and tormented me; and when I went
to meet her, stole home another way, and was laughing at the door
when I came back, disappointed.  The best times were when she sat
quietly at work in the doorway, and I sat on the wooden step at her
feet, reading to her.  It seems to me, at this hour, that I have
never seen such sunlight as on those bright April afternoons; that
I have never seen such a sunny little figure as I used to see,
sitting in the doorway of the old boat; that I have never beheld
such sky, such water, such glorified ships sailing away into golden
air.

On the very first evening after our arrival, Mr. Barkis appeared in
an exceedingly vacant and awkward condition, and with a bundle of
oranges tied up in a handkerchief.  As he made no allusion of any
kind to this property, he was supposed to have left it behind him
by accident when he went away; until Ham, running after him to
restore it, came back with the information that it was intended for
Peggotty.  After that occasion he appeared every evening at exactly
the same hour, and always with a little bundle, to which he never
alluded, and which he regularly put behind the door and left there. 
These offerings of affection were of a most various and eccentric
description.  Among them I remember a double set of pigs' trotters,
a huge pin-cushion, half a bushel or so of apples, a pair of jet
earrings, some Spanish onions, a box of dominoes, a canary bird and
cage, and a leg of pickled pork.

Mr. Barkis's wooing, as I remember it, was altogether of a peculiar
kind.  He very seldom said anything; but would sit by the fire in
much the same attitude as he sat in his cart, and stare heavily at
Peggotty, who was opposite.  One night, being, as I suppose,
inspired by love, he made a dart at the bit of wax-candle she kept
for her thread, and put it in his waistcoat-pocket and carried it
off.  After that, his great delight was to produce it when it was
wanted, sticking to the lining of his pocket, in a partially melted
state, and pocket it again when it was done with.  He seemed to
enjoy himself very much, and not to feel at all called upon to
talk.  Even when he took Peggotty out for a walk on the flats, he
had no uneasiness on that head, I believe; contenting himself with
now and then asking her if she was pretty comfortable; and I
remember that sometimes, after he was gone, Peggotty would throw
her apron over her face, and laugh for half-an-hour.  Indeed, we
were all more or less amused, except that miserable Mrs. Gummidge,
whose courtship would appear to have been of an exactly parallel
nature, she was so continually reminded by these transactions of
the old one.

At length, when the term of my visit was nearly expired, it was
given out that Peggotty and Mr. Barkis were going to make a day's
holiday together, and that little Em'ly and I were to accompany
them.  I had but a broken sleep the night before, in anticipation
of the pleasure of a whole day with Em'ly.  We were all astir
betimes in the morning; and while we were yet at breakfast, Mr.
Barkis appeared in the distance, driving a chaise-cart towards the
object of his affections.

Peggotty was dressed as usual, in her neat and quiet mourning; but
Mr. Barkis bloomed in a new blue coat, of which the tailor had
given him such good measure, that the cuffs would have rendered
gloves unnecessary in the coldest weather, while the collar was so
high that it pushed his hair up on end on the top of his head.  His
bright buttons, too, were of the largest size.  Rendered complete
by drab pantaloons and a buff waistcoat, I thought Mr. Barkis a
phenomenon of respectability.

When we were all in a bustle outside the door, I found that Mr.
Peggotty was prepared with an old shoe, which was to be thrown
after us for luck, and which he offered to Mrs. Gummidge for that
purpose.

'No.  It had better be done by somebody else, Dan'l,' said Mrs.
Gummidge.  'I'm a lone lorn creetur' myself, and everythink that
reminds me of creetur's that ain't lone and lorn, goes contrary
with me.'

'Come, old gal!' cried Mr. Peggotty.  'Take and heave it.'

'No, Dan'l,' returned Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her
head.  'If I felt less, I could do more.  You don't feel like me,
Dan'l; thinks don't go contrary with you, nor you with them; you
had better do it yourself.'

But here Peggotty, who had been going about from one to another in
a hurried way, kissing everybody, called out from the cart, in
which we all were by this time (Em'ly and I on two little chairs,
side by side), that Mrs. Gummidge must do it.  So Mrs. Gummidge did
it; and, I am sorry to relate, cast a damp upon the festive
character of our departure, by immediately bursting into tears, and
sinking subdued into the arms of Ham, with the declaration that she
knowed she was a burden, and had better be carried to the House at
once.  Which I really thought was a sensible idea, that Ham might
have acted on.

Away we went, however, on our holiday excursion; and the first
thing we did was to stop at a church, where Mr. Barkis tied the
horse to some rails, and went in with Peggotty, leaving little
Em'ly and me alone in the chaise.  I took that occasion to put my
arm round Em'ly's waist, and propose that as I was going away so
very soon now, we should determine to be very affectionate to one
another, and very happy, all day.  Little Em'ly consenting, and
allowing me to kiss her, I became desperate; informing her, I
recollect, that I never could love another, and that I was prepared
to shed the blood of anybody who should aspire to her affections.

How merry little Em'ly made herself about it!  With what a demure
assumption of being immensely older and wiser than I, the fairy
little woman said I was 'a silly boy'; and then laughed so
charmingly that I forgot the pain of being called by that
disparaging name, in the pleasure of looking at her.

Mr. Barkis and Peggotty were a good while in the church, but came
out at last, and then we drove away into the country.  As we were
going along, Mr. Barkis turned to me, and said, with a wink, - by
the by, I should hardly have thought, before, that he could wink:

'What name was it as I wrote up in the cart?'

'Clara Peggotty,' I answered.

'What name would it be as I should write up now, if there was a
tilt here?'

'Clara Peggotty, again?' I suggested.

'Clara Peggotty BARKIS!' he returned, and burst into a roar of
laughter that shook the chaise.

In a word, they were married, and had gone into the church for no
other purpose.  Peggotty was resolved that it should be quietly
done; and the clerk had given her away, and there had been no
witnesses of the ceremony.  She was a little confused when Mr.
Barkis made this abrupt announcement of their union, and could not
hug me enough in token of her unimpaired affection; but she soon
became herself again, and said she was very glad it was over.

We drove to a little inn in a by-road, where we were expected, and
where we had a very comfortable dinner, and passed the day with
great satisfaction.  If Peggotty had been married every day for the
last ten years, she could hardly have been more at her ease about
it; it made no sort of difference in her: she was just the same as
ever, and went out for a stroll with little Em'ly and me before
tea, while Mr. Barkis philosophically smoked his pipe, and enjoyed
himself, I suppose, with the contemplation of his happiness.  If
so, it sharpened his appetite; for I distinctly call to mind that,
although he had eaten a good deal of pork and greens at dinner, and
had finished off with a fowl or two, he was obliged to have cold
boiled bacon for tea, and disposed of a large quantity without any
emotion.

I have often thought, since, what an odd, innocent, out-of-the-way
kind of wedding it must have been!  We got into the chaise again
soon after dark, and drove cosily back, looking up at the stars,
and talking about them.  I was their chief exponent, and opened Mr.
Barkis's mind to an amazing extent.  I told him all I knew, but he
would have believed anything I might have taken it into my head to
impart to him; for he had a profound veneration for my abilities,
and informed his wife in my hearing, on that very occasion, that I
was 'a young Roeshus' - by which I think he meant prodigy.

When we had exhausted the subject of the stars, or rather when I
had exhausted the mental faculties of Mr. Barkis, little Em'ly and
I made a cloak of an old wrapper, and sat under it for the rest of
the journey.  Ah, how I loved her!  What happiness (I thought) if
we were married, and were going away anywhere to live among the
trees and in the fields, never growing older, never growing wiser,
children ever, rambling hand in hand through sunshine and among
flowery meadows, laying down our heads on moss at night, in a sweet
sleep of purity and peace, and buried by the birds when we were
dead!  Some such picture, with no real world in it, bright with the
light of our innocence, and vague as the stars afar off, was in my
mind all the way.  I am glad to think there were two such guileless
hearts at Peggotty's marriage as little Em'ly's and mine.  I am
glad to think the Loves and Graces took such airy forms in its
homely procession.

Well, we came to the old boat again in good time at night; and
there Mr. and Mrs. Barkis bade us good-bye, and drove away snugly
to their own home.  I felt then, for the first time, that I had
lost Peggotty.  I should have gone to bed with a sore heart indeed
under any other roof but that which sheltered little Em'ly's head.

Mr. Peggotty and Ham knew what was in my thoughts as well as I did,
and were ready with some supper and their hospitable faces to drive
it away.  Little Em'ly came and sat beside me on the locker for the
only time in all that visit; and it was altogether a wonderful
close to a wonderful day.

It was a night tide; and soon after we went to bed, Mr. Peggotty
and Ham went out to fish.  I felt very brave at being left alone in
the solitary house, the protector of Em'ly and Mrs. Gummidge, and
only wished that a lion or a serpent, or any ill-disposed monster,
would make an attack upon us, that I might destroy him, and cover
myself with glory.  But as nothing of the sort happened to be
walking about on Yarmouth flats that night, I provided the best
substitute I could by dreaming of dragons until morning.

With morning came Peggotty; who called to me, as usual, under my
window as if Mr. Barkis the carrier had been from first to last a
dream too.  After breakfast she took me to her own home, and a
beautiful little home it was.  Of all the moveables in it, I must
have been impressed by a certain old bureau of some dark wood in
the parlour (the tile-floored kitchen was the general
sitting-room), with a retreating top which opened, let down, and
became a desk, within which was a large quarto edition of Foxe's
Book of Martyrs.  This precious volume, of which I do not recollect
one word, I immediately discovered and immediately applied myself
to; and I never visited the house afterwards, but I kneeled on a
chair, opened the casket where this gem was enshrined, spread my
arms over the desk, and fell to devouring the book afresh.  I was
chiefly edified, I am afraid, by the pictures, which were numerous,
and represented all kinds of dismal horrors; but the Martyrs and
Peggotty's house have been inseparable in my mind ever since, and
are now.

I took leave of Mr. Peggotty, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge, and
little Em'ly, that day; and passed the night at Peggotty's, in a
little room in the roof (with the Crocodile Book on a shelf by the
bed's head) which was to be always mine, Peggotty said, and should
always be kept for me in exactly the same state.

'Young or old, Davy dear, as long as I am alive and have this house
over my head,' said Peggotty, 'you shall find it as if I expected
you here directly minute.  I shall keep it every day, as I used to
keep your old little room, my darling; and if you was to go to
China, you might think of it as being kept just the same, all the
time you were away.'

I felt the truth and constancy of my dear old nurse, with all my
heart, and thanked her as well as I could.  That was not very well,
for she spoke to me thus, with her arms round my neck, in the
morning, and I was going home in the morning, and I went home in
the morning, with herself and Mr. Barkis in the cart.  They left me
at the gate, not easily or lightly; and it was a strange sight to
me to see the cart go on, taking Peggotty away, and leaving me
under the old elm-trees looking at the house, in which there was no
face to look on mine with love or liking any more.

And now I fell into a state of neglect, which I cannot look back
upon without compassion.  I fell at once into a solitary condition,
- apart from all friendly notice, apart from the society of all
other boys of my own age, apart from all companionship but my own
spiritless thoughts, - which seems to cast its gloom upon this
paper as I write.

What would I have given, to have been sent to the hardest school
that ever was kept! - to have been taught something, anyhow,
anywhere!  No such hope dawned upon me.  They disliked me; and they
sullenly, sternly, steadily, overlooked me.  I think Mr.
Murdstone's means were straitened at about this time; but it is
little to the purpose.  He could not bear me; and in putting me
from him he tried, as I believe, to put away the notion that I had
any claim upon him - and succeeded.

I was not actively ill-used.  I was not beaten, or starved; but the
wrong that was done to me had no intervals of relenting, and was
done in a systematic, passionless manner.  Day after day, week
after week, month after month, I was coldly neglected.  I wonder
sometimes, when I think of it, what they would have done if I had
been taken with an illness; whether I should have lain down in my
lonely room, and languished through it in my usual solitary way, or
whether anybody would have helped me out.

When Mr. and Miss Murdstone were at home, I took my meals with
them; in their absence, I ate and drank by myself.  At all times I
lounged about the house and neighbourhood quite disregarded, except
that they were jealous of my making any friends: thinking, perhaps,
that if I did, I might complain to someone.  For this reason,
though Mr. Chillip often asked me to go and see him (he was a
widower, having, some years before that, lost a little small
light-haired wife, whom I can just remember connecting in my own
thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat), it was but seldom that I
enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his closet of a
surgery; reading some book that was new to me, with the smell of
the whole Pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding something in
a mortar under his mild directions.

For the same reason, added no doubt to the old dislike of her, I
was seldom allowed to visit Peggotty.  Faithful to her promise, she
either came to see me, or met me somewhere near, once every week,
and never empty-handed; but many and bitter were the
disappointments I had, in being refused permission to pay a visit
to her at her house.  Some few times, however, at long intervals,
I was allowed to go there; and then I found out that Mr. Barkis was
something of a miser, or as Peggotty dutifully expressed it, was 'a
little near', and kept a heap of money in a box under his bed,
which he pretended was only full of coats and trousers.  In this
coffer, his riches hid themselves with such a tenacious modesty,
that the smallest instalments could only be tempted out by
artifice; so that Peggotty had to prepare a long and elaborate
scheme, a very Gunpowder Plot, for every Saturday's expenses.

All this time I was so conscious of the waste of any promise I had
given, and of my being utterly neglected, that I should have been
perfectly miserable, I have no doubt, but for the old books.  They
were my only comfort; and I was as true to them as they were to me,
and read them over and over I don't know how many times more.

I now approach a period of my life, which I can never lose the
remembrance of, while I remember anything: and the recollection of
which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a
ghost, and haunted happier times.

I had been out, one day, loitering somewhere, in the listless,
meditative manner that my way of life engendered, when, turning the
corner of a lane near our house, I came upon Mr. Murdstone walking
with a gentleman.  I was confused, and was going by them, when the
gentleman cried:

'What!  Brooks!'

'No, sir, David Copperfield,' I said.

'Don't tell me.  You are Brooks,' said the gentleman.  'You are
Brooks of Sheffield.  That's your name.'

At these words, I observed the gentleman more attentively.  His
laugh coming to my remembrance too, I knew him to be Mr. Quinion,
whom I had gone over to Lowestoft with Mr. Murdstone to see, before
- it is no matter - I need not recall when.

'And how do you get on, and where are you being educated, Brooks?'
said Mr. Quinion.

He had put his hand upon my shoulder, and turned me about, to walk
with them.  I did not know what to reply, and glanced dubiously at
Mr. Murdstone.

'He is at home at present,' said the latter.  'He is not being
educated anywhere.  I don't know what to do with him.  He is a
difficult subject.'

That old, double look was on me for a moment; and then his eyes
darkened with a frown, as it turned, in its aversion, elsewhere.

'Humph!' said Mr. Quinion, looking at us both, I thought.  'Fine
weather!'

Silence ensued, and I was considering how I could best disengage my
shoulder from his hand, and go away, when he said:

'I suppose you are a pretty sharp fellow still?  Eh, Brooks?'

'Aye!  He is sharp enough,' said Mr. Murdstone, impatiently.  'You
had better let him go.  He will not thank you for troubling him.'

On this hint, Mr. Quinion released me, and I made the best of my
way home.  Looking back as I turned into the front garden, I saw
Mr. Murdstone leaning against the wicket of the churchyard, and Mr.
Quinion talking to him.  They were both looking after me, and I
felt that they were speaking of me.

Mr. Quinion lay at our house that night.  After breakfast, the next
morning, I had put my chair away, and was going out of the room,
when Mr. Murdstone called me back.  He then gravely repaired to
another table, where his sister sat herself at her desk.  Mr.
Quinion, with his hands in his pockets, stood looking out of
window; and I stood looking at them all.

'David,' said Mr. Murdstone, 'to the young this is a world for
action; not for moping and droning in.'  

- 'As you do,' added his sister.

'Jane Murdstone, leave it to me, if you please.  I say, David, to
the young this is a world for action, and not for moping and
droning in.  It is especially so for a young boy of your
disposition, which requires a great deal of correcting; and to
which no greater service can be done than to force it to conform to
the ways of the working world, and to bend it and break it.'

'For stubbornness won't do here,' said his sister 'What it wants
is, to be crushed.  And crushed it must be.  Shall be, too!'

He gave her a look, half in remonstrance, half in approval, and
went on:

'I suppose you know, David, that I am not rich.  At any rate, you
know it now.  You have received some considerable education
already.  Education is costly; and even if it were not, and I could
afford it, I am of opinion that it would not be at all advantageous
to you to be kept at school.  What is before you, is a fight with
the world; and the sooner you begin it, the better.'

I think it occurred to me that I had already begun it, in my poor
way: but it occurs to me now, whether or no.

'You have heard the "counting-house" mentioned sometimes,' said Mr.
Murdstone.

'The counting-house, sir?' I repeated.
'Of Murdstone and Grinby, in the wine trade,' he replied.

I suppose I looked uncertain, for he went on hastily:

'You have heard the "counting-house" mentioned, or the business, or
the cellars, or the wharf, or something about it.'

'I think I have heard the business mentioned, sir,' I said,
remembering what I vaguely knew of his and his sister's resources. 
'But I don't know when.'

'It does not matter when,' he returned.  'Mr. Quinion manages that
business.'

I glanced at the latter deferentially as he stood looking out of
window.

'Mr. Quinion suggests that it gives employment to some other boys,
and that he sees no reason why it shouldn't, on the same terms,
give employment to you.'

'He having,' Mr. Quinion observed in a low voice, and half turning
round, 'no other prospect, Murdstone.'

Mr. Murdstone, with an impatient, even an angry gesture, resumed,
without noticing what he had said:

'Those terms are, that you will earn enough for yourself to provide
for your eating and drinking, and pocket-money.  Your lodging
(which I have arranged for) will be paid by me.  So will your
washing -'

'- Which will be kept down to my estimate,' said his sister.

'Your clothes will be looked after for you, too,' said Mr.
Murdstone; 'as you will not be able, yet awhile, to get them for
yourself.  So you are now going to London, David, with Mr. Quinion,
to begin the world on your own account.'

'In short, you are provided for,' observed his sister; 'and will
please to do your duty.'

Though I quite understood that the purpose of this announcement was
to get rid of me, I have no distinct remembrance whether it pleased
or frightened me.  My impression is, that I was in a state of
confusion about it, and, oscillating between the two points,
touched neither.  Nor had I much time for the clearing of my
thoughts, as Mr. Quinion was to go upon the morrow.

Behold me, on the morrow, in a much-worn little white hat, with a
black crape round it for my mother, a black jacket, and a pair of
hard, stiff corduroy trousers - which Miss Murdstone considered the
best armour for the legs in that fight with the world which was now
to come off.  behold me so attired, and with my little worldly all
before me in a small trunk, sitting, a lone lorn child (as Mrs.
Gummidge might have said), in the post-chaise that was carrying Mr.
Quinion to the London coach at Yarmouth!  See, how our house and
church are lessening in the distance; how the grave beneath the
tree is blotted out by intervening objects; how the spire points
upwards from my old playground no more, and the sky is empty!

CHAPTER 11
I BEGIN LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT, AND DON'T LIKE IT

I know enough of the world now, to have almost lost the capacity of
being much surprised by anything; but it is matter of some surprise
to me, even now, that I can have been so easily thrown away at such
an age.  A child of excellent abilities, and with strong powers of
observation, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or
mentally, it seems wonderful to me that nobody should have made any
sign in my behalf.  But none was made; and I became, at ten years
old, a little labouring hind in the service of Murdstone and
Grinby.

Murdstone and Grinby's warehouse was at the waterside.  It was down
in Blackfriars.  Modern improvements have altered the place; but it
was the last house at the bottom of a narrow street, curving down
hill to the river, with some stairs at the end, where people took
boat.  It was a crazy old house with a wharf of its own, abutting
on the water when the tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was
out, and literally overrun with rats.  Its panelled rooms,
discoloured with the dirt and smoke of a hundred years, I dare say;
its decaying floors and staircase; the squeaking and scuffling of
the old grey rats down in the cellars; and the dirt and rottenness
of the place; are things, not of many years ago, in my mind, but of
the present instant.  They are all before me, just as they were in
the evil hour when I went among them for the first time, with my
trembling hand in Mr. Quinion's.

Murdstone and Grinby's trade was among a good many kinds of people,
but an important branch of it was the supply of wines and spirits
to certain packet ships.  I forget now where they chiefly went, but
I think there were some among them that made voyages both to the
East and West Indies.  I know that a great many empty bottles were
one of the consequences of this traffic, and that certain men and
boys were employed to examine them against the light, and reject
those that were flawed, and to rinse and wash them.  When the empty
bottles ran short, there were labels to be pasted on full ones, or
corks to be fitted to them, or seals to be put upon the corks, or
finished bottles to be packed in casks.  All this work was my work,
and of the boys employed upon it I was one.

There were three or four of us, counting me.  My working place was
established in a corner of the warehouse, where Mr. Quinion could
see me, when he chose to stand up on the bottom rail of his stool
in the counting-house, and look at me through a window above the
desk.  Hither, on the first morning of my so auspiciously beginning
life on my own account, the oldest of the regular boys was summoned
to show me my business.  His name was Mick Walker, and he wore a
ragged apron and a paper cap.  He informed me that his father was
a bargeman, and walked, in a black velvet head-dress, in the Lord
Mayor's Show.  He also informed me that our principal associate
would be another boy whom he introduced by the - to me -
extraordinary name of Mealy Potatoes.  I discovered, however, that
this youth had not been christened by that name, but that it had
been bestowed upon him in the warehouse, on account of his
complexion, which was pale or mealy.  Mealy's father was a
waterman, who had the additional distinction of being a fireman,
and was engaged as such at one of the large theatres; where some
young relation of Mealy's - I think his little sister - did Imps in
the Pantomimes.

No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into
this companionship; compared these henceforth everyday associates
with those of my happier childhood - not to say with Steerforth,
Traddles, and the rest of those boys; and felt my hopes of growing
up to be a learned and distinguished man, crushed in my bosom.  The
deep remembrance of the sense I had, of being utterly without hope
now; of the shame I felt in my position; of the misery it was to my
young heart to believe that day by day what I had learned, and
thought, and delighted in, and raised my fancy and my emulation up
by, would pass away from me, little by little, never to be brought
back any more; cannot be written.  As often as Mick Walker went
away in the course of that forenoon, I mingled my tears with the
water in which I was washing the bottles; and sobbed as if there
were a flaw in my own breast, and it were in danger of bursting.

The counting-house clock was at half past twelve, and there was
general preparation for going to dinner, when Mr. Quinion tapped at
the counting-house window, and beckoned to me to go in.  I went in,
and found there a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown surtout
and black tights and shoes, with no more hair upon his head (which
was a large one, and very shining) than there is upon an egg, and
with a very extensive face, which he turned full upon me.  His
clothes were shabby, but he had an imposing shirt-collar on.  He
carried a jaunty sort of a stick, with a large pair of rusty
tassels to it; and a quizzing-glass hung outside his coat, - for
ornament, I afterwards found, as he very seldom looked through it,
and couldn't see anything when he did.

'This,' said Mr. Quinion, in allusion to myself, 'is he.'

'This,' said the stranger, with a certain condescending roll in his
voice, and a certain indescribable air of doing something genteel,
which impressed me very much, 'is Master Copperfield.  I hope I see
you well, sir?'

I said I was very well, and hoped he was.  I was sufficiently ill
at ease, Heaven knows; but it was not in my nature to complain much
at that time of my life, so I said I was very well, and hoped he
was.

'I am,' said the stranger, 'thank Heaven, quite well.  I have
received a letter from Mr. Murdstone, in which he mentions that he
would desire me to receive into an apartment in the rear of my
house, which is at present unoccupied - and is, in short, to be let
as a - in short,' said the stranger, with a smile and in a burst of
confidence, 'as a bedroom - the young beginner whom I have now the
pleasure to -' and the stranger waved his hand, and settled his
chin in his shirt-collar.

'This is Mr. Micawber,' said Mr. Quinion to me.

'Ahem!' said the stranger, 'that is my name.'

'Mr. Micawber,' said Mr. Quinion, 'is known to Mr. Murdstone.  He
takes orders for us on commission, when he can get any.  He has
been written to by Mr. Murdstone, on the subject of your lodgings,
and he will receive you as a lodger.'

'My address,' said Mr. Micawber, 'is Windsor Terrace, City Road. 
I - in short,' said Mr. Micawber, with the same genteel air, and in
another burst of confidence - 'I live there.'

I made him a bow.

'Under the impression,' said Mr. Micawber, 'that your
peregrinations in this metropolis have not as yet been extensive,
and that you might have some difficulty in penetrating the arcana
of the Modern Babylon in the direction of the City Road, - in
short,' said Mr. Micawber, in another burst of confidence, 'that
you might lose yourself - I shall be happy to call this evening,
and install you in the knowledge of the nearest way.'

I thanked him with all my heart, for it was friendly in him to
offer to take that trouble.

'At what hour,' said Mr. Micawber, 'shall I -'

'At about eight,' said Mr. Quinion.

'At about eight,' said Mr. Micawber.  'I beg to wish you good day,
Mr. Quinion.  I will intrude no longer.'

So he put on his hat, and went out with his cane under his arm:
very upright, and humming a tune when he was clear of the
counting-house.

Mr. Quinion then formally engaged me to be as useful as I could in
the warehouse of Murdstone and Grinby, at a salary, I think, of six
shillings a week.  I am not clear whether it was six or seven.  I
am inclined to believe, from my uncertainty on this head, that it
was six at first and seven afterwards.  He paid me a week down
(from his own pocket, I believe), and I gave Mealy sixpence out of
it to get my trunk carried to Windsor Terrace that night: it being
too heavy for my strength, small as it was.  I paid sixpence more
for my dinner, which was a meat pie and a turn at a neighbouring
pump; and passed the hour which was allowed for that meal, in
walking about the streets.

At the appointed time in the evening, Mr. Micawber reappeared.  I
washed my hands and face, to do the greater honour to his
gentility, and we walked to our house, as I suppose I must now call
it, together; Mr. Micawber impressing the name of streets, and the
shapes of corner houses upon me, as we went along, that I might
find my way back, easily, in the morning.

Arrived at this house in Windsor Terrace (which I noticed was
shabby like himself, but also, like himself, made all the show it
could), he presented me to Mrs. Micawber, a thin and faded lady,
not at all young, who was sitting in the parlour (the first floor
was altogether unfurnished, and the blinds were kept down to delude
the neighbours), with a baby at her breast.  This baby was one of
twins; and I may remark here that I hardly ever, in all my
experience of the family, saw both the twins detached from Mrs.
Micawber at the same time.  One of them was always taking
refreshment.

There were two other children; Master Micawber, aged about four,
and Miss Micawber, aged about three.  These, and a
dark-complexioned young woman, with a habit of snorting, who was
servant to the family, and informed me, before half an hour had
expired, that she was 'a Orfling', and came from St. Luke's
workhouse, in the neighbourhood, completed the establishment.  My
room was at the top of the house, at the back: a close chamber;
stencilled all over with an ornament which my young imagination
represented as a blue muffin; and very scantily furnished.

'I never thought,' said Mrs. Micawber, when she came up, twin and
all, to show me the apartment, and sat down to take breath, 'before
I was married, when I lived with papa and mama, that I should ever
find it necessary to take a lodger.  But Mr. Micawber being in
difficulties, all considerations of private feeling must give way.'

I said: 'Yes, ma'am.'

'Mr. Micawber's difficulties are almost overwhelming just at
present,' said Mrs. Micawber; 'and whether it is possible to bring
him through them, I don't know.  When I lived at home with papa and
mama, I really should have hardly understood what the word meant,
in the sense in which I now employ it, but experientia does it, -
as papa used to say.'

I cannot satisfy myself whether she told me that Mr. Micawber had
been an officer in the Marines, or whether I have imagined it.  I
only know that I believe to this hour that he WAS in the Marines
once upon a time, without knowing why.  He was a sort of town
traveller for a number of miscellaneous houses, now; but made
little or nothing of it, I am afraid.

'If Mr. Micawber's creditors will not give him time,' said Mrs.
Micawber, 'they must take the consequences; and the sooner they
bring it to an issue the better.  Blood cannot be obtained from a
stone, neither can anything on account be obtained at present (not
to mention law expenses) from Mr. Micawber.'

I never can quite understand whether my precocious self-dependence
confused Mrs. Micawber in reference to my age, or whether she was
so full of the subject that she would have talked about it to the
very twins if there had been nobody else to communicate with, but
this was the strain in which she began, and she went on accordingly
all the time I knew her.

Poor Mrs. Micawber!  She said she had tried to exert herself, and
so, I have no doubt, she had.  The centre of the street door was
perfectly covered with a great brass-plate, on which was engraved
'Mrs. Micawber's Boarding Establishment for Young Ladies': but I
never found that any young lady had ever been to school there; or
that any young lady ever came, or proposed to come; or that the
least preparation was ever made to receive any young lady.  The
only visitors I ever saw, or heard of, were creditors.  THEY used
to come at all hours, and some of them were quite ferocious.  One
dirty-faced man, I think he was a boot-maker, used to edge himself
into the passage as early as seven o'clock in the morning, and call
up the stairs to Mr. Micawber - 'Come!  You ain't out yet, you
know.  Pay us, will you?  Don't hide, you know; that's mean.  I
wouldn't be mean if I was you.  Pay us, will you?  You just pay us,
d'ye hear?  Come!'  Receiving no answer to these taunts, he would
mount in his wrath to the words 'swindlers' and 'robbers'; and
these being ineffectual too, would sometimes go to the extremity of
crossing the street, and roaring up at the windows of the second
floor, where he knew Mr. Micawber was.  At these times, Mr.
Micawber would be transported with grief and mortification, even to
the length (as I was once made aware by a scream from his wife) of
making motions at himself with a razor; but within half-an-hour
afterwards, he would polish up his shoes with extraordinary pains,
and go out, humming a tune with a greater air of gentility than
ever.  Mrs. Micawber was quite as elastic.  I have known her to be
thrown into fainting fits by the king's taxes at three o'clock, and
to eat lamb chops, breaded, and drink warm ale (paid for with two
tea-spoons that had gone to the pawnbroker's) at four.  On one
occasion, when an execution had just been put in, coming home
through some chance as early as six o'clock, I saw her lying (of
course with a twin) under the grate in a swoon, with her hair all
torn about her face; but I never knew her more cheerful than she
was, that very same night, over a veal cutlet before the kitchen
fire, telling me stories about her papa and mama, and the company
they used to keep.

In this house, and with this family, I passed my leisure time.  My
own exclusive breakfast of a penny loaf and a pennyworth of milk,
I provided myself.  I kept another small loaf, and a modicum of
cheese, on a particular shelf of a particular cupboard, to make my
supper on when I came back at night.  This made a hole in the six
or seven shillings, I know well; and I was out at the warehouse all
day, and had to support myself on that money all the week.  From
Monday morning until Saturday night, I had no advice, no counsel,
no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any
kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to
heaven!

I was so young and childish, and so little qualified - how could I
be otherwise? - to undertake the whole charge of my own existence,
that often, in going to Murdstone and Grinby's, of a morning, I
could not resist the stale pastry put out for sale at half-price at
the pastrycooks' doors, and spent in that the money I should have
kept for my dinner.  Then, I went without my dinner, or bought a
roll or a slice of pudding.  I remember two pudding shops, between
which I was divided, according to my finances.  One was in a court
close to St. Martin's Church - at the back of the church, - which
is now removed altogether.  The pudding at that shop was made of
currants, and was rather a special pudding, but was dear,
twopennyworth not being larger than a pennyworth of more ordinary
pudding.  A good shop for the latter was in the Strand - somewhere
in that part which has been rebuilt since.  It was a stout pale
pudding, heavy and flabby, and with great flat raisins in it, stuck
in whole at wide distances apart.  It came up hot at about my time
every day, and many a day did I dine off it.  When I dined
regularly and handsomely, I had a saveloy and a penny loaf, or a
fourpenny plate of red beef from a cook's shop; or a plate of bread
and cheese and a glass of beer, from a miserable old public-house
opposite our place of business, called the Lion, or the Lion and
something else that I have forgotten.  Once, I remember carrying my
own bread (which I had brought from home in the morning) under my
arm, wrapped in a piece of paper, like a book, and going to a
famous alamode beef-house near Drury Lane, and ordering a 'small
plate' of that delicacy to eat with it.  What the waiter thought of
such a strange little apparition coming in all alone, I don't know;
but I can see him now, staring at me as I ate my dinner, and
bringing up the other waiter to look.  I gave him a halfpenny for
himself, and I wish he hadn't taken it.

We had half-an-hour, I think, for tea.  When I had money enough, I
used to get half-a-pint of ready-made coffee and a slice of bread
and butter.  When I had none, I used to look at a venison shop in
Fleet Street; or I have strolled, at such a time, as far as Covent
Garden Market, and stared at the pineapples.  I was fond of
wandering about the Adelphi, because it was a mysterious place,
with those dark arches.  I see myself emerging one evening from
some of these arches, on a little public-house close to the river,
with an open space before it, where some coal-heavers were dancing;
to look at whom I sat down upon a bench.  I wonder what they
thought of me!

I was such a child, and so little, that frequently when I went into
the bar of a strange public-house for a glass of ale or porter, to
moisten what I had had for dinner, they were afraid to give it me. 
I remember one hot evening I went into the bar of a public-house,
and said to the landlord:
'What is your best - your very best - ale a glass?'  For it was a
special occasion.  I don't know what.  It may have been my
birthday.

'Twopence-halfpenny,' says the landlord, 'is the price of the
Genuine Stunning ale.'

'Then,' says I, producing the money, 'just draw me a glass of the
Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good head to it.'

The landlord looked at me in return over the bar, from head to
foot, with a strange smile on his face; and instead of drawing the
beer, looked round the screen and said something to his wife.  She
came out from behind it, with her work in her hand, and joined him
in surveying me.  Here we stand, all three, before me now.  The
landlord in his shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar
window-frame; his wife looking over the little half-door; and I, in
some confusion, looking up at them from outside the partition. 
They asked me a good many questions; as, what my name was, how old
I was, where I lived, how I was employed, and how I came there.  To
all of which, that I might commit nobody, I invented, I am afraid,
appropriate answers.  They served me with the ale, though I suspect
it was not the Genuine Stunning; and the landlord's wife, opening
the little half-door of the bar, and bending down, gave me my money
back, and gave me a kiss that was half admiring and half
compassionate, but all womanly and good, I am sure.

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the
scantiness of my resources or the difficulties of my life.  I know
that if a shilling were given me by Mr. Quinion at any time, I
spent it in a dinner or a tea.  I know that I worked, from morning
until night, with common men and boys, a shabby child.  I know that
I lounged about the streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily
fed.  I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have
been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a
little vagabond.

Yet I held some station at Murdstone and Grinby's too.  Besides
that Mr. Quinion did what a careless man so occupied, and dealing
with a thing so anomalous, could, to treat me as one upon a
different footing from the rest, I never said, to man or boy, how
it was that I came to be there, or gave the least indication of
being sorry that I was there.  That I suffered in secret, and that
I suffered exquisitely, no one ever knew but I.  How much I
suffered, it is, as I have said already, utterly beyond my power to
tell.  But I kept my own counsel, and I did my work.  I knew from
the first, that, if I could not do my work as well as any of the
rest, I could not hold myself above slight and contempt.  I soon
became at least as expeditious and as skilful as either of the
other boys.  Though perfectly familiar with them, my conduct and
manner were different enough from theirs to place a space between
us.  They and the men generally spoke of me as 'the little gent',
or 'the young Suffolker.'  A certain man named Gregory, who was
foreman of the packers, and another named Tipp, who was the carman,
and wore a red jacket, used to address me sometimes as 'David': but
I think it was mostly when we were very confidential, and when I
had made some efforts to entertain them, over our work, with some
results of the old readings; which were fast perishing out of my
remembrance.  Mealy Potatoes uprose once, and rebelled against my
being so distinguished; but Mick Walker settled him in no time.

My rescue from this kind of existence I considered quite hopeless,
and abandoned, as such, altogether.  I am solemnly convinced that
I never for one hour was reconciled to it, or was otherwise than
miserably unhappy; but I bore it; and even to Peggotty, partly for
the love of her and partly for shame, never in any letter (though
many passed between us) revealed the truth.

Mr. Micawber's difficulties were an addition to the distressed
state of my mind.  In my forlorn state I became quite attached to
the family, and used to walk about, busy with Mrs. Micawber's
calculations of ways and means, and heavy with the weight of Mr.
Micawber's debts.  On a Saturday night, which was my grand treat,
- partly because it was a great thing to walk home with six or
seven shillings in my pocket, looking into the shops and thinking
what such a sum would buy, and partly because I went home early, -
Mrs. Micawber would make the most heart-rending confidences to me;
also on a Sunday morning, when I mixed the portion of tea or coffee
I had bought over-night, in a little shaving-pot, and sat late at
my breakfast.  It was nothing at all unusual for Mr. Micawber to
sob violently at the beginning of one of these Saturday night
conversations, and sing about jack's delight being his lovely Nan,
towards the end of it.  I have known him come home to supper with
a flood of tears, and a declaration that nothing was now left but
a jail; and go to bed making a calculation of the expense of
putting bow-windows to the house, 'in case anything turned up',
which was his favourite expression.  And Mrs. Micawber was just the
same.

A curious equality of friendship, originating, I suppose, in our
respective circumstances, sprung up between me and these people,
notwithstanding the ludicrous disparity in our years.  But I never
allowed myself to be prevailed upon to accept any invitation to eat
and drink with them out of their stock (knowing that they got on
badly with the butcher and baker, and had often not too much for
themselves), until Mrs. Micawber took me into her entire
confidence.  This she did one evening as follows:

'Master Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'I make no stranger of
you, and therefore do not hesitate to say that Mr. Micawber's
difficulties are coming to a crisis.'

It made me very miserable to hear it, and I looked at Mrs.
Micawber's red eyes with the utmost sympathy.

'With the exception of the heel of a Dutch cheese - which is not
adapted to the wants of a young family' - said Mrs. Micawber,
'there is really not a scrap of anything in the larder.  I was
accustomed to speak of the larder when I lived with papa and mama,
and I use the word almost unconsciously.  What I mean to express
is, that there is nothing to eat in the house.'

'Dear me!' I said, in great concern.

I had two or three shillings of my week's money in my pocket - from
which I presume that it must have been on a Wednesday night when we
held this conversation - and I hastily produced them, and with
heartfelt emotion begged Mrs. Micawber to accept of them as a loan. 
But that lady, kissing me, and making me put them back in my
pocket, replied that she couldn't think of it.

'No, my dear Master Copperfield,' said she, 'far be it from my
thoughts!  But you have a discretion beyond your years, and can
render me another kind of service, if you will; and a service I
will thankfully accept of.'

I begged Mrs. Micawber to name it.

'I have parted with the plate myself,' said Mrs. Micawber.  'Six
tea, two salt, and a pair of sugars, I have at different times
borrowed money on, in secret, with my own hands.  But the twins are
a great tie; and to me, with my recollections, of papa and mama,
these transactions are very painful.  There are still a few trifles
that we could part with.  Mr. Micawber's feelings would never allow
him to dispose of them; and Clickett' - this was the girl from the
workhouse - 'being of a vulgar mind, would take painful liberties
if so much confidence was reposed in her.  Master Copperfield, if
I might ask you -'

I understood Mrs. Micawber now, and begged her to make use of me to
any extent.  I began to dispose of the more portable articles of
property that very evening; and went out on a similar expedition
almost every morning, before I went to Murdstone and Grinby's.

Mr. Micawber had a few books on a little chiffonier, which he
called the library; and those went first.  I carried them, one
after another, to a bookstall in the City Road - one part of which,
near our house, was almost all bookstalls and bird shops then - and
sold them for whatever they would bring.  The keeper of this
bookstall, who lived in a little house behind it, used to get tipsy
every night, and to be violently scolded by his wife every morning. 
More than once, when I went there early, I had audience of him in
a turn-up bedstead, with a cut in his forehead or a black eye,
bearing witness to his excesses over-night (I am afraid he was
quarrelsome in his drink), and he, with a shaking hand,
endeavouring to find the needful shillings in one or other of the
pockets of his clothes, which lay upon the floor, while his wife,
with a baby in her arms and her shoes down at heel, never left off
rating him.  Sometimes he had lost his money, and then he would ask
me to call again; but his wife had always got some - had taken his,
I dare say, while he was drunk - and secretly completed the bargain
on the stairs, as we went down together.
At the pawnbroker's shop, too, I began to be very well known.  The
principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took a good
deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a
Latin noun or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear,
while he transacted my business.  After all these occasions Mrs.
Micawber made a little treat, which was generally a supper; and
there was a peculiar relish in these meals which I well remember.

At last Mr. Micawber's difficulties came to a crisis, and he was
arrested early one morning, and carried over to the King's Bench
Prison in the Borough.  He told me, as he went out of the house,
that the God of day had now gone down upon him - and I really
thought his heart was broken and mine too.  But I heard,
afterwards, that he was seen to play a lively game at skittles,
before noon.

On the first Sunday after he was taken there, I was to go and see
him, and have dinner with him.  I was to ask my way to such a
place, and just short of that place I should see such another
place, and just short of that I should see a yard, which I was to
cross, and keep straight on until I saw a turnkey.  All this I did;
and when at last I did see a turnkey (poor little fellow that I
was!), and thought how, when Roderick Random was in a debtors'
prison, there was a man there with nothing on him but an old rug,
the turnkey swam before my dimmed eyes and my beating heart.

Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went up to
his room (top story but one), and cried very much.  He solemnly
conjured me, I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to
observe that if a man had twenty pounds a-year for his income, and
spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be
happy, but that if he spent twenty pounds one he would be
miserable.  After which he borrowed a shilling of me for porter,
gave me a written order on Mrs. Micawber for the amount, and put
away his pocket-handkerchief, and cheered up.

We sat before a little fire, with two bricks put within the rusted
grate, one on each side, to prevent its burning too many coals;
until another debtor, who shared the room with Mr. Micawber, came
in from the bakehouse with the loin of mutton which was our
joint-stock repast.  Then I was sent up to 'Captain Hopkins' in the
room overhead, with Mr. Micawber's compliments, and I was his young
friend, and would Captain Hopkins lend me a knife and fork.

Captain Hopkins lent me the knife and fork, with his compliments to
Mr. Micawber.  There was a very dirty lady in his little room, and
two wan girls, his daughters, with shock heads of hair.  I thought
it was better to borrow Captain Hopkins's knife and fork, than
Captain Hopkins's comb.  The Captain himself was in the last
extremity of shabbiness, with large whiskers, and an old, old brown
great-coat with no other coat below it.  I saw his bed rolled up in
a corner; and what plates and dishes and pots he had, on a shelf;
and I divined (God knows how) that though the two girls with the
shock heads of hair were Captain Hopkins's children, the dirty lady
was not married to Captain Hopkins.  My timid station on his
threshold was not occupied more than a couple of minutes at most;
but I came down again with all this in my knowledge, as surely as
the knife and fork were in my hand.

There was something gipsy-like and agreeable in the dinner, after
all.  I took back Captain Hopkins's knife and fork early in the
afternoon, and went home to comfort Mrs. Micawber with an account
of my visit.  She fainted when she saw me return, and made a little
jug of egg-hot afterwards to console us while we talked it over.

I don't know how the household furniture came to be sold for the
family benefit, or who sold it, except that I did not.  Sold it
was, however, and carried away in a van; except the bed, a few
chairs, and the kitchen table.  With these possessions we encamped,
as it were, in the two parlours of the emptied house in Windsor
Terrace; Mrs. Micawber, the children, the Orfling, and myself; and
lived in those rooms night and day.  I have no idea for how long,
though it seems to me for a long time.  At last Mrs. Micawber
resolved to move into the prison, where Mr. Micawber had now
secured a room to himself.  So I took the key of the house to the
landlord, who was very glad to get it; and the beds were sent over
to the King's Bench, except mine, for which a little room was hired
outside the walls in the neighbourhood of that Institution, very
much to my satisfaction, since the Micawbers and I had become too
used to one another, in our troubles, to part.  The Orfling was
likewise accommodated with an inexpensive lodging in the same
neighbourhood.  Mine was a quiet back-garret with a sloping roof,
commanding a pleasant prospect of a timberyard; and when I took
possession of it, with the reflection that Mr. Micawber's troubles
had come to a crisis at last, I thought it quite a paradise.

All this time I was working at Murdstone and Grinby's in the same
common way, and with the same common companions, and with the same
sense of unmerited degradation as at first.  But I never, happily
for me no doubt, made a single acquaintance, or spoke to any of the
many boys whom I saw daily in going to the warehouse, in coming
from it, and in prowling about the streets at meal-times.  I led
the same secretly unhappy life; but I led it in the same lonely,
self-reliant manner.  The only changes I am conscious of are,
firstly, that I had grown more shabby, and secondly, that I was now
relieved of much of the weight of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber's cares;
for some relatives or friends had engaged to help them at their
present pass, and they lived more comfortably in the prison than
they had lived for a long while out of it.  I used to breakfast
with them now, in virtue of some arrangement, of which I have
forgotten the details.  I forget, too, at what hour the gates were
opened in the morning, admitting of my going in; but I know that I
was often up at six o'clock, and that my favourite lounging-place
in the interval was old London Bridge, where I was wont to sit in
one of the stone recesses, watching the people going by, or to look
over the balustrades at the sun shining in the water, and lighting
up the golden flame on the top of the Monument.  The Orfling met me
here sometimes, to be told some astonishing fictions respecting the
wharves and the Tower; of which I can say no more than that I hope
I believed them myself.  In the evening I used to go back to the
prison, and walk up and down the parade with Mr. Micawber; or play
casino with Mrs. Micawber, and hear reminiscences of her papa and
mama.  Whether Mr. Murdstone knew where I was, I am unable to say. 
I never told them at Murdstone and Grinby's.

Mr. Micawber's affairs, although past their crisis, were very much
involved by reason of a certain 'Deed', of which I used to hear a
great deal, and which I suppose, now, to have been some former
composition with his creditors, though I was so far from being
clear about it then, that I am conscious of having confounded it
with those demoniacal parchments which are held to have, once upon
a time, obtained to a great extent in Germany.  At last this
document appeared to be got out of the way, somehow; at all events
it ceased to be the rock-ahead it had been; and Mrs. Micawber
informed me that 'her family' had decided that Mr. Micawber should
apply for his release under the Insolvent Debtors Act, which would
set him free, she expected, in about six weeks.

'And then,' said Mr. Micawber, who was present, 'I have no doubt I
shall, please Heaven, begin to be beforehand with the world, and to
live in a perfectly new manner, if - in short, if anything turns
up.'

By way of going in for anything that might be on the cards, I call
to mind that Mr. Micawber, about this time, composed a petition to
the House of Commons, praying for an alteration in the law of
imprisonment for debt.  I set down this remembrance here, because
it is an instance to myself of the manner in which I fitted my old
books to my altered life, and made stories for myself, out of the
streets, and out of men and women; and how some main points in the
character I shall unconsciously develop, I suppose, in writing my
life, were gradually forming all this while.

There was a club in the prison, in which Mr. Micawber, as a
gentleman, was a great authority.  Mr. Micawber had stated his idea
of this petition to the club, and the club had strongly approved of
the same.  Wherefore Mr. Micawber (who was a thoroughly
good-natured man, and as active a creature about everything but his
own affairs as ever existed, and never so happy as when he was busy
about something that could never be of any profit to him) set to
work at the petition, invented it, engrossed it on an immense sheet
of paper, spread it out on a table, and appointed a time for all
the club, and all within the walls if they chose, to come up to his
room and sign it.

When I heard of this approaching ceremony, I was so anxious to see
them all come in, one after another, though I knew the greater part
of them already, and they me, that I got an hour's leave of absence
from Murdstone and Grinby's, and established myself in a corner for
that purpose.  As many of the principal members of the club as
could be got into the small room without filling it, supported Mr.
Micawber in front of the petition, while my old friend Captain
Hopkins (who had washed himself, to do honour to so solemn an
occasion) stationed himself close to it, to read it to all who were
unacquainted with its contents.  The door was then thrown open, and
the general population began to come in, in a long file: several
waiting outside, while one entered, affixed his signature, and went
out.  To everybody in succession, Captain Hopkins said: 'Have you
read it?' - 'No.'  - 'Would you like to hear it read?'  If he
weakly showed the least disposition to hear it, Captain Hopkins, in
a loud sonorous voice, gave him every word of it.  The Captain
would have read it twenty thousand times, if twenty thousand people
would have heard him, one by one.  I remember a certain luscious
roll he gave to such phrases as 'The people's representatives in
Parliament assembled,' 'Your petitioners therefore humbly approach
your honourable house,' 'His gracious Majesty's unfortunate
subjects,' as if the words were something real in his mouth, and
delicious to taste; Mr. Micawber, meanwhile, listening with a
little of an author's vanity, and contemplating (not severely) the
spikes on the opposite wall.

As I walked to and fro daily between Southwark and Blackfriars, and
lounged about at meal-times in obscure streets, the stones of which
may, for anything I know, be worn at this moment by my childish
feet, I wonder how many of these people were wanting in the crowd
that used to come filing before me in review again, to the echo of
Captain Hopkins's voice!  When my thoughts go back, now, to that
slow agony of my youth, I wonder how much of the histories I
invented for such people hangs like a mist of fancy over
well-remembered facts!  When I tread the old ground, I do not
wonder that I seem to see and pity, going on before me, an innocent
romantic boy, making his imaginative world out of such strange
experiences and sordid things!

CHAPTER 12
LIKING LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT NO BETTER,
     I FORM A GREAT RESOLUTION

In due time, Mr. Micawber's petition was ripe for hearing; and that
gentleman was ordered to be discharged under the Act, to my great
joy.  His creditors were not implacable; and Mrs. Micawber informed
me that even the revengeful boot-maker had declared in open court
that he bore him no malice, but that when money was owing to him he
liked to be paid.  He said he thought it was human nature.

M r Micawber returned to the King's Bench when his case was over,
as some fees were to be settled, and some formalities observed,
before he could be actually released.  The club received him with
transport, and held an harmonic meeting that evening in his honour;
while Mrs. Micawber and I had a lamb's fry in private, surrounded
by the sleeping family.

'On such an occasion I will give you, Master Copperfield,' said
Mrs. Micawber, 'in a little more flip,' for we had been having some
already, 'the memory of my papa and mama.'

'Are they dead, ma'am?' I inquired, after drinking the toast in a
wine-glass.

'My mama departed this life,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'before Mr.
Micawber's difficulties commenced, or at least before they became
pressing.  My papa lived to bail Mr. Micawber several times, and
then expired, regretted by a numerous circle.'

Mrs. Micawber shook her head, and dropped a pious tear upon the
twin who happened to be in hand.

As I could hardly hope for a more favourable opportunity of putting
a question in which I had a near interest, I said to Mrs. Micawber:

'May I ask, ma'am, what you and Mr. Micawber intend to do, now that
Mr. Micawber is out of his difficulties, and at liberty?  Have you
settled yet?'

'My family,' said Mrs. Micawber, who always said those two words
with an air, though I never could discover who came under the
denomination, 'my family are of opinion that Mr. Micawber should
quit London, and exert his talents in the country.  Mr. Micawber is
a man of great talent, Master Copperfield.'

I said I was sure of that.

'Of great talent,' repeated Mrs. Micawber.  'My family are of
opinion, that, with a little interest, something might be done for
a man of his ability in the Custom House.  The influence of my
family being local, it is their wish that Mr. Micawber should go
down to Plymouth.  They think it indispensable that he should be
upon the spot.'

'That he may be ready?' I suggested.

'Exactly,' returned Mrs. Micawber.  'That he may be ready - in case
of anything turning up.'

'And do you go too, ma'am?'

The events of the day, in combination with the twins, if not with
the flip, had made Mrs. Micawber hysterical, and she shed tears as
she replied:

'I never will desert Mr. Micawber.  Mr. Micawber may have concealed
his difficulties from me in the first instance, but his sanguine
temper may have led him to expect that he would overcome them.  The
pearl necklace and bracelets which I inherited from mama, have been
disposed of for less than half their value; and the set of coral,
which was the wedding gift of my papa, has been actually thrown
away for nothing.  But I never will desert Mr. Micawber.  No!'
cried Mrs. Micawber, more affected than before, 'I never will do
it!  It's of no use asking me!'

I felt quite uncomfortable - as if Mrs. Micawber supposed I had
asked her to do anything of the sort! - and sat looking at her in
alarm.

'Mr. Micawber has his faults.  I do not deny that he is
improvident.  I do not deny that he has kept me in the dark as to
his resources and his liabilities both,' she went on, looking at
the wall; 'but I never will desert Mr. Micawber!'

Mrs. Micawber having now raised her voice into a perfect scream, I
was so frightened that I ran off to the club-room, and disturbed
Mr. Micawber in the act of presiding at a long table, and leading
the chorus of

     Gee up, Dobbin,
     Gee ho, Dobbin,
     Gee up, Dobbin,
     Gee up, and gee ho - o - o!

with the tidings that Mrs. Micawber was in an alarming state, upon
which he immediately burst into tears, and came away with me with
his waistcoat full of the heads and tails of shrimps, of which he
had been partaking.

'Emma, my angel!' cried Mr. Micawber, running into the room; 'what
is the matter?'

'I never will desert you, Micawber!' she exclaimed.

'My life!' said Mr. Micawber, taking her in his arms.  'I am
perfectly aware of it.'

'He is the parent of my children!  He is the father of my twins!
He is the husband of my affections,' cried Mrs. Micawber,
struggling; 'and I ne - ver - will - desert Mr. Micawber!'

Mr. Micawber was so deeply affected by this proof of her devotion
(as to me, I was dissolved in tears), that he hung over her in a
passionate manner, imploring her to look up, and to be calm.  But
the more he asked Mrs. Micawber to look up, the more she fixed her
eyes on nothing; and the more he asked her to compose herself, the
more she wouldn't.  Consequently Mr. Micawber was soon so overcome,
that he mingled his tears with hers and mine; until he begged me to
do him the favour of taking a chair on the staircase, while he got
her into bed.  I would have taken my leave for the night, but he
would not hear of my doing that until the strangers' bell should
ring.  So I sat at the staircase window, until he came out with
another chair and joined me.

'How is Mrs. Micawber now, sir?' I said.

'Very low,' said Mr. Micawber, shaking his head; 'reaction.  Ah,
this has been a dreadful day!  We stand alone now - everything is
gone from us!'

Mr. Micawber pressed my hand, and groaned, and afterwards shed
tears.  I was greatly touched, and disappointed too, for I had
expected that we should be quite gay on this happy and
long-looked-for occasion.  But Mr. and Mrs. Micawber were so used
to their old difficulties, I think, that they felt quite
shipwrecked when they came to consider that they were released from
them.  All their elasticity was departed, and I never saw them half
so wretched as on this night; insomuch that when the bell rang, and
Mr. Micawber walked with me to the lodge, and parted from me there
with a blessing, I felt quite afraid to leave him by himself, he
was so profoundly miserable.

But through all the confusion and lowness of spirits in which we
had been, so unexpectedly to me, involved, I plainly discerned that
Mr. and Mrs. Micawber and their family were going away from London,
and that a parting between us was near at hand.  It was in my walk
home that night, and in the sleepless hours which followed when I
lay in bed, that the thought first occurred to me - though I don't
know how it came into my head - which afterwards shaped itself into
a settled resolution.

I had grown to be so accustomed to the Micawbers, and had been so
intimate with them in their distresses, and was so utterly
friendless without them, that the prospect of being thrown upon
some new shift for a lodging, and going once more among unknown
people, was like being that moment turned adrift into my present
life, with such a knowledge of it ready made as experience had
given me.  All the sensitive feelings it wounded so cruelly, all
the shame and misery it kept alive within my breast, became more
poignant as I thought of this; and I determined that the life was
unendurable.

That there was no hope of escape from it, unless the escape was my
own act, I knew quite well.  I rarely heard from Miss Murdstone,
and never from Mr. Murdstone: but two or three parcels of made or
mended clothes had come up for me, consigned to Mr. Quinion, and in
each there was a scrap of paper to the effect that J. M. trusted D.
C. was applying himself to business, and devoting himself wholly to
his duties - not the least hint of my ever being anything else than
the common drudge into which I was fast settling down.

The very next day showed me, while my mind was in the first
agitation of what it had conceived, that Mrs. Micawber had not
spoken of their going away without warrant.  They took a lodging in
the house where I lived, for a week; at the expiration of which
time they were to start for Plymouth.  Mr. Micawber himself came
down to the counting-house, in the afternoon, to tell Mr. Quinion
that he must relinquish me on the day of his departure, and to give
me a high character, which I am sure I deserved.  And Mr. Quinion,
calling in Tipp the carman, who was a married man, and had a room
to let, quartered me prospectively on him - by our mutual consent,
as he had every reason to think; for I said nothing, though my
resolution was now taken.

I passed my evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, during the
remaining term of our residence under the same roof; and I think we
became fonder of one another as the time went on.  On the last
Sunday, they invited me to dinner; and we had a loin of pork and
apple sauce, and a pudding.  I had bought a spotted wooden horse
over-night as a parting gift to little Wilkins Micawber - that was
the boy - and a doll for little Emma.  I had also bestowed a
shilling on the Orfling, who was about to be disbanded.

We had a very pleasant day, though we were all in a tender state
about our approaching separation.

'I shall never, Master Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'revert to
the period when Mr. Micawber was in difficulties, without thinking
of you.  Your conduct has always been of the most delicate and
obliging description.  You have never been a lodger.  You have been
a friend.'

'My dear,' said Mr. Micawber; 'Copperfield,' for so he had been
accustomed to call me, of late, 'has a heart to feel for the
distresses of his fellow-creatures when they are behind a cloud,
and a head to plan, and a hand to - in short, a general ability to
dispose of such available property as could be made away with.'

I expressed my sense of this commendation, and said I was very
sorry we were going to lose one another.

'My dear young friend,' said Mr. Micawber, 'I am older than you; a
man of some experience in life, and - and of some experience, in
short, in difficulties, generally speaking.  At present, and until
something turns up (which I am, I may say, hourly expecting), I
have nothing to bestow but advice.  Still my advice is so far worth
taking, that - in short, that I have never taken it myself, and am
the' - here Mr. Micawber, who had been beaming and smiling, all
over his head and face, up to the present moment, checked himself
and frowned - 'the miserable wretch you behold.'

'My dear Micawber!' urged his wife.

'I say,' returned Mr. Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and
smiling again, 'the miserable wretch you behold.  My advice is,
never do tomorrow what you can do today.  Procrastination is the
thief of time.  Collar him!'

'My poor papa's maxim,' Mrs. Micawber observed.

'My dear,' said Mr. Micawber, 'your papa was very well in his way,
and Heaven forbid that I should disparage him.  Take him for all in
all, we ne'er shall - in short, make the acquaintance, probably, of
anybody else possessing, at his time of life, the same legs for
gaiters, and able to read the same description of print, without
spectacles.  But he applied that maxim to our marriage, my dear;
and that was so far prematurely entered into, in consequence, that
I never recovered the expense.'  Mr. Micawber looked aside at Mrs.
Micawber, and added: 'Not that I am sorry for it.  Quite the
contrary, my love.'  After which, he was grave for a minute or so.

'My other piece of advice, Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'you
know.  Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen
nineteen and six, result happiness.  Annual income twenty pounds,
annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.  The
blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down
upon the dreary scene, and - and in short you are for ever floored. 
As I am!'

To make his example the more impressive, Mr. Micawber drank a glass
of punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction, and
whistled the College Hornpipe.

I did not fail to assure him that I would store these precepts in
my mind, though indeed I had no need to do so, for, at the time,
they affected me visibly.  Next morning I met the whole family at
the coach office, and saw them, with a desolate heart, take their
places outside, at the back.

'Master Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'God bless you!  I never
can forget all that, you know, and I never would if I could.'

'Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'farewell!  Every happiness and
prosperity!  If, in the progress of revolving years, I could
persuade myself that my blighted destiny had been a warning to you,
I should feel that I had not occupied another man's place in
existence altogether in vain.  In case of anything turning up (of
which I am rather confident), I shall be extremely happy if it
should be in my power to improve your prospects.'

I think, as Mrs. Micawber sat at the back of the coach, with the
children, and I stood in the road looking wistfully at them, a mist
cleared from her eyes, and she saw what a little creature I really
was.  I think so, because she beckoned to me to climb up, with
quite a new and motherly expression in her face, and put her arm
round my neck, and gave me just such a kiss as she might have given
to her own boy.  I had barely time to get down again before the
coach started, and I could hardly see the family for the
handkerchiefs they waved.  It was gone in a minute.  The Orfling
and I stood looking vacantly at each other in the middle of the
road, and then shook hands and said good-bye; she going back, I
suppose, to St. Luke's workhouse, as I went to begin my weary day
at Murdstone and Grinby's.

But with no intention of passing many more weary days there.  No. 
I had resolved to run away.  - To go, by some means or other, down
into the country, to the only relation I had in the world, and tell
my story to my aunt, Miss Betsey.
I have already observed that I don't know how this desperate idea
came into my brain.  But, once there, it remained there; and
hardened into a purpose than which I have never entertained a more
determined purpose in my life.  I am far from sure that I believed
there was anything hopeful in it, but my mind was thoroughly made
up that it must be carried into execution.

Again, and again, and a hundred times again, since the night when
the thought had first occurred to me and banished sleep, I had gone
over that old story of my poor mother's about my birth, which it
had been one of my great delights in the old time to hear her tell,
and which I knew by heart.  My aunt walked into that story, and
walked out of it, a dread and awful personage; but there was one
little trait in her behaviour which I liked to dwell on, and which
gave me some faint shadow of encouragement.  I could not forget how
my mother had thought that she felt her touch her pretty hair with
no ungentle hand; and though it might have been altogether my
mother's fancy, and might have had no foundation whatever in fact,
I made a little picture, out of it, of my terrible aunt relenting
towards the girlish beauty that I recollected so well and loved so
much, which softened the whole narrative.  It is very possible that
it had been in my mind a long time, and had gradually engendered my
determination.

As I did not even know where Miss Betsey lived, I wrote a long
letter to Peggotty, and asked her, incidentally, if she remembered;
pretending that I had heard of such a lady living at a certain
place I named at random, and had a curiosity to know if it were the
same.  In the course of that letter, I told Peggotty that I had a
particular occasion for half a guinea; and that if she could lend
me that sum until I could repay it, I should be very much obliged
to her, and would tell her afterwards what I had wanted it for.

Peggotty's answer soon arrived, and was, as usual, full of
affectionate devotion.  She enclosed the half guinea (I was afraid
she must have had a world of trouble to get it out of Mr. Barkis's
box), and told me that Miss Betsey lived near Dover, but whether at
Dover itself, at Hythe, Sandgate, or Folkestone, she could not say. 
One of our men, however, informing me on my asking him about these
places, that they were all close together, I deemed this enough for
my object, and resolved to set out at the end of that week.

Being a very honest little creature, and unwilling to disgrace the
memory I was going to leave behind me at Murdstone and Grinby's, I
considered myself bound to remain until Saturday night; and, as I
had been paid a week's wages in advance when I first came there,
not to present myself in the counting-house at the usual hour, to
receive my stipend.  For this express reason, I had borrowed the
half-guinea, that I might not be without a fund for my
travelling-expenses.  Accordingly, when the Saturday night came,
and we were all waiting in the warehouse to be paid, and Tipp the
carman, who always took precedence, went in first to draw his
money, I shook Mick Walker by the hand; asked him, when it came to
his turn to be paid, to say to Mr. Quinion that I had gone to move
my box to Tipp's; and, bidding a last good night to Mealy Potatoes,
ran away.

My box was at my old lodging, over the water, and I had written a
direction for it on the back of one of our address cards that we
nailed on the casks: 'Master David, to be left till called for, at
the Coach Office, Dover.'  This I had in my pocket ready to put on
the box, after I should have got it out of the house; and as I went
towards my lodging, I looked about me for someone who would help me
to carry it to the booking-office.

There was a long-legged young man with a very little empty
donkey-cart, standing near the Obelisk, in the Blackfriars Road,
whose eye I caught as I was going by, and who, addressing me as
'Sixpenn'orth of bad ha'pence,' hoped 'I should know him agin to
swear to' - in allusion, I have no doubt, to my staring at him.  I
stopped to assure him that I had not done so in bad manners, but
uncertain whether he might or might not like a job.

'Wot job?' said the long-legged young man.

'To move a box,' I answered.

'Wot box?' said the long-legged young man.

I told him mine, which was down that street there, and which I
wanted him to take to the Dover coach office for sixpence.

'Done with you for a tanner!' said the long-legged young man, and
directly got upon his cart, which was nothing but a large wooden
tray on wheels, and rattled away at such a rate, that it was as
much as I could do to keep pace with the donkey.

There was a defiant manner about this young man, and particularly
about the way in which he chewed straw as he spoke to me, that I
did not much like; as the bargain was made, however, I took him
upstairs to the room I was leaving, and we brought the box down,
and put it on his cart.  Now, I was unwilling to put the
direction-card on there, lest any of my landlord's family should
fathom what I was doing, and detain me; so I said to the young man
that I would be glad if he would stop for a minute, when he came to
the dead-wall of the King's Bench prison.  The words were no sooner
out of my mouth, than he rattled away as if he, my box, the cart,
and the donkey, were all equally mad; and I was quite out of breath
with running and calling after him, when I caught him at the place
appointed.

Being much flushed and excited, I tumbled my half-guinea out of my
pocket in pulling the card out.  I put it in my mouth for safety,
and though my hands trembled a good deal, had just tied the card on
very much to my satisfaction, when I felt myself violently chucked
under the chin by the long-legged young man, and saw my half-guinea
fly out of my mouth into his hand.

'Wot!' said the young man, seizing me by my jacket collar, with a
frightful grin.  'This is a pollis case, is it?  You're a-going to
bolt, are you?  Come to the pollis, you young warmin, come to the
pollis!'

'You give me my money back, if you please,' said I, very much
frightened; 'and leave me alone.'

'Come to the pollis!' said the young man.  'You shall prove it
yourn to the pollis.'

'Give me my box and money, will you,' I cried, bursting into tears.

The young man still replied: 'Come to the pollis!' and was dragging
me against the donkey in a violent manner, as if there were any
affinity between that animal and a magistrate, when he changed his
mind, jumped into the cart, sat upon my box, and, exclaiming that
he would drive to the pollis straight, rattled away harder than
ever.

I ran after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to call out
with, and should not have dared to call out, now, if I had.  I
narrowly escaped being run over, twenty times at least, in half a
mile.  Now I lost him, now I saw him, now I lost him, now I was cut
at with a whip, now shouted at, now down in the mud, now up again,
now running into somebody's arms, now running headlong at a post. 
At length, confused by fright and heat, and doubting whether half
London might not by this time be turning out for my apprehension,
I left the young man to go where he would with my box and money;
and, panting and crying, but never stopping, faced about for
Greenwich, which I had understood was on the Dover Road: taking
very little more out of the world, towards the retreat of my aunt,
Miss Betsey, than I had brought into it, on the night when my
arrival gave her so much umbrage.

CHAPTER 13
THE SEQUEL OF MY RESOLUTION

For anything I know, I may have had some wild idea of running all
the way to Dover, when I gave up the pursuit of the young man with
the donkey-cart, and started for Greenwich.  My scattered senses
were soon collected as to that point, if I had; for I came to a
stop in the Kent Road, at a terrace with a piece of water before
it, and a great foolish image in the middle, blowing a dry shell. 
Here I sat down on a doorstep, quite spent and exhausted with the
efforts I had already made, and with hardly breath enough to cry
for the loss of my box and half-guinea.

It was by this time dark; I heard the clocks strike ten, as I sat
resting.  But it was a summer night, fortunately, and fine weather. 
When I had recovered my breath, and had got rid of a stifling
sensation in my throat, I rose up and went on.  In the midst of my
distress, I had no notion of going back.  I doubt if I should have
had any, though there had been a Swiss snow-drift in the Kent Road.

But my standing possessed of only three-halfpence in the world (and
I am sure I wonder how they came to be left in my pocket on a
Saturday night!) troubled me none the less because I went on.  I
began to picture to myself, as a scrap of newspaper intelligence,
my being found dead in a day or two, under some hedge; and I
trudged on miserably, though as fast as I could, until I happened
to pass a little shop, where it was written up that ladies' and
gentlemen's wardrobes were bought, and that the best price was
given for rags, bones, and kitchen-stuff.  The master of this shop
was sitting at the door in his shirt-sleeves, smoking; and as there
were a great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling from the low
ceiling, and only two feeble candles burning inside to show what
they were, I fancied that he looked like a man of a revengeful
disposition, who had hung all his enemies, and was enjoying
himself.

My late experiences with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber suggested to me that
here might be a means of keeping off the wolf for a little while. 
I went up the next by-street, took off my waistcoat, rolled it
neatly under my arm, and came back to the shop door.

'If you please, sir,' I said, 'I am to sell this for a fair price.'

Mr. Dolloby - Dolloby was the name over the shop door, at least -
took the waistcoat, stood his pipe on its head, against the
door-post, went into the shop, followed by me, snuffed the two
candles with his fingers, spread the waistcoat on the counter, and
looked at it there, held it up against the light, and looked at it
there, and ultimately said:

'What do you call a price, now, for this here little weskit?'

'Oh! you know best, sir,' I returned modestly.

'I can't be buyer and seller too,' said Mr. Dolloby.  'Put a price
on this here little weskit.'

'Would eighteenpence be?'- I hinted, after some hesitation.

Mr. Dolloby rolled it up again, and gave it me back.  'I should rob
my family,' he said, 'if I was to offer ninepence for it.'

This was a disagreeable way of putting the business; because it
imposed upon me, a perfect stranger, the unpleasantness of asking
Mr. Dolloby to rob his family on my account.  My circumstances
being so very pressing, however, I said I would take ninepence for
it, if he pleased.  Mr. Dolloby, not without some grumbling, gave
ninepence.  I wished him good night, and walked out of the shop the
richer by that sum, and the poorer by a waistcoat.  But when I
buttoned my jacket, that was not much.
Indeed, I foresaw pretty clearly that my jacket would go next, and
that I should have to make the best of my way to Dover in a shirt
and a pair of trousers, and might deem myself lucky if I got there
even in that trim.  But my mind did not run so much on this as
might be supposed.  Beyond a general impression of the distance
before me, and of the young man with the donkey-cart having used me
cruelly, I think I had no very urgent sense of my difficulties when
I once again set off with my ninepence in my pocket.

A plan had occurred to me for passing the night, which I was going
to carry into execution.  This was, to lie behind the wall at the
back of my old school, in a corner where there used to be a
haystack.  I imagined it would be a kind of company to have the
boys, and the bedroom where I used to tell the stories, so near me:
although the boys would know nothing of my being there, and the
bedroom would yield me no shelter.

I had had a hard day's work, and was pretty well jaded when I came
climbing out, at last, upon the level of Blackheath.  It cost me
some trouble to find out Salem House; but I found it, and I found
a haystack in the corner, and I lay down by it; having first walked
round the wall, and looked up at the windows, and seen that all was
dark and silent within.  Never shall I forget the lonely sensation
of first lying down, without a roof above my head!

Sleep came upon me as it came on many other outcasts, against whom
house-doors were locked, and house-dogs barked, that night - and I
dreamed of lying on my old school-bed, talking to the boys in my
room; and found myself sitting upright, with Steerforth's name upon
my lips, looking wildly at the stars that were glistening and
glimmering above me.  When I remembered where I was at that
untimely hour, a feeling stole upon me that made me get up, afraid
of I don't know what, and walk about.  But the fainter glimmering
of the stars, and the pale light in the sky where the day was
coming, reassured me: and my eyes being very heavy, I lay down
again and slept - though with a knowledge in my sleep that it was
cold - until the warm beams of the sun, and the ringing of the
getting-up bell at Salem House, awoke me.  If I could have hoped
that Steerforth was there, I would have lurked about until he came
out alone; but I knew he must have left long since.  Traddles still
remained, perhaps, but it was very doubtful; and I had not
sufficient confidence in his discretion or good luck, however
strong my reliance was on his good nature, to wish to trust him
with my situation.  So I crept away from the wall as Mr. Creakle's
boys were getting up, and struck into the long dusty track which I
had first known to be the Dover Road when I was one of them, and
when I little expected that any eyes would ever see me the wayfarer
I was now, upon it.

What a different Sunday morning from the old Sunday morning at
Yarmouth!  In due time I heard the church-bells ringing, as I
plodded on; and I met people who were going to church; and I passed
a church or two where the congregation were inside, and the sound
of singing came out into the sunshine, while the beadle sat and
cooled himself in the shade of the porch, or stood beneath the
yew-tree, with his hand to his forehead, glowering at me going by. 
But the peace and rest of the old Sunday morning were on
everything, except me.  That was the difference.  I felt quite
wicked in my dirt and dust, with my tangled hair.  But for the
quiet picture I had conjured up, of my mother in her youth and
beauty, weeping by the fire, and my aunt relenting to her, I hardly
think I should have had the courage to go on until next day.  But
it always went before me, and I followed.

I got, that Sunday, through three-and-twenty miles on the straight
road, though not very easily, for I was new to that kind of toil. 
I see myself, as evening closes in, coming over the bridge at
Rochester, footsore and tired, and eating bread that I had bought
for supper.  One or two little houses, with the notice, 'Lodgings
for Travellers', hanging out, had tempted me; but I was afraid of
spending the few pence I had, and was even more afraid of the
vicious looks of the trampers I had met or overtaken.  I sought no
shelter, therefore, but the sky; and toiling into Chatham, - which,
in that night's aspect, is a mere dream of chalk, and drawbridges,
and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah's arks, -
crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery overhanging a
lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro.  Here I lay down, near
a cannon; and, happy in the society of the sentry's footsteps,
though he knew no more of my being above him than the boys at Salem
House had known of my lying by the wall, slept soundly until
morning.

Very stiff and sore of foot I was in the morning, and quite dazed
by the beating of drums and marching of troops, which seemed to hem
me in on every side when I went down towards the long narrow
street.  Feeling that I could go but a very little way that day, if
I were to reserve any strength for getting to my journey's end, I
resolved to make the sale of my jacket its principal business. 
Accordingly, I took the jacket off, that I might learn to do
without it; and carrying it under my arm, began a tour of
inspection of the various slop-shops.

It was a likely place to sell a jacket in; for the dealers in
second-hand clothes were numerous, and were, generally speaking, on
the look-out for customers at their shop doors.  But as most of
them had, hanging up among their stock, an officer's coat or two,
epaulettes and all, I was rendered timid by the costly nature of
their dealings, and walked about for a long time without offering
my merchandise to anyone.

This modesty of mine directed my attention to the marine-store
shops, and such shops as Mr. Dolloby's, in preference to the
regular dealers.  At last I found one that I thought looked
promising, at the corner of a dirty lane, ending in an enclosure
full of stinging-nettles, against the palings of which some
second-hand sailors' clothes, that seemed to have overflowed the
shop, were fluttering among some cots, and rusty guns, and oilskin
hats, and certain trays full of so many old rusty keys of so many
sizes that they seemed various enough to open all the doors in the
world.

Into this shop, which was low and small, and which was darkened
rather than lighted by a little window, overhung with clothes, and
was descended into by some steps, I went with a palpitating heart;
which was not relieved when an ugly old man, with the lower part of
his face all covered with a stubbly grey beard, rushed out of a
dirty den behind it, and seized me by the hair of my head.  He was
a dreadful old man to look at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, and
smelling terribly of rum.  His bedstead, covered with a tumbled and
ragged piece of patchwork, was in the den he had come from, where
another little window showed a prospect of more stinging-nettles,
and a lame donkey.

'Oh, what do you want?' grinned this old man, in a fierce,
monotonous whine.  'Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want?  Oh,
my lungs and liver, what do you want?  Oh, goroo, goroo!'

I was so much dismayed by these words, and particularly by the
repetition of the last unknown one, which was a kind of rattle in
his throat, that I could make no answer; hereupon the old man,
still holding me by the hair, repeated:

'Oh, what do you want?  Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? 
Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want?  Oh, goroo!' - which he
screwed out of himself, with an energy that made his eyes start in
his head.

'I wanted to know,' I said, trembling, 'if you would buy a jacket.'

'Oh, let's see the jacket!' cried the old man.  'Oh, my heart on
fire, show the jacket to us!  Oh, my eyes and limbs, bring the
jacket out!'

With that he took his trembling hands, which were like the claws of
a great bird, out of my hair; and put on a pair of spectacles, not
at all ornamental to his inflamed eyes.

'Oh, how much for the jacket?' cried the old man, after examining
it.  'Oh - goroo! - how much for the jacket?'

'Half-a-crown,' I answered, recovering myself.

'Oh, my lungs and liver,' cried the old man, 'no!  Oh, my eyes, no! 
Oh, my limbs, no!  Eighteenpence.  Goroo!'

Every time he uttered this ejaculation, his eyes seemed to be in
danger of starting out; and every sentence he spoke, he delivered
in a sort of tune, always exactly the same, and more like a gust of
wind, which begins low, mounts up high, and falls again, than any
other comparison I can find for it.

'Well,' said I, glad to have closed the bargain, 'I'll take
eighteenpence.'

'Oh, my liver!' cried the old man, throwing the jacket on a shelf. 
'Get out of the shop!  Oh, my lungs, get out of the shop!  Oh, my
eyes and limbs - goroo! - don't ask for money; make it an
exchange.'  I never was so frightened in my life, before or since;
but I told him humbly that I wanted money, and that nothing else
was of any use to me, but that I would wait for it, as he desired,
outside, and had no wish to hurry him.  So I went outside, and sat
down in the shade in a corner.  And I sat there so many hours, that
the shade became sunlight, and the sunlight became shade again, and
still I sat there waiting for the money.

There never was such another drunken madman in that line of
business, I hope.  That he was well known in the neighbourhood, and
enjoyed the reputation of having sold himself to the devil, I soon
understood from the visits he received from the boys, who
continually came skirmishing about the shop, shouting that legend,
and calling to him to bring out his gold.  'You ain't poor, you
know, Charley, as you pretend.  Bring out your gold.  Bring out
some of the gold you sold yourself to the devil for.  Come!  It's
in the lining of the mattress, Charley.  Rip it open and let's have
some!'  This, and many offers to lend him a knife for the purpose,
exasperated him to such a degree, that the whole day was a
succession of rushes on his part, and flights on the part of the
boys.  Sometimes in his rage he would take me for one of them, and
come at me, mouthing as if he were going to tear me in pieces;
then, remembering me, just in time, would dive into the shop, and
lie upon his bed, as I thought from the sound of his voice, yelling
in a frantic way, to his own windy tune, the 'Death of Nelson';
with an Oh! before every line, and innumerable Goroos interspersed. 
As if this were not bad enough for me, the boys, connecting me with
the establishment, on account of the patience and perseverance with
which I sat outside, half-dressed, pelted me, and used me very ill
all day.

He made many attempts to induce me to consent to an exchange; at
one time coming out with a fishing-rod, at another with a fiddle,
at another with a cocked hat, at another with a flute.  But I
resisted all these overtures, and sat there in desperation; each
time asking him, with tears in my eyes, for my money or my jacket. 
At last he began to pay me in halfpence at a time; and was full two
hours getting by easy stages to a shilling.

'Oh, my eyes and limbs!' he then cried, peeping hideously out of
the shop, after a long pause, 'will you go for twopence more?'

'I can't,' I said; 'I shall be starved.'

'Oh, my lungs and liver, will you go for threepence?'

'I would go for nothing, if I could,' I said, 'but I want the money
badly.'

'Oh, go-roo!' (it is really impossible to express how he twisted
this ejaculation out of himself, as he peeped round the door-post
at me, showing nothing but his crafty old head); 'will you go for
fourpence?'

I was so faint and weary that I closed with this offer; and taking
the money out of his claw, not without trembling, went away more
hungry and thirsty than I had ever been, a little before sunset. 
But at an expense of threepence I soon refreshed myself completely;
and, being in better spirits then, limped seven miles upon my road.

My bed at night was under another haystack, where I rested
comfortably, after having washed my blistered feet in a stream, and
dressed them as well as I was able, with some cool leaves.  When I
took the road again next morning, I found that it lay through a
succession of hop-grounds and orchards.  It was sufficiently late
in the year for the orchards to be ruddy with ripe apples; and in
a few places the hop-pickers were already at work.  I thought it
all extremely beautiful, and made up my mind to sleep among the
hops that night: imagining some cheerful companionship in the long
perspectives of poles, with the graceful leaves twining round them.

The trampers were worse than ever that day, and inspired me with a
dread that is yet quite fresh in my mind.  Some of them were most
ferocious-looking ruffians, who stared at me as I went by; and
stopped, perhaps, and called after me to come back and speak to
them, and when I took to my heels, stoned me.  I recollect one
young fellow - a tinker, I suppose, from his wallet and brazier -
who had a woman with him, and who faced about and stared at me
thus; and then roared to me in such a tremendous voice to come
back, that I halted and looked round.

'Come here, when you're called,' said the tinker, 'or I'll rip your
young body open.'

I thought it best to go back.  As I drew nearer to them, trying to
propitiate the tinker by my looks, I observed that the woman had a
black eye.

'Where are you going?' said the tinker, gripping the bosom of my
shirt with his blackened hand.

'I am going to Dover,' I said.

'Where do you come from?' asked the tinker, giving his hand another
turn in my shirt, to hold me more securely.

'I come from London,' I said.

'What lay are you upon?' asked the tinker.  'Are you a prig?'

'N-no,' I said.

'Ain't you, by G--?  If you make a brag of your honesty to me,'
said the tinker, 'I'll knock your brains out.'

With his disengaged hand he made a menace of striking me, and then
looked at me from head to foot.

'Have you got the price of a pint of beer about you?' said the
tinker.  'If you have, out with it, afore I take it away!'

I should certainly have produced it, but that I met the woman's
look, and saw her very slightly shake her head, and form 'No!' with
her lips.

'I am very poor,' I said, attempting to smile, 'and have got no
money.'

'Why, what do you mean?' said the tinker, looking so sternly at me,
that I almost feared he saw the money in my pocket.

'Sir!' I stammered.

'What do you mean,' said the tinker, 'by wearing my brother's silk
handkerchief!  Give it over here!'  And he had mine off my neck in
a moment, and tossed it to the woman.

The woman burst into a fit of laughter, as if she thought this a
joke, and tossed it back to me, nodded once, as slightly as before,
and made the word 'Go!' with her lips.  Before I could obey,
however, the tinker seized the handkerchief out of my hand with a
roughness that threw me away like a feather, and putting it loosely
round his own neck, turned upon the woman with an oath, and knocked
her down.  I never shall forget seeing her fall backward on the
hard road, and lie there with her bonnet tumbled off, and her hair
all whitened in the dust; nor, when I looked back from a distance,
seeing her sitting on the pathway, which was a bank by the
roadside, wiping the blood from her face with a corner of her
shawl, while he went on ahead.

This adventure frightened me so, that, afterwards, when I saw any
of these people coming, I turned back until I could find a
hiding-place, where I remained until they had gone out of sight;
which happened so often, that I was very seriously delayed.  But
under this difficulty, as under all the other difficulties of my
journey, I seemed to be sustained and led on by my fanciful picture
of my mother in her youth, before I came into the world.  It always
kept me company.  It was there, among the hops, when I lay down to
sleep; it was with me on my waking in the morning; it went before
me all day.  I have associated it, ever since, with the sunny
street of Canterbury, dozing as it were in the hot light; and with
the sight of its old houses and gateways, and the stately, grey
Cathedral, with the rooks sailing round the towers.  When I came,
at last, upon the bare, wide downs near Dover, it relieved the
solitary aspect of the scene with hope; and not until I reached
that first great aim of my journey, and actually set foot in the
town itself, on the sixth day of my flight, did it desert me.  But
then, strange to say, when I stood with my ragged shoes, and my
dusty, sunburnt, half-clothed figure, in the place so long desired,
it seemed to vanish like a dream, and to leave me helpless and
dispirited.

I inquired about my aunt among the boatmen first, and received
various answers.  One said she lived in the South Foreland Light,
and had singed her whiskers by doing so; another, that she was made
fast to the great buoy outside the harbour, and could only be
visited at half-tide; a third, that she was locked up in Maidstone
jail for child-stealing; a fourth, that she was seen to mount a
broom in the last high wind, and make direct for Calais.  The
fly-drivers, among whom I inquired next, were equally jocose and
equally disrespectful; and the shopkeepers, not liking my
appearance, generally replied, without hearing what I had to say,
that they had got nothing for me.  I felt more miserable and
destitute than I had done at any period of my running away.  My
money was all gone, I had nothing left to dispose of; I was hungry,
thirsty, and worn out; and seemed as distant from my end as if I
had remained in London.

The morning had worn away in these inquiries, and I was sitting on
the step of an empty shop at a street corner, near the
market-place, deliberating upon wandering towards those other
places which had been mentioned, when a fly-driver, coming by with
his carriage, dropped a horsecloth.  Something good-natured in the
man's face, as I handed it up, encouraged me to ask him if he could
tell me where Miss Trotwood lived; though I had asked the question
so often, that it almost died upon my lips.

'Trotwood,' said he.  'Let me see.  I know the name, too.  Old
lady?'

'Yes,' I said, 'rather.'

'Pretty stiff in the back?' said he, making himself upright.

'Yes,' I said.  'I should think it very likely.'

'Carries a bag?' said he - 'bag with a good deal of room in it - is
gruffish, and comes down upon you, sharp?'

My heart sank within me as I acknowledged the undoubted accuracy of
this description.

'Why then, I tell you what,' said he.  'If you go up there,'
pointing with his whip towards the heights, 'and keep right on till
you come to some houses facing the sea, I think you'll hear of her. 
My opinion is she won't stand anything, so here's a penny for you.'

I accepted the gift thankfully, and bought a loaf with it. 
Dispatching this refreshment by the way, I went in the direction my
friend had indicated, and walked on a good distance without coming
to the houses he had mentioned.  At length I saw some before me;
and approaching them, went into a little shop (it was what we used
to call a general shop, at home), and inquired if they could have
the goodness to tell me where Miss Trotwood lived.  I addressed
myself to a man behind the counter, who was weighing some rice for
a young woman; but the latter, taking the inquiry to herself,
turned round quickly.

'My mistress?' she said.  'What do you want with her, boy?'

'I want,' I replied, 'to speak to her, if you please.'

'To beg of her, you mean,' retorted the damsel.

'No,' I said, 'indeed.'  But suddenly remembering that in truth I
came for no other purpose, I held my peace in confusion, and felt
my face burn.

MY aunt's handmaid, as I supposed she was from what she had said,
put her rice in a little basket and walked out of the shop; telling
me that I could follow her, if I wanted to know where Miss Trotwood
lived.  I needed no second permission; though I was by this time in
such a state of consternation and agitation, that my legs shook
under me.  I followed the young woman, and we soon came to a very
neat little cottage with cheerful bow-windows: in front of it, a
small square gravelled court or garden full of flowers, carefully
tended, and smelling deliciously.

'This is Miss Trotwood's,' said the young woman.  'Now you know;
and that's all I have got to say.'  With which words she hurried
into the house, as if to shake off the responsibility of my
appearance; and left me standing at the garden-gate, looking
disconsolately over the top of it towards the parlour window, where
a muslin curtain partly undrawn in the middle, a large round green
screen or fan fastened on to the windowsill, a small table, and a
great chair, suggested to me that my aunt might be at that moment
seated in awful state.

My shoes were by this time in a woeful condition.  The soles had
shed themselves bit by bit, and the upper leathers had broken and
burst until the very shape and form of shoes had departed from
them.  My hat (which had served me for a night-cap, too) was so
crushed and bent, that no old battered handleless saucepan on a
dunghill need have been ashamed to vie with it.  My shirt and
trousers, stained with heat, dew, grass, and the Kentish soil on
which I had slept - and torn besides - might have frightened the
birds from my aunt's garden, as I stood at the gate.  My hair had
known no comb or brush since I left London.  My face, neck, and
hands, from unaccustomed exposure to the air and sun, were burnt to
a berry-brown.  From head to foot I was powdered almost as white
with chalk and dust, as if I had come out of a lime-kiln.  In this
plight, and with a strong consciousness of it, I waited to
introduce myself to, and make my first impression on, my formidable
aunt.

The unbroken stillness of the parlour window leading me to infer,
after a while, that she was not there, I lifted up my eyes to the
window above it, where I saw a florid, pleasant-looking gentleman,
with a grey head, who shut up one eye in a grotesque manner, nodded
his head at me several times, shook it at me as often, laughed, and
went away.

I had been discomposed enough before; but I was so much the more
discomposed by this unexpected behaviour, that I was on the point
of slinking off, to think how I had best proceed, when there came
out of the house a lady with her handkerchief tied over her cap,
and a pair of gardening gloves on her hands, wearing a gardening
pocket like a toll-man's apron, and carrying a great knife.  I knew
her immediately to be Miss Betsey, for she came stalking out of the
house exactly as my poor mother had so often described her stalking
up our garden at Blunderstone Rookery.

'Go away!' said Miss Betsey, shaking her head, and making a distant
chop in the air with her knife.  'Go along!  No boys here!'

I watched her, with my heart at my lips, as she marched to a corner
of her garden, and stooped to dig up some little root there.  Then,
without a scrap of courage, but with a great deal of desperation,
I went softly in and stood beside her, touching her with my finger.

'If you please, ma'am,' I began.

She started and looked up.

'If you please, aunt.'

'EH?' exclaimed Miss Betsey, in a tone of amazement I have never
heard approached.

'If you please, aunt, I am your nephew.'

'Oh, Lord!' said my aunt.  And sat flat down in the garden-path.

'I am David Copperfield, of Blunderstone, in Suffolk - where you
came, on the night when I was born, and saw my dear mama.  I have
been very unhappy since she died.  I have been slighted, and taught
nothing, and thrown upon myself, and put to work not fit for me. 
It made me run away to you.  I was robbed at first setting out, and
have walked all the way, and have never slept in a bed since I
began the journey.'  Here my self-support gave way all at once; and
with a movement of my hands, intended to show her my ragged state,
and call it to witness that I had suffered something, I broke into
a passion of crying, which I suppose had been pent up within me all
the week.

My aunt, with every sort of expression but wonder discharged from
her countenance, sat on the gravel, staring at me, until I began to
cry; when she got up in a great hurry, collared me, and took me
into the parlour.  Her first proceeding there was to unlock a tall
press, bring out several bottles, and pour some of the contents of
each into my mouth.  I think they must have been taken out at
random, for I am sure I tasted aniseed water, anchovy sauce, and
salad dressing.  When she had administered these restoratives, as
I was still quite hysterical, and unable to control my sobs, she
put me on the sofa, with a shawl under my head, and the
handkerchief from her own head under my feet, lest I should sully
the cover; and then, sitting herself down behind the green fan or
screen I have already mentioned, so that I could not see her face,
ejaculated at intervals, 'Mercy on us!' letting those exclamations
off like minute guns.

After a time she rang the bell.  'Janet,' said my aunt, when her
servant came in.  'Go upstairs, give my compliments to Mr. Dick,
and say I wish to speak to him.'

Janet looked a little surprised to see me lying stiffly on the sofa
(I was afraid to move lest it should be displeasing to my aunt),
but went on her errand.  My aunt, with her hands behind her, walked
up and down the room, until the gentleman who had squinted at me
from the upper window came in laughing.

'Mr. Dick,' said my aunt, 'don't be a fool, because nobody can be
more discreet than you can, when you choose.  We all know that.  So
don't be a fool, whatever you are.'

The gentleman was serious immediately, and looked at me, I thought,
as if he would entreat me to say nothing about the window.

'Mr. Dick,' said my aunt, 'you have heard me mention David
Copperfield?  Now don't pretend not to have a memory, because you
and I know better.'

'David Copperfield?' said Mr. Dick, who did not appear to me to
remember much about it.  'David Copperfield?  Oh yes, to be sure. 
David, certainly.'

'Well,' said my aunt, 'this is his boy - his son.  He would be as
like his father as it's possible to be, if he was not so like his
mother, too.'

'His son?' said Mr. Dick.  'David's son?  Indeed!'

'Yes,' pursued my aunt, 'and he has done a pretty piece of
business.  He has run away.  Ah!  His sister, Betsey Trotwood,
never would have run away.'  My aunt shook her head firmly,
confident in the character and behaviour of the girl who never was
born.

'Oh! you think she wouldn't have run away?' said Mr. Dick.

'Bless and save the man,' exclaimed my aunt, sharply, 'how he
talks!  Don't I know she wouldn't?  She would have lived with her
god-mother, and we should have been devoted to one another.  Where,
in the name of wonder, should his sister, Betsey Trotwood, have run
from, or to?'

'Nowhere,' said Mr. Dick.

'Well then,' returned my aunt, softened by the reply, 'how can you
pretend to be wool-gathering, Dick, when you are as sharp as a
surgeon's lancet?  Now, here you see young David Copperfield, and
the question I put to you is, what shall I do with him?'

'What shall you do with him?' said Mr. Dick, feebly, scratching his
head.  'Oh! do with him?'

'Yes,' said my aunt, with a grave look, and her forefinger held up. 
'Come!  I want some very sound advice.'

'Why, if I was you,' said Mr. Dick, considering, and looking
vacantly at me, 'I should -' The contemplation of me seemed to
inspire him with a sudden idea, and he added, briskly, 'I should
wash him!'

'Janet,' said my aunt, turning round with a quiet triumph, which I
did not then understand, 'Mr. Dick sets us all right.  Heat the
bath!'

Although I was deeply interested in this dialogue, I could not help
observing my aunt, Mr. Dick, and Janet, while it was in progress,
and completing a survey I had already been engaged in making of the
room.

MY aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means
ill-looking.  There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice,
in her gait and carriage, amply sufficient to account for the
effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my mother; but her
features were rather handsome than otherwise, though unbending and
austere.  I particularly noticed that she had a very quick, bright
eye.  Her hair, which was grey, was arranged in two plain
divisions, under what I believe would be called a mob-cap; I mean
a cap, much more common then than now, with side-pieces fastening
under the chin.  Her dress was of a lavender colour, and perfectly
neat; but scantily made, as if she desired to be as little
encumbered as possible.  I remember that I thought it, in form,
more like a riding-habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than
anything else.  She wore at her side a gentleman's gold watch, if
I might judge from its size and make, with an appropriate chain and
seals; she had some linen at her throat not unlike a shirt-collar,
and things at her wrists like little shirt-wristbands.

Mr. Dick, as I have already said, was grey-headed, and florid: I
should have said all about him, in saying so, had not his head been
curiously bowed - not by age; it reminded me of one of Mr.
Creakle's boys' heads after a beating - and his grey eyes prominent
and large, with a strange kind of watery brightness in them that
made me, in combination with his vacant manner, his submission to
my aunt, and his childish delight when she praised him, suspect him
of being a little mad; though, if he were mad, how he came to be
there puzzled me extremely.  He was dressed like any other ordinary
gentleman, in a loose grey morning coat and waistcoat, and white
trousers; and had his watch in his fob, and his money in his
pockets: which he rattled as if he were very proud of it.

Janet was a pretty blooming girl, of about nineteen or twenty, and
a perfect picture of neatness.  Though I made no further
observation of her at the moment, I may mention here what I did not
discover until afterwards, namely, that she was one of a series of
protegees whom my aunt had taken into her service expressly to
educate in a renouncement of mankind, and who had generally
completed their abjuration by marrying the baker.

The room was as neat as Janet or my aunt.  As I laid down my pen,
a moment since, to think of it, the air from the sea came blowing
in again, mixed with the perfume of the flowers; and I saw the
old-fashioned furniture brightly rubbed and polished, my aunt's
inviolable chair and table by the round green fan in the
bow-window, the drugget-covered carpet, the cat, the kettle-holder,
the two canaries, the old china, the punchbowl full of dried
rose-leaves, the tall press guarding all sorts of bottles and pots,
and, wonderfully out of keeping with the rest, my dusty self upon
the sofa, taking note of everything.

Janet had gone away to get the bath ready, when my aunt, to my
great alarm, became in one moment rigid with indignation, and had
hardly voice to cry out, 'Janet!  Donkeys!'

Upon which, Janet came running up the stairs as if the house were
in flames, darted out on a little piece of green in front, and
warned off two saddle-donkeys, lady-ridden, that had presumed to
set hoof upon it; while my aunt, rushing out of the house, seized
the bridle of a third animal laden with a bestriding child, turned
him, led him forth from those sacred precincts, and boxed the ears
of the unlucky urchin in attendance who had dared to profane that
hallowed ground.

To this hour I don't know whether my aunt had any lawful right of
way over that patch of green; but she had settled it in her own
mind that she had, and it was all the same to her.  The one great
outrage of her life, demanding to be constantly avenged, was the
passage of a donkey over that immaculate spot.  In whatever
occupation she was engaged, however interesting to her the
conversation in which she was taking part, a donkey turned the
current of her ideas in a moment, and she was upon him straight. 
Jugs of water, and watering-pots, were kept in secret places ready
to be discharged on the offending boys; sticks were laid in ambush
behind the door; sallies were made at all hours; and incessant war
prevailed.  Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the
donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys,
understanding how the case stood, delighted with constitutional
obstinacy in coming that way.  I only know that there were three
alarms before the bath was ready; and that on the occasion of the
last and most desperate of all, I saw my aunt engage,
single-handed, with a sandy-headed lad of fifteen, and bump his
sandy head against her own gate, before he seemed to comprehend
what was the matter.  These interruptions were of the more
ridiculous to me, because she was giving me broth out of a
table-spoon at the time (having firmly persuaded herself that I was
actually starving, and must receive nourishment at first in very
small quantities), and, while my mouth was yet open to receive the
spoon, she would put it back into the basin, cry 'Janet!  Donkeys!'
and go out to the assault.

The bath was a great comfort.  For I began to be sensible of acute
pains in my limbs from lying out in the fields, and was now so
tired and low that I could hardly keep myself awake for five
minutes together.  When I had bathed, they (I mean my aunt and
Janet) enrobed me in a shirt and a pair of trousers belonging to
Mr. Dick, and tied me up in two or three great shawls.  What sort
of bundle I looked like, I don't know, but I felt a very hot one. 
Feeling also very faint and drowsy, I soon lay down on the sofa
again and fell asleep.

It might have been a dream, originating in the fancy which had
occupied my mind so long, but I awoke with the impression that my
aunt had come and bent over me, and had put my hair away from my
face, and laid my head more comfortably, and had then stood looking
at me.  The words, 'Pretty fellow,' or 'Poor fellow,' seemed to be
in my ears, too; but certainly there was nothing else, when I
awoke, to lead me to believe that they had been uttered by my aunt,
who sat in the bow-window gazing at the sea from behind the green
fan, which was mounted on a kind of swivel, and turned any way.

We dined soon after I awoke, off a roast fowl and a pudding; I
sitting at table, not unlike a trussed bird myself, and moving my
arms with considerable difficulty.  But as my aunt had swathed me
up, I made no complaint of being inconvenienced.  All this time I
was deeply anxious to know what she was going to do with me; but
she took her dinner in profound silence, except when she
occasionally fixed her eyes on me sitting opposite, and said,
'Mercy upon us!' which did not by any means relieve my anxiety.

The cloth being drawn, and some sherry put upon the table (of which
I had a glass), my aunt sent up for Mr. Dick again, who joined us,
and looked as wise as he could when she requested him to attend to
my story, which she elicited from me, gradually, by a course of
questions.  During my recital, she kept her eyes on Mr. Dick, who
I thought would have gone to sleep but for that, and who,
whensoever he lapsed into a smile, was checked by a frown from my
aunt.

'Whatever possessed that poor unfortunate Baby, that she must go
and be married again,' said my aunt, when I had finished, 'I can't
conceive.'

'Perhaps she fell in love with her second husband,' Mr. Dick
suggested.

'Fell in love!' repeated my aunt.  'What do you mean?  What
business had she to do it?'

'Perhaps,' Mr. Dick simpered, after thinking a little, 'she did it
for pleasure.'

'Pleasure, indeed!' replied my aunt.  'A mighty pleasure for the
poor Baby to fix her simple faith upon any dog of a fellow, certain
to ill-use her in some way or other.  What did she propose to
herself, I should like to know!  She had had one husband.  She had
seen David Copperfield out of the world, who was always running
after wax dolls from his cradle.  She had got a baby - oh, there
were a pair of babies when she gave birth to this child sitting
here, that Friday night! - and what more did she want?'

Mr. Dick secretly shook his head at me, as if he thought there was
no getting over this.

'She couldn't even have a baby like anybody else,' said my aunt. 
'Where was this child's sister, Betsey Trotwood?  Not forthcoming. 
Don't tell me!'

Mr. Dick seemed quite frightened.

'That little man of a doctor, with his head on one side,' said my
aunt, 'Jellips, or whatever his name was, what was he about?  All
he could do, was to say to me, like a robin redbreast - as he is -
"It's a boy."  A boy!  Yah, the imbecility of the whole set of
'em!'

The heartiness of the ejaculation startled Mr. Dick exceedingly;
and me, too, if I am to tell the truth.

'And then, as if this was not enough, and she had not stood
sufficiently in the light of this child's sister, Betsey Trotwood,'
said my aunt, 'she marries a second time - goes and marries a
Murderer - or a man with a name like it - and stands in THIS
child's light!  And the natural consequence is, as anybody but a
baby might have foreseen, that he prowls and wanders.  He's as like
Cain before he was grown up, as he can be.'

Mr. Dick looked hard at me, as if to identify me in this character.

'And then there's that woman with the Pagan name,' said my aunt,
'that Peggotty, she goes and gets married next.  Because she has
not seen enough of the evil attending such things, she goes and
gets married next, as the child relates.  I only hope,' said my
aunt, shaking her head, 'that her husband is one of those Poker
husbands who abound in the newspapers, and will beat her well with
one.'

I could not bear to hear my old nurse so decried, and made the
subject of such a wish.  I told my aunt that indeed she was
mistaken.  That Peggotty was the best, the truest, the most
faithful, most devoted, and most self-denying friend and servant in
the world; who had ever loved me dearly, who had ever loved my
mother dearly; who had held my mother's dying head upon her arm, on
whose face my mother had imprinted her last grateful kiss.  And my
remembrance of them both, choking me, I broke down as I was trying
to say that her home was my home, and that all she had was mine,
and that I would have gone to her for shelter, but for her humble
station, which made me fear that I might bring some trouble on her
- I broke down, I say, as I was trying to say so, and laid my face
in my hands upon the table.

'Well, well!' said my aunt, 'the child is right to stand by those
who have stood by him - Janet!  Donkeys!'

I thoroughly believe that but for those unfortunate donkeys, we
should have come to a good understanding; for my aunt had laid her
hand on my shoulder, and the impulse was upon me, thus emboldened,
to embrace her and beseech her protection.  But the interruption,
and the disorder she was thrown into by the struggle outside, put
an end to all softer ideas for the present, and kept my aunt
indignantly declaiming to Mr. Dick about her determination to
appeal for redress to the laws of her country, and to bring actions
for trespass against the whole donkey proprietorship of Dover,
until tea-time.

After tea, we sat at the window - on the look-out, as I imagined,
from my aunt's sharp expression of face, for more invaders - until
dusk, when Janet set candles, and a backgammon-board, on the table,
and pulled down the blinds.

'Now, Mr. Dick,' said my aunt, with her grave look, and her
forefinger up as before, 'I am going to ask you another question. 
Look at this child.'

'David's son?' said Mr. Dick, with an attentive, puzzled face.

'Exactly so,' returned my aunt.  'What would you do with him, now?'

'Do with David's son?' said Mr. Dick.

'Ay,' replied my aunt, 'with David's son.'

'Oh!' said Mr. Dick.  'Yes.  Do with - I should put him to bed.'

'Janet!' cried my aunt, with the same complacent triumph that I had
remarked before.  'Mr. Dick sets us all right.  If the bed is
ready, we'll take him up to it.'

Janet reporting it to be quite ready, I was taken up to it; kindly,
but in some sort like a prisoner; my aunt going in front and Janet
bringing up the rear.  The only circumstance which gave me any new
hope, was my aunt's stopping on the stairs to inquire about a smell
of fire that was prevalent there; and janet's replying that she had
been making tinder down in the kitchen, of my old shirt.  But there
were no other clothes in my room than the odd heap of things I
wore; and when I was left there, with a little taper which my aunt
forewarned me would burn exactly five minutes, I heard them lock my
door on the outside.  Turning these things over in my mind I deemed
it possible that my aunt, who could know nothing of me, might
suspect I had a habit of running away, and took precautions, on
that account, to have me in safe keeping.

The room was a pleasant one, at the top of the house, overlooking
the sea, on which the moon was shining brilliantly.  After I had
said my prayers, and the candle had burnt out, I remember how I
still sat looking at the moonlight on the water, as if I could hope
to read my fortune in it, as in a bright book; or to see my mother
with her child, coming from Heaven, along that shining path, to
look upon me as she had looked when I last saw her sweet face.  I
remember how the solemn feeling with which at length I turned my
eyes away, yielded to the sensation of gratitude and rest which the
sight of the white-curtained bed - and how much more the lying
softly down upon it, nestling in the snow-white sheets! - inspired. 
I remember how I thought of all the solitary places under the night
sky where I had slept, and how I prayed that I never might be
houseless any more, and never might forget the houseless.  I
remember how I seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of
that track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams.

CHAPTER 14
MY AUNT MAKES UP HER MIND ABOUT ME

On going down in the morning, I found my aunt musing so profoundly
over the breakfast table, with her elbow on the tray, that the
contents of the urn had overflowed the teapot and were laying the
whole table-cloth under water, when my entrance put her meditations
to flight.  I felt sure that I had been the subject of her
reflections, and was more than ever anxious to know her intentions
towards me.  Yet I dared not express my anxiety, lest it should
give her offence.

My eyes, however, not being so much under control as my tongue,
were attracted towards my aunt very often during breakfast.  I
never could look at her for a few moments together but I found her
looking at me - in an odd thoughtful manner, as if I were an
immense way off, instead of being on the other side of the small
round table.  When she had finished her breakfast, my aunt very
deliberately leaned back in her chair, knitted her brows, folded
her arms, and contemplated me at her leisure, with such a fixedness
of attention that I was quite overpowered by embarrassment.  Not
having as yet finished my own breakfast, I attempted to hide my
confusion by proceeding with it; but my knife tumbled over my fork,
my fork tripped up my knife, I chipped bits of bacon a surprising
height into the air instead of cutting them for my own eating, and
choked myself with my tea, which persisted in going the wrong way
instead of the right one, until I gave in altogether, and sat
blushing under my aunt's close scrutiny.

'Hallo!' said my aunt, after a long time.

I looked up, and met her sharp bright glance respectfully.

'I have written to him,' said my aunt.

'To -?'

'To your father-in-law,' said my aunt.  'I have sent him a letter
that I'll trouble him to attend to, or he and I will fall out, I
can tell him!'

'Does he know where I am, aunt?' I inquired, alarmed.

'I have told him,' said my aunt, with a nod.

'Shall I - be - given up to him?' I faltered.

'I don't know,' said my aunt.  'We shall see.'

'Oh! I can't think what I shall do,' I exclaimed, 'if I have to go
back to Mr. Murdstone!'

'I don't know anything about it,' said my aunt, shaking her head. 
'I can't say, I am sure.  We shall see.'

My spirits sank under these words, and I became very downcast and
heavy of heart.  My aunt, without appearing to take much heed of
me, put on a coarse apron with a bib, which she took out of the
press; washed up the teacups with her own hands; and, when
everything was washed and set in the tray again, and the cloth
folded and put on the top of the whole, rang for Janet to remove
it.  She next swept up the crumbs with a little broom (putting on
a pair of gloves first), until there did not appear to be one
microscopic speck left on the carpet; next dusted and arranged the
room, which was dusted and arranged to a hair'sbreadth already. 
When all these tasks were performed to her satisfaction, she took
off the gloves and apron, folded them up, put them in the
particular corner of the press from which they had been taken,
brought out her work-box to her own table in the open window, and
sat down, with the green fan between her and the light, to work.

'I wish you'd go upstairs,' said my aunt, as she threaded her
needle, 'and give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and I'll be glad to
know how he gets on with his Memorial.'

I rose with all alacrity, to acquit myself of this commission.

'I suppose,' said my aunt, eyeing me as narrowly as she had eyed
the needle in threading it, 'you think Mr. Dick a short name, eh?'

'I thought it was rather a short name, yesterday,' I confessed.

'You are not to suppose that he hasn't got a longer name, if he
chose to use it,' said my aunt, with a loftier air.  'Babley - Mr.
Richard Babley - that's the gentleman's true name.'

I was going to suggest, with a modest sense of my youth and the
familiarity I had been already guilty of, that I had better give
him the full benefit of that name, when my aunt went on to say:

'But don't you call him by it, whatever you do.  He can't bear his
name.  That's a peculiarity of his.  Though I don't know that it's
much of a peculiarity, either; for he has been ill-used enough, by
some that bear it, to have a mortal antipathy for it, Heaven knows. 
Mr. Dick is his name here, and everywhere else, now - if he ever
went anywhere else, which he don't.  So take care, child, you don't
call him anything BUT Mr. Dick.'

I promised to obey, and went upstairs with my message; thinking, as
I went, that if Mr. Dick had been working at his Memorial long, at
the same rate as I had seen him working at it, through the open
door, when I came down, he was probably getting on very well
indeed.  I found him still driving at it with a long pen, and his
head almost laid upon the paper.  He was so intent upon it, that I
had ample leisure to observe the large paper kite in a corner, the
confusion of bundles of manuscript, the number of pens, and, above
all, the quantity of ink (which he seemed to have in, in
half-gallon jars by the dozen), before he observed my being
present.

'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.'

I was going away, when he directed my attention to the kite.

'What do you think of that for a kite?' he said.

I answered that it was a beautiful one.  I should think it must
have been as much as seven feet high.

'I made it.  We'll go and fly it, you and I,' said Mr. Dick.  'Do
you see this?'

He showed me that it was covered with manuscript, very closely and
laboriously written; but so plainly, that as I looked along the
lines, I thought I saw some allusion to King Charles the First's
head again, in one or two places.

'There's plenty of string,' said Mr. Dick, 'and when it flies high,
it takes the facts a long way.  That's my manner of diffusing 'em. 
I don't know where they may come down.  It's according to
circumstances, and the wind, and so forth; but I take my chance of
that.'

His face was so very mild and pleasant, and had something so
reverend in it, though it was hale and hearty, that I was not sure
but that he was having a good-humoured jest with me.  So I laughed,
and he laughed, and we parted the best friends possible.

'Well, child,' said my aunt, when I went downstairs.  'And what of
Mr. Dick, this morning?'

I informed her that he sent his compliments, and was getting on
very well indeed.

'What do you think of him?' said my aunt.

I had some shadowy idea of endeavouring to evade the question, by
replying that I thought him a very nice gentleman; but my aunt was
not to be so put off, for she laid her work down in her lap, and
said, folding her hands upon it:

'Come!  Your sister Betsey Trotwood would have told me what she
thought of anyone, directly.  Be as like your sister as you can,
and speak out!'

'Is he - is Mr. Dick - I ask because I don't know, aunt - is he at
all out of his mind, then?' I stammered; for I felt I was on
dangerous ground.

'Not a morsel,' said my aunt.

'Oh, indeed!' I observed faintly.

'If there is anything in the world,' said my aunt, with great
decision and force of manner, 'that Mr. Dick is not, it's that.'

I had nothing better to offer, than another timid, 'Oh, indeed!'

'He has been CALLED mad,' said my aunt.  'I have a selfish pleasure
in saying he has been called mad, or I should not have had the
benefit of his society and advice for these last ten years and
upwards - in fact, ever since your sister, Betsey Trotwood,
disappointed me.'

'So long as that?' I said.

'And nice people they were, who had the audacity to call him mad,'
pursued my aunt.  'Mr. Dick is a sort of distant connexion of mine
- it doesn't matter how; I needn't enter into that.  If it hadn't
been for me, his own brother would have shut him up for life. 
That's all.'

I am afraid it was hypocritical in me, but seeing that my aunt felt
strongly on the subject, I tried to look as if I felt strongly too.

'A proud fool!' said my aunt.  'Because his brother was a little
eccentric - though he is not half so eccentric as a good many
people - he didn't like to have him visible about his house, and
sent him away to some private asylum-place: though he had been left
to his particular care by their deceased father, who thought him
almost a natural.  And a wise man he must have been to think so!
Mad himself, no doubt.'

Again, as my aunt looked quite convinced, I endeavoured to look
quite convinced also.

'So I stepped in,' said my aunt, 'and made him an offer.  I said,
"Your brother's sane - a great deal more sane than you are, or ever
will be, it is to be hoped.  Let him have his little income, and
come and live with me.  I am not afraid of him, I am not proud, I
am ready to take care of him, and shall not ill-treat him as some
people (besides the asylum-folks) have done."  After a good deal of
squabbling,' said my aunt, 'I got him; and he has been here ever
since.  He is the most friendly and amenable creature in existence;
and as for advice! - But nobody knows what that man's mind is,
except myself.'

My aunt smoothed her dress and shook her head, as if she smoothed
defiance of the whole world out of the one, and shook it out of the
other.

'He had a favourite sister,' said my aunt, 'a good creature, and
very kind to him.  But she did what they all do - took a husband. 
And HE did what they all do - made her wretched.  It had such an
effect upon the mind of Mr. Dick (that's not madness, I hope!)
that, combined with his fear of his brother, and his sense of his
unkindness, it threw him into a fever.  That was before he came to
me, but the recollection of it is oppressive to him even now.  Did
he say anything to you about King Charles the First, child?'

'Yes, aunt.'

'Ah!' said my aunt, rubbing her nose as if she were a little vexed. 
'That's his allegorical way of expressing it.  He connects his
illness with great disturbance and agitation, naturally, and that's
the figure, or the simile, or whatever it's called, which he
chooses to use.  And why shouldn't he, if he thinks proper!'

I said: 'Certainly, aunt.'

'It's not a business-like way of speaking,' said my aunt, 'nor a
worldly way.  I am aware of that; and that's the reason why I
insist upon it, that there shan't be a word about it in his
Memorial.'

'Is it a Memorial about his own history that he is writing, aunt?'

'Yes, child,' said my aunt, rubbing her nose again.  'He is
memorializing the Lord Chancellor, or the Lord Somebody or other -
one of those people, at all events, who are paid to be memorialized
- about his affairs.  I suppose it will go in, one of these days. 
He hasn't been able to draw it up yet, without introducing that
mode of expressing himself; but it don't signify; it keeps him
employed.'

In fact, I found out afterwards that Mr. Dick had been for upwards
of ten years endeavouring to keep King Charles the First out of the
Memorial; but he had been constantly getting into it, and was there
now.

'I say again,' said my aunt, 'nobody knows what that man's mind is
except myself; and he's the most amenable and friendly creature in
existence.  If he likes to fly a kite sometimes, what of that!
Franklin used to fly a kite.  He was a Quaker, or something of that
sort, if I am not mistaken.  And a Quaker flying a kite is a much
more ridiculous object than anybody else.'

If I could have supposed that my aunt had recounted these
particulars for my especial behoof, and as a piece of confidence in
me, I should have felt very much distinguished, and should have
augured favourably from such a mark of her good opinion.  But I
could hardly help observing that she had launched into them,
chiefly because the question was raised in her own mind, and with
very little reference to me, though she had addressed herself to me
in the absence of anybody else.

At the same time, I must say that the generosity of her
championship of poor harmless Mr. Dick, not only inspired my young
breast with some selfish hope for myself, but warmed it unselfishly
towards her.  I believe that I began to know that there was
something about my aunt, notwithstanding her many eccentricities
and odd humours, to be honoured and trusted in.  Though she was
just as sharp that day as on the day before, and was in and out
about the donkeys just as often, and was thrown into a tremendous
state of indignation, when a young man, going by, ogled Janet at a
window (which was one of the gravest misdemeanours that could be
committed against my aunt's dignity), she seemed to me to command
more of my respect, if not less of my fear.

The anxiety I underwent, in the interval which necessarily elapsed
before a reply could be received to her letter to Mr. Murdstone,
was extreme; but I made an endeavour to suppress it, and to be as
agreeable as I could in a quiet way, both to my aunt and Mr. Dick. 
The latter and I would have gone out to fly the great kite; but
that I had still no other clothes than the anything but ornamental
garments with which I had been decorated on the first day, and
which confined me to the house, except for an hour after dark, when
my aunt, for my health's sake, paraded me up and down on the cliff
outside, before going to bed.  At length the reply from Mr.
Murdstone came, and my aunt informed me, to my infinite terror,
that he was coming to speak to her herself on the next day.  On the
next day, still bundled up in my curious habiliments, I sat
counting the time, flushed and heated by the conflict of sinking
hopes and rising fears within me; and waiting to be startled by the
sight of the gloomy face, whose non-arrival startled me every
minute.

MY aunt was a little more imperious and stern than usual, but I
observed no other token of her preparing herself to receive the
visitor so much dreaded by me.  She sat at work in the window, and
I sat by, with my thoughts running astray on all possible and
impossible results of Mr. Murdstone's visit, until pretty late in
the afternoon.  Our dinner had been indefinitely postponed; but it
was growing so late, that my aunt had ordered it to be got ready,
when she gave a sudden alarm of donkeys, and to my consternation
and amazement, I beheld Miss Murdstone, on a side-saddle, ride
deliberately over the sacred piece of green, and stop in front of
the house, looking about her.

'Go along with you!' cried my aunt, shaking her head and her fist
at the window.  'You have no business there.  How dare you
trespass?  Go along!  Oh! you bold-faced thing!'

MY aunt was so exasperated by the coolness with which Miss
Murdstone looked about her, that I really believe she was
motionless, and unable for the moment to dart out according to
custom.  I seized the opportunity to inform her who it was; and
that the gentleman now coming near the offender (for the way up was
very steep, and he had dropped behind), was Mr. Murdstone himself.

'I don't care who it is!' cried my aunt, still shaking her head and
gesticulating anything but welcome from the bow-window.  'I won't
be trespassed upon.  I won't allow it.  Go away!  Janet, turn him
round.  Lead him off!' and I saw, from behind my aunt, a sort of
hurried battle-piece, in which the donkey stood resisting
everybody, with all his four legs planted different ways, while
Janet tried to pull him round by the bridle, Mr. Murdstone tried to
lead him on, Miss Murdstone struck at Janet with a parasol, and
several boys, who had come to see the engagement, shouted
vigorously.  But my aunt, suddenly descrying among them the young
malefactor who was the donkey's guardian, and who was one of the
most inveterate offenders against her, though hardly in his teens,
rushed out to the scene of action, pounced upon him, captured him,
dragged him, with his jacket over his head, and his heels grinding
the ground, into the garden, and, calling upon Janet to fetch the
constables and justices, that he might be taken, tried, and
executed on the spot, held him at bay there.  This part of the
business, however, did not last long; for the young rascal, being
expert at a variety of feints and dodges, of which my aunt had no
conception, soon went whooping away, leaving some deep impressions
of his nailed boots in the flower-beds, and taking his donkey in
triumph with him.

Miss Murdstone, during the latter portion of the contest, had
dismounted, and was now waiting with her brother at the bottom of
the steps, until my aunt should be at leisure to receive them.  My
aunt, a little ruffled by the combat, marched past them into the
house, with great dignity, and took no notice of their presence,
until they were announced by Janet.

'Shall I go away, aunt?' I asked, trembling.

'No, sir,' said my aunt.  'Certainly not!'  With which she pushed
me into a corner near her, and fenced Me in with a chair, as if it
were a prison or a bar of justice.  This position I continued to
occupy during the whole interview, and from it I now saw Mr. and
Miss Murdstone enter the room.

'Oh!' said my aunt, 'I was not aware at first to whom I had the
pleasure of objecting.  But I don't allow anybody to ride over that
turf.  I make no exceptions.  I don't allow anybody to do it.'

'Your regulation is rather awkward to strangers,' said Miss
Murdstone.

'Is it!' said my aunt.

Mr. Murdstone seemed afraid of a renewal of hostilities, and
interposing began:

'Miss Trotwood!'

'I beg your pardon,' observed my aunt with a keen look.  'You are
the Mr. Murdstone who married the widow of my late nephew, David
Copperfield, of Blunderstone Rookery! - Though why Rookery, I don't
know!'

'I am,' said Mr. Murdstone.

'You'll excuse my saying, sir,' returned my aunt, 'that I think it
would have been a much better and happier thing if you had left
that poor child alone.'

'I so far agree with what Miss Trotwood has remarked,' observed
Miss Murdstone, bridling, 'that I consider our lamented Clara to
have been, in all essential respects, a mere child.'

'It is a comfort to you and me, ma'am,' said my aunt, 'who are
getting on in life, and are not likely to be made unhappy by our
personal attractions, that nobody can say the same of us.'

'No doubt!' returned Miss Murdstone, though, I thought, not with a
very ready or gracious assent.  'And it certainly might have been,
as you say, a better and happier thing for my brother if he had
never entered into such a marriage.  I have always been of that
opinion.'

'I have no doubt you have,' said my aunt.  'Janet,' ringing the
bell, 'my compliments to Mr. Dick, and beg him to come down.'

Until he came, my aunt sat perfectly upright and stiff, frowning at
the wall.  When he came, my aunt performed the ceremony of
introduction.

'Mr. Dick.  An old and intimate friend.  On whose judgement,' said
my aunt, with emphasis, as an admonition to Mr. Dick, who was
biting his forefinger and looking rather foolish, 'I rely.'

Mr. Dick took his finger out of his mouth, on this hint, and stood
among the group, with a grave and attentive expression of face.

My aunt inclined her head to Mr. Murdstone, who went on:

'Miss Trotwood: on the receipt of your letter, I considered it an
act of greater justice to myself, and perhaps of more respect to
you-'

'Thank you,' said my aunt, still eyeing him keenly.  'You needn't
mind me.'

'To answer it in person, however inconvenient the journey,' pursued
Mr. Murdstone, 'rather than by letter.  This unhappy boy who has
run away from his friends and his occupation -'

'And whose appearance,' interposed his sister, directing general
attention to me in my indefinable costume, 'is perfectly scandalous
and disgraceful.'

'Jane Murdstone,' said her brother, 'have the goodness not to
interrupt me.  This unhappy boy, Miss Trotwood, has been the
occasion of much domestic trouble and uneasiness; both during the
lifetime of my late dear wife, and since.  He has a sullen,
rebellious spirit; a violent temper; and an untoward, intractable
disposition.  Both my sister and myself have endeavoured to correct
his vices, but ineffectually.  And I have felt - we both have felt,
I may say; my sister being fully in my confidence - that it is
right you should receive this grave and dispassionate assurance
from our lips.'

'It can hardly be necessary for me to confirm anything stated by my
brother,' said Miss Murdstone; 'but I beg to observe, that, of all
the boys in the world, I believe this is the worst boy.'

'Strong!' said my aunt, shortly.

'But not at all too strong for the facts,' returned Miss Murdstone.

'Ha!' said my aunt.  'Well, sir?'

'I have my own opinions,' resumed Mr. Murdstone, whose face
darkened more and more, the more he and my aunt observed each
other, which they did very narrowly, 'as to the best mode of
bringing him up; they are founded, in part, on my knowledge of him,
and in part on my knowledge of my own means and resources.  I am
responsible for them to myself, I act upon them, and I say no more
about them.  It is enough that I place this boy under the eye of a
friend of my own, in a respectable business; that it does not
please him; that he runs away from it; makes himself a common
vagabond about the country; and comes here, in rags, to appeal to
you, Miss Trotwood.  I wish to set before you, honourably, the
exact consequences - so far as they are within my knowledge - of
your abetting him in this appeal.'

'But about the respectable business first,' said my aunt.  'If he
had been your own boy, you would have put him to it, just the same,
I suppose?'

'If he had been my brother's own boy,' returned Miss Murdstone,
striking in, 'his character, I trust, would have been altogether
different.'

'Or if the poor child, his mother, had been alive, he would still
have gone into the respectable business, would he?' said my aunt.

'I believe,' said Mr. Murdstone, with an inclination of his head,
'that Clara would have disputed nothing which myself and my sister
Jane Murdstone were agreed was for the best.'

Miss Murdstone confirmed this with an audible murmur.

'Humph!' said my aunt.  'Unfortunate baby!'

Mr. Dick, who had been rattling his money all this time, was
rattling it so loudly now, that my aunt felt it necessary to check
him with a look, before saying:

'The poor child's annuity died with her?'

'Died with her,' replied Mr. Murdstone.

'And there was no settlement of the little property - the house and
garden - the what's-its-name Rookery without any rooks in it - upon
her boy?'

'It had been left to her, unconditionally, by her first husband,'
Mr. Murdstone began, when my aunt caught him up with the greatest
irascibility and impatience.

'Good Lord, man, there's no occasion to say that.  Left to her
unconditionally!  I think I see David Copperfield looking forward
to any condition of any sort or kind, though it stared him
point-blank in the face!  Of course it was left to her
unconditionally.  But when she married again - when she took that
most disastrous step of marrying you, in short,' said my aunt, 'to
be plain - did no one put in a word for the boy at that time?'

'My late wife loved her second husband, ma'am,' said Mr. Murdstone,
'and trusted implicitly in him.'

'Your late wife, sir, was a most unworldly, most unhappy, most
unfortunate baby,' returned my aunt, shaking her head at him. 
'That's what she was.  And now, what have you got to say next?'

'Merely this, Miss Trotwood,' he returned.  'I am here to take
David back - to take him back unconditionally, to dispose of him as
I think proper, and to deal with him as I think right.  I am not
here to make any promise, or give any pledge to anybody.  You may
possibly have some idea, Miss Trotwood, of abetting him in his
running away, and in his complaints to you.  Your manner, which I
must say does not seem intended to propitiate, induces me to think
it possible.  Now I must caution you that if you abet him once, you
abet him for good and all; if you step in between him and me, now,
you must step in, Miss Trotwood, for ever.  I cannot trifle, or be
trifled with.  I am here, for the first and last time, to take him
away.  Is he ready to go?  If he is not - and you tell me he is
not; on any pretence; it is indifferent to me what - my doors are
shut against him henceforth, and yours, I take it for granted, are
open to him.'

To this address, my aunt had listened with the closest attention,
sitting perfectly upright, with her hands folded on one knee, and
looking grimly on the speaker.  When he had finished, she turned
her eyes so as to command Miss Murdstone, without otherwise
disturbing her attitude, and said:

'Well, ma'am, have YOU got anything to remark?'

'Indeed, Miss Trotwood,' said Miss Murdstone, 'all that I could say
has been so well said by my brother, and all that I know to be the
fact has been so plainly stated by him, that I have nothing to add
except my thanks for your politeness.  For your very great
politeness, I am sure,' said Miss Murdstone; with an irony which no
more affected my aunt, than it discomposed the cannon I had slept
by at Chatham.

'And what does the boy say?' said my aunt.  'Are you ready to go,
David?'

I answered no, and entreated her not to let me go.  I said that
neither Mr. nor Miss Murdstone had ever liked me, or had ever been
kind to me.  That they had made my mama, who always loved me
dearly, unhappy about me, and that I knew it well, and that
Peggotty knew it.  I said that I had been more miserable than I
thought anybody could believe, who only knew how young I was.  And
I begged and prayed my aunt - I forget in what terms now, but I
remember that they affected me very much then - to befriend and
protect me, for my father's sake.

'Mr. Dick,' said my aunt, 'what shall I do with this child?'

Mr. Dick considered, hesitated, brightened, and rejoined, 'Have him
measured for a suit of clothes directly.'

'Mr. Dick,' said my aunt triumphantly, 'give me your hand, for your
common sense is invaluable.'  Having shaken it with great
cordiality, she pulled me towards her and said to Mr. Murdstone:

'You can go when you like; I'll take my chance with the boy.  If
he's all you say he is, at least I can do as much for him then, as
you have done.  But I don't believe a word of it.'

'Miss Trotwood,' rejoined Mr. Murdstone, shrugging his shoulders,
as he rose, 'if you were a gentleman -'

'Bah!  Stuff and nonsense!' said my aunt.  'Don't talk to me!'

'How exquisitely polite!' exclaimed Miss Murdstone, rising. 
'Overpowering, really!'

'Do you think I don't know,' said my aunt, turning a deaf ear to
the sister, and continuing to address the brother, and to shake her
head at him with infinite expression, 'what kind of life you must
have led that poor, unhappy, misdirected baby?  Do you think I
don't know what a woeful day it was for the soft little creature
when you first came in her way - smirking and making great eyes at
her, I'll be bound, as if you couldn't say boh! to a goose!'

'I never heard anything so elegant!' said Miss Murdstone.

'Do you think I can't understand you as well as if I had seen you,'
pursued my aunt, 'now that I DO see and hear you - which, I tell
you candidly, is anything but a pleasure to me?  Oh yes, bless us!
who so smooth and silky as Mr. Murdstone at first!  The poor,
benighted innocent had never seen such a man.  He was made of
sweetness.  He worshipped her.  He doted on her boy - tenderly
doted on him!  He was to be another father to him, and they were
all to live together in a garden of roses, weren't they?  Ugh!  Get
along with you, do!' said my aunt.

'I never heard anything like this person in my life!' exclaimed
Miss Murdstone.

'And when you had made sure of the poor little fool,' said my aunt
- 'God forgive me that I should call her so, and she gone where YOU
won't go in a hurry - because you had not done wrong enough to her
and hers, you must begin to train her, must you? begin to break
her, like a poor caged bird, and wear her deluded life away, in
teaching her to sing YOUR notes?'

'This is either insanity or intoxication,' said Miss Murdstone, in
a perfect agony at not being able to turn the current of my aunt's
address towards herself; 'and my suspicion is that it's
intoxication.'

Miss Betsey, without taking the least notice of the interruption,
continued to address herself to Mr. Murdstone as if there had been
no such thing.

'Mr. Murdstone,' she said, shaking her finger at him, 'you were a
tyrant to the simple baby, and you broke her heart.  She was a
loving baby - I know that; I knew it, years before you ever saw her
- and through the best part of her weakness you gave her the wounds
she died of.  There is the truth for your comfort, however you like
it.  And you and your instruments may make the most of it.'

'Allow me to inquire, Miss Trotwood,' interposed Miss Murdstone,
'whom you are pleased to call, in a choice of words in which I am
not experienced, my brother's instruments?'

'It was clear enough, as I have told you, years before YOU ever saw
her - and why, in the mysterious dispensations of Providence, you
ever did see her, is more than humanity can comprehend - it was
clear enough that the poor soft little thing would marry somebody,
at some time or other; but I did hope it wouldn't have been as bad
as it has turned out.  That was the time, Mr. Murdstone, when she
gave birth to her boy here,' said my aunt; 'to the poor child you
sometimes tormented her through afterwards, which is a disagreeable
remembrance and makes the sight of him odious now.  Aye, aye! you
needn't wince!' said my aunt.  'I know it's true without that.'

He had stood by the door, all this while, observant of her with a
smile upon his face, though his black eyebrows were heavily
contracted.  I remarked now, that, though the smile was on his face
still, his colour had gone in a moment, and he seemed to breathe as
if he had been running.

'Good day, sir,' said my aunt, 'and good-bye!  Good day to you,
too, ma'am,' said my aunt, turning suddenly upon his sister.  'Let
me see you ride a donkey over my green again, and as sure as you
have a head upon your shoulders, I'll knock your bonnet off, and
tread upon it!'

It would require a painter, and no common painter too, to depict my
aunt's face as she delivered herself of this very unexpected
sentiment, and Miss Murdstone's face as she heard it.  But the
manner of the speech, no less than the matter, was so fiery, that
Miss Murdstone, without a word in answer, discreetly put her arm
through her brother's, and walked haughtily out of the cottage; my
aunt remaining in the window looking after them; prepared, I have
no doubt, in case of the donkey's reappearance, to carry her threat
into instant execution.

No attempt at defiance being made, however, her face gradually
relaxed, and became so pleasant, that I was emboldened to kiss and
thank her; which I did with great heartiness, and with both my arms
clasped round her neck.  I then shook hands with Mr. Dick, who
shook hands with me a great many times, and hailed this happy close
of the proceedings with repeated bursts of laughter.

'You'll consider yourself guardian, jointly with me, of this child,
Mr. Dick,' said my aunt.

'I shall be delighted,' said Mr. Dick, 'to be the guardian of
David's son.'

'Very good,' returned my aunt, 'that's settled.  I have been
thinking, do you know, Mr. Dick, that I might call him Trotwood?'

'Certainly, certainly.  Call him Trotwood, certainly,' said Mr.
Dick.  'David's son's Trotwood.'

'Trotwood Copperfield, you mean,' returned my aunt.

'Yes, to be sure.  Yes.  Trotwood Copperfield,' said Mr. Dick, a
little abashed.

My aunt took so kindly to the notion, that some ready-made clothes,
which were purchased for me that afternoon, were marked 'Trotwood
Copperfield', in her own handwriting, and in indelible marking-ink,
before I put them on; and it was settled that all the other clothes
which were ordered to be made for me (a complete outfit was bespoke
that afternoon) should be marked in the same way.

Thus I began my new life, in a new name, and with everything new
about me.  Now that the state of doubt was over, I felt, for many
days, like one in a dream.  I never thought that I had a curious
couple of guardians, in my aunt and Mr. Dick.  I never thought of
anything about myself, distinctly.  The two things clearest in my
mind were, that a remoteness had come upon the old Blunderstone
life - which seemed to lie in the haze of an immeasurable distance;
and that a curtain had for ever fallen on my life at Murdstone and
Grinby's.  No one has ever raised that curtain since.  I have
lifted it for a moment, even in this narrative, with a reluctant
hand, and dropped it gladly.  The remembrance of that life is
fraught with so much pain to me, with so much mental suffering and
want of hope, that I have never had the courage even to examine how
long I was doomed to lead it.  Whether it lasted for a year, or
more, or less, I do not know.  I only know that it was, and ceased
to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.

CHAPTER 15
I MAKE ANOTHER BEGINNING

Mr. Dick and I soon became the best of friends, and very often,
when his day's work was done, went out together to fly the great
kite.  Every day of his life he had a long sitting at the Memorial,
which never made the least progress, however hard he laboured, for
King Charles the First always strayed into it, sooner or later, and
then it was thrown aside, and another one begun.  The patience and
hope with which he bore these perpetual disappointments, the mild
perception he had that there was something wrong about King Charles
the First, the feeble efforts he made to keep him out, and the
certainty with which he came in, and tumbled the Memorial out of
all shape, made a deep impression on me.  What Mr. Dick supposed
would come of the Memorial, if it were completed; where he thought
it was to go, or what he thought it was to do; he knew no more than
anybody else, I believe.  Nor was it at all necessary that he
should trouble himself with such questions, for if anything were
certain under the sun, it was certain that the Memorial never would
be finished.  It was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to
see him with the kite when it was up a great height in the air. 
What he had told me, in his room, about his belief in its
disseminating the statements pasted on it, which were nothing but
old leaves of abortive Memorials, might have been a fancy with him
sometimes; but not when he was out, looking up at the kite in the
sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand.  He never looked so
serene as he did then.  I used to fancy, as I sat by him of an
evening, on a green slope, and saw him watch the kite high in the
quiet air, that it lifted his mind out of its confusion, and bore
it (such was my boyish thought) into the skies.  As he wound the
string in and it came lower and lower down out of the beautiful
light, until it fluttered to the ground, and lay there like a dead
thing, he seemed to wake gradually out of a dream; and I remember
to have seen him take it up, and look about him in a lost way, as
if they had both come down together, so that I pitied him with all
my heart.

While I advanced in friendship and intimacy with Mr. Dick, I did
not go backward in the favour of his staunch friend, my aunt.  She
took so kindly to me, that, in the course of a few weeks, she
shortened my adopted name of Trotwood into Trot; and even
encouraged me to hope, that if I went on as I had begun, I might
take equal rank in her affections with my sister Betsey Trotwood.

'Trot,' said my aunt one evening, when the backgammon-board was
placed as usual for herself and Mr. Dick, 'we must not forget your
education.'

This was my only subject of anxiety, and I felt quite delighted by
her referring to it.

'Should you like to go to school at Canterbury?' said my aunt.

I replied that I should like it very much, as it was so near her.

'Good,' said my aunt.  'Should you like to go tomorrow?'

Being already no stranger to the general rapidity of my aunt's
evolutions, I was not surprised by the suddenness of the proposal,
and said: 'Yes.'

'Good,' said my aunt again.  'Janet, hire the grey pony and chaise
tomorrow morning at ten o'clock, and pack up Master Trotwood's
clothes tonight.'

I was greatly elated by these orders; but my heart smote me for my
selfishness, when I witnessed their effect on Mr. Dick, who was so
low-spirited at the prospect of our separation, and played so ill
in consequence, that my aunt, after giving him several admonitory
raps on the knuckles with her dice-box, shut up the board, and
declined to play with him any more.  But, on hearing from my aunt
that I should sometimes come over on a Saturday, and that he could
sometimes come and see me on a Wednesday, he revived; and vowed to
make another kite for those occasions, of proportions greatly
surpassing the present one.  In the morning he was downhearted
again, and would have sustained himself by giving me all the money
he had in his possession, gold and silver too, if my aunt had not
interposed, and limited the gift to five shillings, which, at his
earnest petition, were afterwards increased to ten.  We parted at
the garden-gate in a most affectionate manner, and Mr. Dick did not
go into the house until my aunt had driven me out of sight of it.

My aunt, who was perfectly indifferent to public opinion, drove the
grey pony through Dover in a masterly manner; sitting high and
stiff like a state coachman, keeping a steady eye upon him wherever
he went, and making a point of not letting him have his own way in
any respect.  When we came into the country road, she permitted him
to relax a little, however; and looking at me down in a valley of
cushion by her side, asked me whether I was happy?

'Very happy indeed, thank you, aunt,' I said.

She was much gratified; and both her hands being occupied, patted
me on the head with her whip.

'Is it a large school, aunt?' I asked.

'Why, I don't know,' said my aunt.  'We are going to Mr.
Wickfield's first.'

'Does he keep a school?' I asked.

'No, Trot,' said my aunt.  'He keeps an office.'

I asked for no more information about Mr. Wickfield, as she offered
none, and we conversed on other subjects until we came to
Canterbury, where, as it was market-day, my aunt had a great
opportunity of insinuating the grey pony among carts, baskets,
vegetables, and huckster's goods.  The hair-breadth turns and
twists we made, drew down upon us a variety of speeches from the
people standing about, which were not always complimentary; but my
aunt drove on with perfect indifference, and I dare say would have
taken her own way with as much coolness through an enemy's country.

At length we stopped before a very old house bulging out over the
road; a house with long low lattice-windows bulging out still
farther, and beams with carved heads on the ends bulging out too,
so that I fancied the whole house was leaning forward, trying to
see who was passing on the narrow pavement below.  It was quite
spotless in its cleanliness.  The old-fashioned brass knocker on
the low arched door, ornamented with carved garlands of fruit and
flowers, twinkled like a star; the two stone steps descending to
the door were as white as if they had been covered with fair linen;
and all the angles and corners, and carvings and mouldings, and
quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little windows, though
as old as the hills, were as pure as any snow that ever fell upon
the hills.

When the pony-chaise stopped at the door, and my eyes were intent
upon the house, I saw a cadaverous face appear at a small window on
the ground floor (in a little round tower that formed one side of
the house), and quickly disappear.  The low arched door then
opened, and the face came out.  It was quite as cadaverous as it
had looked in the window, though in the grain of it there was that
tinge of red which is sometimes to be observed in the skins of
red-haired people.  It belonged to a red-haired person - a youth of
fifteen, as I take it now, but looking much older - whose hair was
cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any
eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered
and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep.  He
was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white
wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long,
lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as
he stood at the pony's head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking
up at us in the chaise.

'Is Mr. Wickfield at home, Uriah Heep?' said my aunt.

'Mr. Wickfield's at home, ma'am,' said Uriah Heep, 'if you'll
please to walk in there' - pointing with his long hand to the room
he meant.

We got out; and leaving him to hold the pony, went into a long low
parlour looking towards the street, from the window of which I
caught a glimpse, as I went in, of Uriah Heep breathing into the
pony's nostrils, and immediately covering them with his hand, as if
he were putting some spell upon him.  Opposite to the tall old
chimney-piece were two portraits: one of a gentleman with grey hair
(though not by any means an old man) and black eyebrows, who was
looking over some papers tied together with red tape; the other, of
a lady, with a very placid and sweet expression of face, who was
looking at me.

I believe I was turning about in search of Uriah's picture, when,
a door at the farther end of the room opening, a gentleman entered,
at sight of whom I turned to the first-mentioned portrait again, to
make quite sure that it had not come out of its frame.  But it was
stationary; and as the gentleman advanced into the light, I saw
that he was some years older than when he had had his picture
painted.

'Miss Betsey Trotwood,' said the gentleman, 'pray walk in.  I was
engaged for a moment, but you'll excuse my being busy.  You know my
motive.  I have but one in life.'

Miss Betsey thanked him, and we went into his room, which was
furnished as an office, with books, papers, tin boxes, and so
forth.  It looked into a garden, and had an iron safe let into the
wall; so immediately over the mantelshelf, that I wondered, as I
sat down, how the sweeps got round it when they swept the chimney.

'Well, Miss Trotwood,' said Mr. Wickfield; for I soon found that it
was he, and that he was a lawyer, and steward of the estates of a
rich gentleman of the county; 'what wind blows you here?  Not an
ill wind, I hope?'

'No,' replied my aunt.  'I have not come for any law.'

'That's right, ma'am,' said Mr. Wickfield.  'You had better come
for anything else.'
His hair was quite white now, though his eyebrows were still black. 
He had a very agreeable face, and, I thought, was handsome.  There
was a certain richness in his complexion, which I had been long
accustomed, under Peggotty's tuition, to connect with port wine;
and I fancied it was in his voice too, and referred his growing
corpulency to the same cause.  He was very cleanly dressed, in a
blue coat, striped waistcoat, and nankeen trousers; and his fine
frilled shirt and cambric neckcloth looked unusually soft and
white, reminding my strolling fancy (I call to mind) of the plumage
on the breast of a swan.

'This is my nephew,' said my aunt.

'Wasn't aware you had one, Miss Trotwood,' said Mr. Wickfield.

'My grand-nephew, that is to say,' observed my aunt.

'Wasn't aware you had a grand-nephew, I give you my word,' said Mr.
Wickfield.

'I have adopted him,' said my aunt, with a wave of her hand,
importing that his knowledge and his ignorance were all one to her,
'and I have brought him here, to put to a school where he may be
thoroughly well taught, and well treated.  Now tell me where that
school is, and what it is, and all about it.'

'Before I can advise you properly,' said Mr. Wickfield - 'the old
question, you know.  What's your motive in this?'

'Deuce take the man!' exclaimed my aunt.  'Always fishing for
motives, when they're on the surface!  Why, to make the child happy
and useful.'

'It must be a mixed motive, I think,' said Mr. Wickfield, shaking
his head and smiling incredulously.

'A mixed fiddlestick,' returned my aunt.  'You claim to have one
plain motive in all you do yourself.  You don't suppose, I hope,
that you are the only plain dealer in the world?'

'Ay, but I have only one motive in life, Miss Trotwood,' he
rejoined, smiling.  'Other people have dozens, scores, hundreds. 
I have only one.  There's the difference.  However, that's beside
the question.  The best school?  Whatever the motive, you want the
best?'

My aunt nodded assent.

'At the best we have,' said Mr. Wickfield, considering, 'your
nephew couldn't board just now.'

'But he could board somewhere else, I suppose?' suggested my aunt.

Mr. Wickfield thought I could.  After a little discussion, he
proposed to take my aunt to the school, that she might see it and
judge for herself; also, to take her, with the same object, to two
or three houses where he thought I could be boarded.  My aunt
embracing the proposal, we were all three going out together, when
he stopped and said:

'Our little friend here might have some motive, perhaps, for
objecting to the arrangements.  I think we had better leave him
behind?'

My aunt seemed disposed to contest the point; but to facilitate
matters I said I would gladly remain behind, if they pleased; and
returned into Mr. Wickfield's office, where I sat down again, in
the chair I had first occupied, to await their return.

It so happened that this chair was opposite a narrow passage, which
ended in the little circular room where I had seen Uriah Heep's
pale face looking out of the window.  Uriah, having taken the pony
to a neighbouring stable, was at work at a desk in this room, which
had a brass frame on the top to hang paper upon, and on which the
writing he was making a copy of was then hanging.  Though his face
was towards me, I thought, for some time, the writing being between
us, that he could not see me; but looking that way more
attentively, it made me uncomfortable to observe that, every now
and then, his sleepless eyes would come below the writing, like two
red suns, and stealthily stare at me for I dare say a whole minute
at a time, during which his pen went, or pretended to go, as
cleverly as ever.  I made several attempts to get out of their way
- such as standing on a chair to look at a map on the other side of
the room, and poring over the columns of a Kentish newspaper - but
they always attracted me back again; and whenever I looked towards
those two red suns, I was sure to find them, either just rising or
just setting.

At length, much to my relief, my aunt and Mr. Wickfield came back,
after a pretty long absence.  They were not so successful as I
could have wished; for though the advantages of the school were
undeniable, my aunt had not approved of any of the boarding-houses
proposed for me.

'It's very unfortunate,' said my aunt.  'I don't know what to do,
Trot.'

'It does happen unfortunately,' said Mr. Wickfield.  'But I'll tell
you what you can do, Miss Trotwood.'

'What's that?' inquired my aunt.

'Leave your nephew here, for the present.  He's a quiet fellow.  He
won't disturb me at all.  It's a capital house for study.  As quiet
as a monastery, and almost as roomy.  Leave him here.'

My aunt evidently liked the offer, though she was delicate of
accepting it.  So did I.
'Come, Miss Trotwood,' said Mr. Wickfield.  'This is the way out of
the difficulty.  It's only a temporary arrangement, you know.  If
it don't act well, or don't quite accord with our mutual
convenience, he can easily go to the right-about.  There will be
time to find some better place for him in the meanwhile.  You had
better determine to leave him here for the present!'

'I am very much obliged to you,' said my aunt; 'and so is he, I
see; but -'

'Come! I know what you mean,' cried Mr. Wickfield.  'You shall not
be oppressed by the receipt of favours, Miss Trotwood.  You may pay
for him, if you like.  We won't be hard about terms, but you shall
pay if you will.'

'On that understanding,' said my aunt, 'though it doesn't lessen
the real obligation, I shall be very glad to leave him.'

'Then come and see my little housekeeper,' said Mr. Wickfield.

We accordingly went up a wonderful old staircase; with a balustrade
so broad that we might have gone up that, almost as easily; and
into a shady old drawing-room, lighted by some three or four of the
quaint windows I had looked up at from the street: which had old
oak seats in them, that seemed to have come of the same trees as
the shining oak floor, and the great beams in the ceiling.  It was
a prettily furnished room, with a piano and some lively furniture
in red and green, and some flowers.  It seemed to be all old nooks
and corners; and in every nook and corner there was some queer
little table, or cupboard, or bookcase, or seat, or something or
other, that made me think there was not such another good corner in
the room; until I looked at the next one, and found it equal to it,
if not better.  On everything there was the same air of retirement
and cleanliness that marked the house outside.

Mr. Wickfield tapped at a door in a corner of the panelled wall,
and a girl of about my own age came quickly out and kissed him.  On
her face, I saw immediately the placid and sweet expression of the
lady whose picture had looked at me downstairs.  It seemed to my
imagination as if the portrait had grown womanly, and the original
remained a child.  Although her face was quite bright and happy,
there was a tranquillity about it, and about her - a quiet, good,
calm spirit - that I never have forgotten; that I shall never
forget.  This was his little housekeeper, his daughter Agnes, Mr.
Wickfield said.  When I heard how he said it, and saw how he held
her hand, I guessed what the one motive of his life was.

She had a little basket-trifle hanging at her side, with keys in
it; and she looked as staid and as discreet a housekeeper as the
old house could have.  She listened to her father as he told her
about me, with a pleasant face; and when he had concluded, proposed
to my aunt that we should go upstairs and see my room.  We all went
together, she before us: and a glorious old room it was, with more
oak beams, and diamond panes; and the broad balustrade going all
the way up to it.

I cannot call to mind where or when, in my childhood, I had seen a
stained glass window in a church.  Nor do I recollect its subject. 
But I know that when I saw her turn round, in the grave light of
the old staircase, and wait for us, above, I thought of that
window; and I associated something of its tranquil brightness with
Agnes Wickfield ever afterwards.

My aunt was as happy as I was, in the arrangement made for me; and
we went down to the drawing-room again, well pleased and gratified. 
As she would not hear of staying to dinner, lest she should by any
chance fail to arrive at home with the grey pony before dark; and
as I apprehend Mr. Wickfield knew her too well to argue any point
with her; some lunch was provided for her there, and Agnes went
back to her governess, and Mr. Wickfield to his office.  So we were
left to take leave of one another without any restraint.

She told me that everything would be arranged for me by Mr.
Wickfield, and that I should want for nothing, and gave me the
kindest words and the best advice.

'Trot,' said my aunt in conclusion, 'be a credit to yourself, to
me, and Mr. Dick, and Heaven be with you!'

I was greatly overcome, and could only thank her, again and again,
and send my love to Mr. Dick.

'Never,' said my aunt, 'be mean in anything; never be false; never
be cruel.  Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be
hopeful of you.'

I promised, as well as I could, that I would not abuse her kindness
or forget her admonition.

'The pony's at the door,' said my aunt, 'and I am off! Stay here.'
With these words she embraced me hastily, and went out of the room,
shutting the door after her.  At first I was startled by so abrupt
a departure, and almost feared I had displeased her; but when I
looked into the street, and saw how dejectedly she got into the
chaise, and drove away without looking up, I understood her better
and did not do her that injustice.

By five o'clock, which was Mr. Wickfield's dinner-hour, I had
mustered up my spirits again, and was ready for my knife and fork. 
The cloth was only laid for us two; but Agnes was waiting in the
drawing-room before dinner, went down with her father, and sat
opposite to him at table.  I doubted whether he could have dined
without her.

We did not stay there, after dinner, but came upstairs into the
drawing-room again: in one snug corner of which, Agnes set glasses
for her father, and a decanter of port wine.  I thought he would
have missed its usual flavour, if it had been put there for him by
any other hands.

There he sat, taking his wine, and taking a good deal of it, for
two hours; while Agnes played on the piano, worked, and talked to
him and me.  He was, for the most part, gay and cheerful with us;
but sometimes his eyes rested on her, and he fell into a brooding
state, and was silent.  She always observed this quickly, I
thought, and always roused him with a question or caress.  Then he
came out of his meditation, and drank more wine.

Agnes made the tea, and presided over it; and the time passed away
after it, as after dinner, until she went to bed; when her father
took her in his arms and kissed her, and, she being gone, ordered
candles in his office.  Then I went to bed too.

But in the course of the evening I had rambled down to the door,
and a little way along the street, that I might have another peep
at the old houses, and the grey Cathedral; and might think of my
coming through that old city on my journey, and of my passing the
very house I lived in, without knowing it.  As I came back, I saw
Uriah Heep shutting up the office; and feeling friendly towards
everybody, went in and spoke to him, and at parting, gave him my
hand.  But oh, what a clammy hand his was! as ghostly to the touch
as to the sight!  I rubbed mine afterwards, to warm it, AND TO RUB
HIS OFF.

It was such an uncomfortable hand, that, when I went to my room, it
was still cold and wet upon my memory.  Leaning out of the window,
and seeing one of the faces on the beam-ends looking at me
sideways, I fancied it was Uriah Heep got up there somehow, and
shut him out in a hurry.

CHAPTER 16
I AM A NEW BOY IN MORE SENSES THAN ONE

Next morning, after breakfast, I entered on school life again.  I
went, accompanied by Mr. Wickfield, to the scene of my future
studies - a grave building in a courtyard, with a learned air about
it that seemed very well suited to the stray rooks and jackdaws who
came down from the Cathedral towers to walk with a clerkly bearing
on the grass-plot - and was introduced to my new master, Doctor
Strong.

Doctor Strong looked almost as rusty, to my thinking, as the tall
iron rails and gates outside the house; and almost as stiff and
heavy as the great stone urns that flanked them, and were set up,
on the top of the red-brick wall, at regular distances all round
the court, like sublimated skittles, for Time to play at.  He was
in his library (I mean Doctor Strong was), with his clothes not
particularly well brushed, and his hair not particularly well
combed; his knee-smalls unbraced; his long black gaiters
unbuttoned; and his shoes yawning like two caverns on the
hearth-rug.  Turning upon me a lustreless eye, that reminded me of
a long-forgotten blind old horse who once used to crop the grass,
and tumble over the graves, in Blunderstone churchyard, he said he
was glad to see me: and then he gave me his hand; which I didn't
know what to do with, as it did nothing for itself.

But, sitting at work, not far from Doctor Strong, was a very pretty
young lady - whom he called Annie, and who was his daughter, I
supposed - who got me out of my difficulty by kneeling down to put
Doctor Strong's shoes on, and button his gaiters, which she did
with great cheerfulness and quickness.  When she had finished, and
we were going out to the schoolroom, I was much surprised to hear
Mr. Wickfield, in bidding her good morning, address her as 'Mrs.
Strong'; and I was wondering could she be Doctor Strong's son's
wife, or could she be Mrs. Doctor Strong, when Doctor Strong
himself unconsciously enlightened me.

'By the by, Wickfield,' he said, stopping in a passage with his
hand on my shoulder; 'you have not found any suitable provision for
my wife's cousin yet?'

'No,' said Mr. Wickfield.  'No.  Not yet.'

'I could wish it done as soon as it can be done, Wickfield,' said
Doctor Strong, 'for Jack Maldon is needy, and idle; and of those
two bad things, worse things sometimes come.  What does Doctor
Watts say,' he added, looking at me, and moving his head to the
time of his quotation, '"Satan finds some mischief still, for idle
hands to do."'

'Egad, Doctor,' returned Mr. Wickfield, 'if Doctor Watts knew
mankind, he might have written, with as much truth, "Satan finds
some mischief still, for busy hands to do." The busy people achieve
their full share of mischief in the world, you may rely upon it. 
What have the people been about, who have been the busiest in
getting money, and in getting power, this century or two?  No
mischief?'

'Jack Maldon will never be very busy in getting either, I expect,'
said Doctor Strong, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

'Perhaps not,' said Mr. Wickfield; 'and you bring me back to the
question, with an apology for digressing.  No, I have not been able
to dispose of Mr. Jack Maldon yet.  I believe,' he said this with
some hesitation, 'I penetrate your motive, and it makes the thing
more difficult.'

'My motive,' returned Doctor Strong, 'is to make some suitable
provision for a cousin, and an old playfellow, of Annie's.'

'Yes, I know,' said Mr. Wickfield; 'at home or abroad.'

'Aye!' replied the Doctor, apparently wondering why he emphasized
those words so much.  'At home or abroad.'

'Your own expression, you know,' said Mr. Wickfield.  'Or abroad.'

'Surely,' the Doctor answered.  'Surely.  One or other.'

'One or other?  Have you no choice?' asked Mr. Wickfield.

'No,' returned the Doctor.

'No?' with astonishment.

'Not the least.'

'No motive,' said Mr. Wickfield, 'for meaning abroad, and not at
home?'

'No,' returned the Doctor.

'I am bound to believe you, and of course I do believe you,' said
Mr. Wickfield.  'It might have simplified my office very much, if
I had known it before.  But I confess I entertained another
impression.'

Doctor Strong regarded him with a puzzled and doubting look, which
almost immediately subsided into a smile that gave me great
encouragement; for it was full of amiability and sweetness, and
there was a simplicity in it, and indeed in his whole manner, when
the studious, pondering frost upon it was got through, very
attractive and hopeful to a young scholar like me.  Repeating 'no',
and 'not the least', and other short assurances to the same
purport, Doctor Strong jogged on before us, at a queer, uneven
pace; and we followed: Mr. Wickfield, looking grave, I observed,
and shaking his head to himself, without knowing that I saw him.

The schoolroom was a pretty large hall, on the quietest side of the
house, confronted by the stately stare of some half-dozen of the
great urns, and commanding a peep of an old secluded garden
belonging to the Doctor, where the peaches were ripening on the
sunny south wall.  There were two great aloes, in tubs, on the turf
outside the windows; the broad hard leaves of which plant (looking
as if they were made of painted tin) have ever since, by
association, been symbolical to me of silence and retirement. 
About five-and-twenty boys were studiously engaged at their books
when we went in, but they rose to give the Doctor good morning, and
remained standing when they saw Mr. Wickfield and me.

'A new boy, young gentlemen,' said the Doctor; 'Trotwood
Copperfield.'

One Adams, who was the head-boy, then stepped out of his place and
welcomed me.  He looked like a young clergyman, in his white
cravat, but he was very affable and good-humoured; and he showed me
my place, and presented me to the masters, in a gentlemanly way
that would have put me at my ease, if anything could.

It seemed to me so long, however, since I had been among such boys,
or among any companions of my own age, except Mick Walker and Mealy
Potatoes, that I felt as strange as ever I have done in my life. 
I was so conscious of having passed through scenes of which they
could have no knowledge, and of having acquired experiences foreign
to my age, appearance, and condition as one of them, that I half
believed it was an imposture to come there as an ordinary little
schoolboy.  I had become, in the Murdstone and Grinby time, however
short or long it may have been, so unused to the sports and games
of boys, that I knew I was awkward and inexperienced in the
commonest things belonging to them.  Whatever I had learnt, had so
slipped away from me in the sordid cares of my life from day to
night, that now, when I was examined about what I knew, I knew
nothing, and was put into the lowest form of the school.  But,
troubled as I was, by my want of boyish skill, and of book-learning
too, I was made infinitely more uncomfortable by the consideration,
that, in what I did know, I was much farther removed from my
companions than in what I did not.  My mind ran upon what they
would think, if they knew of my familiar acquaintance with the
King's Bench Prison?  Was there anything about me which would
reveal my proceedings in connexion with the Micawber family - all
those pawnings, and sellings, and suppers - in spite of myself? 
Suppose some of the boys had seen me coming through Canterbury,
wayworn and ragged, and should find me out?  What would they say,
who made so light of money, if they could know how I had scraped my
halfpence together, for the purchase of my daily saveloy and beer,
or my slices of pudding?  How would it affect them, who were so
innocent of London life, and London streets, to discover how
knowing I was (and was ashamed to be) in some of the meanest phases
of both?  All this ran in my head so much, on that first day at
Doctor Strong's, that I felt distrustful of my slightest look and
gesture; shrunk within myself whensoever I was approached by one of
my new schoolfellows; and hurried off the minute school was over,
afraid of committing myself in my response to any friendly notice
or advance.

But there was such an influence in Mr. Wickfield's old house, that
when I knocked at it, with my new school-books under my arm, I
began to feel my uneasiness softening away.  As I went up to my
airy old room, the grave shadow of the staircase seemed to fall
upon my doubts and fears, and to make the past more indistinct.  I
sat there, sturdily conning my books, until dinner-time (we were
out of school for good at three); and went down, hopeful of
becoming a passable sort of boy yet.

Agnes was in the drawing-room, waiting for her father, who was
detained by someone in his office.  She met me with her pleasant
smile, and asked me how I liked the school.  I told her I should
like it very much, I hoped; but I was a little strange to it at
first.

'You have never been to school,' I said, 'have you?'
'Oh yes!  Every day.'

'Ah, but you mean here, at your own home?'

'Papa couldn't spare me to go anywhere else,' she answered, smiling
and shaking her head.  'His housekeeper must be in his house, you
know.'

'He is very fond of you, I am sure,' I said.

She nodded 'Yes,' and went to the door to listen for his coming up,
that she might meet him on the stairs.  But, as he was not there,
she came back again.

'Mama has been dead ever since I was born,' she said, in her quiet
way.  'I only know her picture, downstairs.  I saw you looking at
it yesterday.  Did you think whose it was?'

I told her yes, because it was so like herself.

'Papa says so, too,' said Agnes, pleased.  'Hark!  That's papa
now!'

Her bright calm face lighted up with pleasure as she went to meet
him, and as they came in, hand in hand.  He greeted me cordially;
and told me I should certainly be happy under Doctor Strong, who
was one of the gentlest of men.

'There may be some, perhaps - I don't know that there are - who
abuse his kindness,' said Mr. Wickfield.  'Never be one of those,
Trotwood, in anything.  He is the least suspicious of mankind; and
whether that's a merit, or whether it's a blemish, it deserves
consideration in all dealings with the Doctor, great or small.'

He spoke, I thought, as if he were weary, or dissatisfied with
something; but I did not pursue the question in my mind, for dinner
was just then announced, and we went down and took the same seats
as before.

We had scarcely done so, when Uriah Heep put in his red head and
his lank hand at the door, and said:

'Here's Mr. Maldon begs the favour of a word, sir.'

'I am but this moment quit of Mr. Maldon,' said his master.

'Yes, sir,' returned Uriah; 'but Mr. Maldon has come back, and he
begs the favour of a word.'

As he held the door open with his hand, Uriah looked at me, and
looked at Agnes, and looked at the dishes, and looked at the
plates, and looked at every object in the room, I thought, - yet
seemed to look at nothing; he made such an appearance all the while
of keeping his red eyes dutifully on his master.
'I beg your pardon.  It's only to say, on reflection,' observed a
voice behind Uriah, as Uriah's head was pushed away, and the
speaker's substituted - 'pray excuse me for this intrusion - that
as it seems I have no choice in the matter, the sooner I go abroad
the better.  My cousin Annie did say, when we talked of it, that
she liked to have her friends within reach rather than to have them
banished, and the old Doctor -'

'Doctor Strong, was that?' Mr. Wickfield interposed, gravely.

'Doctor Strong, of course,' returned the other; 'I call him the old
Doctor; it's all the same, you know.'

'I don't know,' returned Mr. Wickfield.

'Well, Doctor Strong,' said the other - 'Doctor Strong was of the
same mind, I believed.  But as it appears from the course you take
with me he has changed his mind, why there's no more to be said,
except that the sooner I am off, the better.  Therefore, I thought
I'd come back and say, that the sooner I am off the better.  When
a plunge is to be made into the water, it's of no use lingering on
the bank.'

'There shall be as little lingering as possible, in your case, Mr.
Maldon, you may depend upon it,' said Mr. Wickfield.

'Thank'ee,' said the other.  'Much obliged.  I don't want to look
a gift-horse in the mouth, which is not a gracious thing to do;
otherwise, I dare say, my cousin Annie could easily arrange it in
her own way.  I suppose Annie would only have to say to the old
Doctor -'

'Meaning that Mrs. Strong would only have to say to her husband -
do I follow you?' said Mr. Wickfield.

'Quite so,' returned the other, '- would only have to say, that she
wanted such and such a thing to be so and so; and it would be so
and so, as a matter of course.'

'And why as a matter of course, Mr. Maldon?' asked Mr. Wickfield,
sedately eating his dinner.

'Why, because Annie's a charming young girl, and the old Doctor -
Doctor Strong, I mean - is not quite a charming young boy,' said
Mr. Jack Maldon, laughing.  'No offence to anybody, Mr. Wickfield. 
I only mean that I suppose some compensation is fair and reasonable
in that sort of marriage.'

'Compensation to the lady, sir?' asked Mr. Wickfield gravely.

'To the lady, sir,' Mr. Jack Maldon answered, laughing.  But
appearing to remark that Mr. Wickfield went on with his dinner in
the same sedate, immovable manner, and that there was no hope of
making him relax a muscle of his face, he added:
'However, I have said what I came to say, and, with another apology
for this intrusion, I may take myself off.  Of course I shall
observe your directions, in considering the matter as one to be
arranged between you and me solely, and not to be referred to, up
at the Doctor's.'

'Have you dined?' asked Mr. Wickfield, with a motion of his hand
towards the table.

'Thank'ee.  I am going to dine,' said Mr. Maldon, 'with my cousin
Annie.  Good-bye!'

Mr. Wickfield, without rising, looked after him thoughtfully as he
went out.  He was rather a shallow sort of young gentleman, I
thought, with a handsome face, a rapid utterance, and a confident,
bold air.  And this was the first I ever saw of Mr. Jack Maldon;
whom I had not expected to see so soon, when I heard the Doctor
speak of him that morning.

When we had dined, we went upstairs again, where everything went on
exactly as on the previous day.  Agnes set the glasses and
decanters in the same corner, and Mr. Wickfield sat down to drink,
and drank a good deal.  Agnes played the piano to him, sat by him,
and worked and talked, and played some games at dominoes with me. 
In good time she made tea; and afterwards, when I brought down my
books, looked into them, and showed me what she knew of them (which
was no slight matter, though she said it was), and what was the
best way to learn and understand them.  I see her, with her modest,
orderly, placid manner, and I hear her beautiful calm voice, as I
write these words.  The influence for all good, which she came to
exercise over me at a later time, begins already to descend upon my
breast.  I love little Em'ly, and I don't love Agnes - no, not at
all in that way - but I feel that there are goodness, peace, and
truth, wherever Agnes is; and that the soft light of the coloured
window in the church, seen long ago, falls on her always, and on me
when I am near her, and on everything around.

The time having come for her withdrawal for the night, and she
having left us, I gave Mr. Wickfield my hand, preparatory to going
away myself.  But he checked me and said: 'Should you like to stay
with us, Trotwood, or to go elsewhere?'

'To stay,' I answered, quickly.

'You are sure?'

'If you please.  If I may!'

'Why, it's but a dull life that we lead here, boy, I am afraid,' he
said.

'Not more dull for me than Agnes, sir.  Not dull at all!'

'Than Agnes,' he repeated, walking slowly to the great
chimney-piece, and leaning against it.  'Than Agnes!'

He had drank wine that evening (or I fancied it), until his eyes
were bloodshot.  Not that I could see them now, for they were cast
down, and shaded by his hand; but I had noticed them a little while
before.

'Now I wonder,' he muttered, 'whether my Agnes tires of me.  When
should I ever tire of her!  But that's different, that's quite
different.'

He was musing, not speaking to me; so I remained quiet.

'A dull old house,' he said, 'and a monotonous life; but I must
have her near me.  I must keep her near me.  If the thought that I
may die and leave my darling, or that my darling may die and leave
me, comes like a spectre, to distress my happiest hours, and is
only to be drowned in -'

He did not supply the word; but pacing slowly to the place where he
had sat, and mechanically going through the action of pouring wine
from the empty decanter, set it down and paced back again.

'If it is miserable to bear, when she is here,' he said, 'what
would it be, and she away?  No, no, no.  I cannot try that.'

He leaned against the chimney-piece, brooding so long that I could
not decide whether to run the risk of disturbing him by going, or
to remain quietly where I was, until he should come out of his
reverie.  At length he aroused himself, and looked about the room
until his eyes encountered mine.

'Stay with us, Trotwood, eh?' he said in his usual manner, and as
if he were answering something I had just said.  'I am glad of it. 
You are company to us both.  It is wholesome to have you here. 
Wholesome for me, wholesome for Agnes, wholesome perhaps for all of
us.'

'I am sure it is for me, sir,' I said.  'I am so glad to be here.'

'That's a fine fellow!' said Mr. Wickfield.  'As long as you are
glad to be here, you shall stay here.'  He shook hands with me upon
it, and clapped me on the back; and told me that when I had
anything to do at night after Agnes had left us, or when I wished
to read for my own pleasure, I was free to come down to his room,
if he were there and if I desired it for company's sake, and to sit
with him.  I thanked him for his consideration; and, as he went
down soon afterwards, and I was not tired, went down too, with a
book in my hand, to avail myself, for half-an-hour, of his
permission.

But, seeing a light in the little round office, and immediately
feeling myself attracted towards Uriah Heep, who had a sort of
fascination for me, I went in there instead.  I found Uriah reading
a great fat book, with such demonstrative attention, that his lank
forefinger followed up every line as he read, and made clammy
tracks along the page (or so I fully believed) like a snail.

'You are working late tonight, Uriah,' says I.

'Yes, Master Copperfield,' says Uriah.

As I was getting on the stool opposite, to talk to him more
conveniently, I observed that he had not such a thing as a smile
about him, and that he could only widen his mouth and make two hard
creases down his cheeks, one on each side, to stand for one.

'I am not doing office-work, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah.

'What work, then?' I asked.

'I am improving my legal knowledge, Master Copperfield,' said
Uriah.  'I am going through Tidd's Practice.  Oh, what a writer Mr.
Tidd is, Master Copperfield!'

My stool was such a tower of observation, that as I watched him
reading on again, after this rapturous exclamation, and following
up the lines with his forefinger, I observed that his nostrils,
which were thin and pointed, with sharp dints in them, had a
singular and most uncomfortable way of expanding and contracting
themselves - that they seemed to twinkle instead of his eyes, which
hardly ever twinkled at all.

'I suppose you are quite a great lawyer?' I said, after looking at
him for some time.

'Me, Master Copperfield?' said Uriah.  'Oh, no!  I'm a very umble
person.'

It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I observed; for he
frequently ground the palms against each other as if to squeeze
them dry and warm, besides often wiping them, in a stealthy way, on
his pocket-handkerchief.

'I am well aware that I am the umblest person going,' said Uriah
Heep, modestly; 'let the other be where he may.  My mother is
likewise a very umble person.  We live in a numble abode, Master
Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for.  My father's former
calling was umble.  He was a sexton.'

'What is he now?' I asked.

'He is a partaker of glory at present, Master Copperfield,' said
Uriah Heep.  'But we have much to be thankful for.  How much have
I to be thankful for in living with Mr. Wickfield!'

I asked Uriah if he had been with Mr. Wickfield long?

'I have been with him, going on four year, Master Copperfield,'
said Uriah; shutting up his book, after carefully marking the place
where he had left off.  'Since a year after my father's death.  How
much have I to be thankful for, in that!  How much have I to be
thankful for, in Mr. Wickfield's kind intention to give me my
articles, which would otherwise not lay within the umble means of
mother and self!'

'Then, when your articled time is over, you'll be a regular lawyer,
I suppose?' said I.

'With the blessing of Providence, Master Copperfield,' returned
Uriah.

'Perhaps you'll be a partner in Mr. Wickfield's business, one of
these days,' I said, to make myself agreeable; 'and it will be
Wickfield and Heep, or Heep late Wickfield.'

'Oh no, Master Copperfield,' returned Uriah, shaking his head, 'I
am much too umble for that!'

He certainly did look uncommonly like the carved face on the beam
outside my window, as he sat, in his humility, eyeing me sideways,
with his mouth widened, and the creases in his cheeks.

'Mr.  Wickfield is a most excellent man, Master Copperfield,' said
Uriah.  'If you have known him long, you know it, I am sure, much
better than I can inform you.'

I replied that I was certain he was; but that I had not known him
long myself, though he was a friend of my aunt's.

'Oh, indeed, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah.  'Your aunt is a
sweet lady, Master Copperfield!'

He had a way of writhing when he wanted to express enthusiasm,
which was very ugly; and which diverted my attention from the
compliment he had paid my relation, to the snaky twistings of his
throat and body.

'A sweet lady, Master Copperfield!' said Uriah Heep.  'She has a
great admiration for Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield, I believe?'

I said, 'Yes,' boldly; not that I knew anything about it, Heaven
forgive me!

'I hope you have, too, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah.  'But I am
sure you must have.'

'Everybody must have,' I returned.

'Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah Heep, 'for that
remark!  It is so true!  Umble as I am, I know it is so true!  Oh,
thank you, Master Copperfield!'
He writhed himself quite off his stool in the excitement of his
feelings, and, being off, began to make arrangements for going
home.

'Mother will be expecting me,' he said, referring to a pale,
inexpressive-faced watch in his pocket, 'and getting uneasy; for
though we are very umble, Master Copperfield, we are much attached
to one another.  If you would come and see us, any afternoon, and
take a cup of tea at our lowly dwelling, mother would be as proud
of your company as I should be.'

I said I should be glad to come.

'Thank you, Master Copperfield,' returned Uriah, putting his book
away upon the shelf - 'I suppose you stop here, some time, Master
Copperfield?'

I said I was going to be brought up there, I believed, as long as
I remained at school.

'Oh, indeed!' exclaimed Uriah.  'I should think YOU would come into
the business at last, Master Copperfield!'

I protested that I had no views of that sort, and that no such
scheme was entertained in my behalf by anybody; but Uriah insisted
on blandly replying to all my assurances, 'Oh, yes, Master
Copperfield, I should think you would, indeed!' and, 'Oh, indeed,
Master Copperfield, I should think you would, certainly!' over and
over again.  Being, at last, ready to leave the office for the
night, he asked me if it would suit my convenience to have the
light put out; and on my answering 'Yes,' instantly extinguished
it.  After shaking hands with me - his hand felt like a fish, in
the dark - he opened the door into the street a very little, and
crept out, and shut it, leaving me to grope my way back into the
house: which cost me some trouble and a fall over his stool.  This
was the proximate cause, I suppose, of my dreaming about him, for
what appeared to me to be half the night; and dreaming, among other
things, that he had launched Mr. Peggotty's house on a piratical
expedition, with a black flag at the masthead, bearing the
inscription 'Tidd's Practice', under which diabolical ensign he was
carrying me and little Em'ly to the Spanish Main, to be drowned.

I got a little the better of my uneasiness when I went to school
next day, and a good deal the better next day, and so shook it off
by degrees, that in less than a fortnight I was quite at home, and
happy, among my new companions.  I was awkward enough in their
games, and backward enough in their studies; but custom would
improve me in the first respect, I hoped, and hard work in the
second.  Accordingly, I went to work very hard, both in play and in
earnest, and gained great commendation.  And, in a very little
while, the Murdstone and Grinby life became so strange to me that
I hardly believed in it, while my present life grew so familiar,
that I seemed to have been leading it a long time.

Doctor Strong's was an excellent school; as different from Mr.
Creakle's as good is from evil.  It was very gravely and decorously
ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to
the honour and good faith of the boys, and an avowed intention to
rely on their possession of those qualities unless they proved
themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders.  We all felt that
we had a part in the management of the place, and in sustaining its
character and dignity.  Hence, we soon became warmly attached to it
- I am sure I did for one, and I never knew, in all my time, of any
other boy being otherwise - and learnt with a good will, desiring
to do it credit.  We had noble games out of hours, and plenty of
liberty; but even then, as I remember, we were well spoken of in
the town, and rarely did any disgrace, by our appearance or manner,
to the reputation of Doctor Strong and Doctor Strong's boys.

Some of the higher scholars boarded in the Doctor's house, and
through them I learned, at second hand, some particulars of the
Doctor's history - as, how he had not yet been married twelve
months to the beautiful young lady I had seen in the study, whom he
had married for love; for she had not a sixpence, and had a world
of poor relations (so our fellows said) ready to swarm the Doctor
out of house and home.  Also, how the Doctor's cogitating manner
was attributable to his being always engaged in looking out for
Greek roots; which, in my innocence and ignorance, I supposed to be
a botanical furor on the Doctor's part, especially as he always
looked at the ground when he walked about, until I understood that
they were roots of words, with a view to a new Dictionary which he
had in contemplation.  Adams, our head-boy, who had a turn for
mathematics, had made a calculation, I was informed, of the time
this Dictionary would take in completing, on the Doctor's plan, and
at the Doctor's rate of going.  He considered that it might be done
in one thousand six hundred and forty-nine years, counting from the
Doctor's last, or sixty-second, birthday.

But the Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school: and it
must have been a badly composed school if he had been anything
else, for he was the kindest of men; with a simple faith in him
that might have touched the stone hearts of the very urns upon the
wall.  As he walked up and down that part of the courtyard which
was at the side of the house, with the stray rooks and jackdaws
looking after him with their heads cocked slyly, as if they knew
how much more knowing they were in worldly affairs than he, if any
sort of vagabond could only get near enough to his creaking shoes
to attract his attention to one sentence of a tale of distress,
that vagabond was made for the next two days.  It was so notorious
in the house, that the masters and head-boys took pains to cut
these marauders off at angles, and to get out of windows, and turn
them out of the courtyard, before they could make the Doctor aware
of their presence; which was sometimes happily effected within a
few yards of him, without his knowing anything of the matter, as he
jogged to and fro.  Outside his own domain, and unprotected, he was
a very sheep for the shearers.  He would have taken his gaiters off
his legs, to give away.  In fact, there was a story current among
us (I have no idea, and never had, on what authority, but I have
believed it for so many years that I feel quite certain it is
true), that on a frosty day, one winter-time, he actually did
bestow his gaiters on a beggar-woman, who occasioned some scandal
in the neighbourhood by exhibiting a fine infant from door to door,
wrapped in those garments, which were universally recognized, being
as well known in the vicinity as the Cathedral.  The legend added
that the only person who did not identify them was the Doctor
himself, who, when they were shortly afterwards displayed at the
door of a little second-hand shop of no very good repute, where
such things were taken in exchange for gin, was more than once
observed to handle them approvingly, as if admiring some curious
novelty in the pattern, and considering them an improvement on his
own.

It was very pleasant to see the Doctor with his pretty young wife. 
He had a fatherly, benignant way of showing his fondness for her,
which seemed in itself to express a good man.  I often saw them
walking in the garden where the peaches were, and I sometimes had
a nearer observation of them in the study or the parlour.  She
appeared to me to take great care of the Doctor, and to like him
very much, though I never thought her vitally interested in the
Dictionary: some cumbrous fragments of which work the Doctor always
carried in his pockets, and in the lining of his hat, and generally
seemed to be expounding to her as they walked about.

I saw a good deal of Mrs. Strong, both because she had taken a
liking for me on the morning of my introduction to the Doctor, and
was always afterwards kind to me, and interested in me; and because
she was very fond of Agnes, and was often backwards and forwards at
our house.  There was a curious constraint between her and Mr.
Wickfield, I thought (of whom she seemed to be afraid), that never
wore off.  When she came there of an evening, she always shrunk
from accepting his escort home, and ran away with me instead.  And
sometimes, as we were running gaily across the Cathedral yard
together, expecting to meet nobody, we would meet Mr. Jack Maldon,
who was always surprised to see us.

Mrs. Strong's mama was a lady I took great delight in.  Her name
was Mrs. Markleham; but our boys used to call her the Old Soldier,
on account of her generalship, and the skill with which she
marshalled great forces of relations against the Doctor.  She was
a little, sharp-eyed woman, who used to wear, when she was dressed,
one unchangeable cap, ornamented with some artificial flowers, and
two artificial butterflies supposed to be hovering above the
flowers.  There was a superstition among us that this cap had come
from France, and could only originate in the workmanship of that
ingenious nation: but all I certainly know about it, is, that it
always made its appearance of an evening, wheresoever Mrs.
Markleham made HER appearance; that it was carried about to
friendly meetings in a Hindoo basket; that the butterflies had the
gift of trembling constantly; and that they improved the shining
hours at Doctor Strong's expense, like busy bees.

I observed the Old Soldier - not to adopt the name disrespectfully
- to pretty good advantage, on a night which is made memorable to
me by something else I shall relate.  It was the night of a little
party at the Doctor's, which was given on the occasion of Mr. Jack
Maldon's departure for India, whither he was going as a cadet, or
something of that kind: Mr. Wickfield having at length arranged the
business.  It happened to be the Doctor's birthday, too.  We had
had a holiday, had made presents to him in the morning, had made a
speech to him through the head-boy, and had cheered him until we
were hoarse, and until he had shed tears.  And now, in the evening,
Mr. Wickfield, Agnes, and I, went to have tea with him in his
private capacity.

Mr. Jack Maldon was there, before us.  Mrs. Strong, dressed in
white, with cherry-coloured ribbons, was playing the piano, when we
went in; and he was leaning over her to turn the leaves.  The clear
red and white of her complexion was not so blooming and flower-like
as usual, I thought, when she turned round; but she looked very
pretty, Wonderfully pretty.

'I have forgotten, Doctor,' said Mrs. Strong's mama, when we were
seated, 'to pay you the compliments of the day - though they are,
as you may suppose, very far from being mere compliments in my
case.  Allow me to wish you many happy returns.'

'I thank you, ma'am,' replied the Doctor.

'Many, many, many, happy returns,' said the Old Soldier.  'Not only
for your own sake, but for Annie's, and John Maldon's, and many
other people's.  It seems but yesterday to me, John, when you were
a little creature, a head shorter than Master Copperfield, making
baby love to Annie behind the gooseberry bushes in the
back-garden.'

'My dear mama,' said Mrs. Strong, 'never mind that now.'

'Annie, don't be absurd,' returned her mother.  'If you are to
blush to hear of such things now you are an old married woman, when
are you not to blush to hear of them?'

'Old?' exclaimed Mr. Jack Maldon.  'Annie?  Come!'

'Yes, John,' returned the Soldier.  'Virtually, an old married
woman.  Although not old by years - for when did you ever hear me
say, or who has ever heard me say, that a girl of twenty was old by
years! - your cousin is the wife of the Doctor, and, as such, what
I have described her.  It is well for you, John, that your cousin
is the wife of the Doctor.  You have found in him an influential
and kind friend, who will be kinder yet, I venture to predict, if
you deserve it.  I have no false pride.  I never hesitate to admit,
frankly, that there are some members of our family who want a
friend.  You were one yourself, before your cousin's influence
raised up one for you.'

The Doctor, in the goodness of his heart, waved his hand as if to
make light of it, and save Mr. Jack Maldon from any further
reminder.  But Mrs. Markleham changed her chair for one next the
Doctor's, and putting her fan on his coat-sleeve, said:

'No, really, my dear Doctor, you must excuse me if I appear to
dwell on this rather, because I feel so very strongly.  I call it
quite my monomania, it is such a subject of mine.  You are a
blessing to us.  You really are a Boon, you know.'

'Nonsense, nonsense,' said the Doctor.

'No, no, I beg your pardon,' retorted the Old Soldier.  'With
nobody present, but our dear and confidential friend Mr. Wickfield,
I cannot consent to be put down.  I shall begin to assert the
privileges of a mother-in-law, if you go on like that, and scold
you.  I am perfectly honest and outspoken.  What I am saying, is
what I said when you first overpowered me with surprise - you
remember how surprised I was? - by proposing for Annie.  Not that
there was anything so very much out of the way, in the mere fact of
the proposal - it would be ridiculous to say that! - but because,
you having known her poor father, and having known her from a baby
six months old, I hadn't thought of you in such a light at all, or
indeed as a marrying man in any way, - simply that, you know.'

'Aye, aye,' returned the Doctor, good-humouredly.  'Never mind.'

'But I DO mind,' said the Old Soldier, laying her fan upon his
lips.  'I mind very much.  I recall these things that I may be
contradicted if I am wrong.  Well!  Then I spoke to Annie, and I
told her what had happened.  I said, "My dear, here's Doctor Strong
has positively been and made you the subject of a handsome
declaration and an offer." Did I press it in the least?  No.  I
said, "Now, Annie, tell me the truth this moment; is your heart
free?"  "Mama," she said crying, "I am extremely young" - which was
perfectly true - "and I hardly know if I have a heart at all." 
"Then, my dear," I said, "you may rely upon it, it's free.  At all
events, my love," said I, "Doctor Strong is in an agitated state of
mind, and must be answered.  He cannot be kept in his present state
of suspense."  "Mama," said Annie, still crying, "would he be
unhappy without me?  If he would, I honour and respect him so much,
that I think I will have him." So it was settled.  And then, and
not till then, I said to Annie, "Annie, Doctor Strong will not only
be your husband, but he will represent your late father: he will
represent the head of our family, he will represent the wisdom and
station, and I may say the means, of our family; and will be, in
short, a Boon to it." I used the word at the time, and I have used
it again, today.  If I have any merit it is consistency.'

The daughter had sat quite silent and still during this speech,
with her eyes fixed on the ground; her cousin standing near her,
and looking on the ground too.  She now said very softly, in a
trembling voice:

'Mama, I hope you have finished?'
'No, my dear Annie,' returned the Old Soldier, 'I have not quite
finished.  Since you ask me, my love, I reply that I have not.  I
complain that you really are a little unnatural towards your own
family; and, as it is of no use complaining to you.  I mean to
complain to your husband.  Now, my dear Doctor, do look at that
silly wife of yours.'

As the Doctor turned his kind face, with its smile of simplicity
and gentleness, towards her, she drooped her head more.  I noticed
that Mr. Wickfield looked at her steadily.

'When I happened to say to that naughty thing, the other day,'
pursued her mother, shaking her head and her fan at her, playfully,
'that there was a family circumstance she might mention to you -
indeed, I think, was bound to mention - she said, that to mention
it was to ask a favour; and that, as you were too generous, and as
for her to ask was always to have, she wouldn't.'

'Annie, my dear,' said the Doctor.  'That was wrong.  It robbed me
of a pleasure.'

'Almost the very words I said to her!' exclaimed her mother.  'Now
really, another time, when I know what she would tell you but for
this reason, and won't, I have a great mind, my dear Doctor, to
tell you myself.'

'I shall be glad if you will,' returned the Doctor.

'Shall I?'

'Certainly.'

'Well, then, I will!' said the Old Soldier.  'That's a bargain.'
And having, I suppose, carried her point, she tapped the Doctor's
hand several times with her fan (which she kissed first), and
returned triumphantly to her former station.

Some more company coming in, among whom were the two masters and
Adams, the talk became general; and it naturally turned on Mr. Jack
Maldon, and his voyage, and the country he was going to, and his
various plans and prospects.  He was to leave that night, after
supper, in a post-chaise, for Gravesend; where the ship, in which
he was to make the voyage, lay; and was to be gone - unless he came
home on leave, or for his health - I don't know how many years.  I
recollect it was settled by general consent that India was quite a
misrepresented country, and had nothing objectionable in it, but a
tiger or two, and a little heat in the warm part of the day.  For
my own part, I looked on Mr. Jack Maldon as a modern Sindbad, and
pictured him the bosom friend of all the Rajahs in the East,
sitting under canopies, smoking curly golden pipes - a mile long,
if they could be straightened out.

Mrs. Strong was a very pretty singer: as I knew, who often heard
her singing by herself.  But, whether she was afraid of singing
before people, or was out of voice that evening, it was certain
that she couldn't sing at all.  She tried a duet, once, with her
cousin Maldon, but could not so much as begin; and afterwards, when
she tried to sing by herself, although she began sweetly, her voice
died away on a sudden, and left her quite distressed, with her head
hanging down over the keys.  The good Doctor said she was nervous,
and, to relieve her, proposed a round game at cards; of which he
knew as much as of the art of playing the trombone.  But I remarked
that the Old Soldier took him into custody directly, for her
partner; and instructed him, as the first preliminary of
initiation, to give her all the silver he had in his pocket.

We had a merry game, not made the less merry by the Doctor's
mistakes, of which he committed an innumerable quantity, in spite
of the watchfulness of the butterflies, and to their great
aggravation.  Mrs. Strong had declined to play, on the ground of
not feeling very well; and her cousin Maldon had excused himself
because he had some packing to do.  When he had done it, however,
he returned, and they sat together, talking, on the sofa.  From
time to time she came and looked over the Doctor's hand, and told
him what to play.  She was very pale, as she bent over him, and I
thought her finger trembled as she pointed out the cards; but the
Doctor was quite happy in her attention, and took no notice of
this, if it were so.

At supper, we were hardly so gay.  Everyone appeared to feel that
a parting of that sort was an awkward thing, and that the nearer it
approached, the more awkward it was.  Mr. Jack Maldon tried to be
very talkative, but was not at his ease, and made matters worse. 
And they were not improved, as it appeared to me, by the Old
Soldier: who continually recalled passages of Mr. Jack Maldon's
youth.

The Doctor, however, who felt, I am sure, that he was making
everybody happy, was well pleased, and had no suspicion but that we
were all at the utmost height of enjoyment.

'Annie, my dear,' said he, looking at his watch, and filling his
glass, 'it is past your cousin jack's time, and we must not detain
him, since time and tide - both concerned in this case - wait for
no man.  Mr. Jack Maldon, you have a long voyage, and a strange
country, before you; but many men have had both, and many men will
have both, to the end of time.  The winds you are going to tempt,
have wafted thousands upon thousands to fortune, and brought
thousands upon thousands happily back.'

'It's an affecting thing,' said Mrs. Markleham - 'however it's
viewed, it's affecting, to see a fine young man one has known from
an infant, going away to the other end of the world, leaving all he
knows behind, and not knowing what's before him.  A young man
really well deserves constant support and patronage,' looking at
the Doctor, 'who makes such sacrifices.'

'Time will go fast with you, Mr. Jack Maldon,' pursued the Doctor,
'and fast with all of us.  Some of us can hardly expect, perhaps,
in the natural course of things, to greet you on your return.  The
next best thing is to hope to do it, and that's my case.  I shall
not weary you with good advice.  You have long had a good model
before you, in your cousin Annie.  Imitate her virtues as nearly as
you can.'

Mrs. Markleham fanned herself, and shook her head.

'Farewell, Mr. Jack,' said the Doctor, standing up; on which we all
stood up.  'A prosperous voyage out, a thriving career abroad, and
a happy return home!'

We all drank the toast, and all shook hands with Mr. Jack Maldon;
after which he hastily took leave of the ladies who were there, and
hurried to the door, where he was received, as he got into the
chaise, with a tremendous broadside of cheers discharged by our
boys, who had assembled on the lawn for the purpose.  Running in
among them to swell the ranks, I was very near the chaise when it
rolled away; and I had a lively impression made upon me, in the
midst of the noise and dust, of having seen Mr. Jack Maldon rattle
past with an agitated face, and something cherry-coloured in his
hand.

After another broadside for the Doctor, and another for the
Doctor's wife, the boys dispersed, and I went back into the house,
where I found the guests all standing in a group about the Doctor,
discussing how Mr. Jack Maldon had gone away, and how he had borne
it, and how he had felt it, and all the rest of it.  In the midst
of these remarks, Mrs. Markleham cried: 'Where's Annie?'

No Annie was there; and when they called to her, no Annie replied. 
But all pressing out of the room, in a crowd, to see what was the
matter, we found her lying on the hall floor.  There was great
alarm at first, until it was found that she was in a swoon, and
that the swoon was yielding to the usual means of recovery; when
the Doctor, who had lifted her head upon his knee, put her curls
aside with his hand, and said, looking around:

'Poor Annie!  She's so faithful and tender-hearted!  It's the
parting from her old playfellow and friend - her favourite cousin
- that has done this.  Ah!  It's a pity!  I am very sorry!'

When she opened her eyes, and saw where she was, and that we were
all standing about her, she arose with assistance: turning her
head, as she did so, to lay it on the Doctor's shoulder - or to
hide it, I don't know which.  We went into the drawing-room, to
leave her with the Doctor and her mother; but she said, it seemed,
that she was better than she had been since morning, and that she
would rather be brought among us; so they brought her in, looking
very white and weak, I thought, and sat her on a sofa.

'Annie, my dear,' said her mother, doing something to her dress. 
'See here!  You have lost a bow.  Will anybody be so good as find
a ribbon; a cherry-coloured ribbon?'

It was the one she had worn at her bosom.  We all looked for it; I
myself looked everywhere, I am certain - but nobody could find it.

'Do you recollect where you had it last, Annie?' said her mother.

I wondered how I could have thought she looked white, or anything
but burning red, when she answered that she had had it safe, a
little while ago, she thought, but it was not worth looking for.

Nevertheless, it was looked for again, and still not found.  She
entreated that there might be no more searching; but it was still
sought for, in a desultory way, until she was quite well, and the
company took their departure.

We walked very slowly home, Mr. Wickfield, Agnes, and I - Agnes and
I admiring the moonlight, and Mr. Wickfield scarcely raising his
eyes from the ground.  When we, at last, reached our own door,
Agnes discovered that she had left her little reticule behind. 
Delighted to be of any service to her, I ran back to fetch it.

I went into the supper-room where it had been left, which was
deserted and dark.  But a door of communication between that and
the Doctor's study, where there was a light, being open, I passed
on there, to say what I wanted, and to get a candle.

The Doctor was sitting in his easy-chair by the fireside, and his
young wife was on a stool at his feet.  The Doctor, with a
complacent smile, was reading aloud some manuscript explanation or
statement of a theory out of that interminable Dictionary, and she
was looking up at him.  But with such a face as I never saw.  It
was so beautiful in its form, it was so ashy pale, it was so fixed
in its abstraction, it was so full of a wild, sleep-walking, dreamy
horror of I don't know what.  The eyes were wide open, and her
brown hair fell in two rich clusters on her shoulders, and on her
white dress, disordered by the want of the lost ribbon.  Distinctly
as I recollect her look, I cannot say of what it was expressive, I
cannot even say of what it is expressive to me now, rising again
before my older judgement.  Penitence, humiliation, shame, pride,
love, and trustfulness - I see them all; and in them all, I see
that horror of I don't know what.

My entrance, and my saying what I wanted, roused her.  It disturbed
the Doctor too, for when I went back to replace the candle I had
taken from the table, he was patting her head, in his fatherly way,
and saying he was a merciless drone to let her tempt him into
reading on; and he would have her go to bed.

But she asked him, in a rapid, urgent manner, to let her stay - to
let her feel assured (I heard her murmur some broken words to this
effect) that she was in his confidence that night.  And, as she
turned again towards him, after glancing at me as I left the room
and went out at the door, I saw her cross her hands upon his knee,
and look up at him with the same face, something quieted, as he
resumed his reading.

It made a great impression on me, and I remembered it a long time
afterwards; as I shall have occasion to narrate when the time
comes.

CHAPTER 17
SOMEBODY TURNS UP

It has not occurred to me to mention Peggotty since I ran away;
but, of course, I wrote her a letter almost as soon as I was housed
at Dover, and another, and a longer letter, containing all
particulars fully related, when my aunt took me formally under her
protection.  On my being settled at Doctor Strong's I wrote to her
again, detailing my happy condition and prospects.  I never could
have derived anything like the pleasure from spending the money Mr.
Dick had given me, that I felt in sending a gold half-guinea to
Peggotty, per post, enclosed in this last letter, to discharge the
sum I had borrowed of her: in which epistle, not before, I
mentioned about the young man with the donkey-cart.

To these communications Peggotty replied as promptly, if not as
concisely, as a merchant's clerk.  Her utmost powers of expression
(which were certainly not great in ink) were exhausted in the
attempt to write what she felt on the subject of my journey.  Four
sides of incoherent and interjectional beginnings of sentences,
that had no end, except blots, were inadequate to afford her any
relief.  But the blots were more expressive to me than the best
composition; for they showed me that Peggotty had been crying all
over the paper, and what could I have desired more?

I made out, without much difficulty, that she could not take quite
kindly to my aunt yet.  The notice was too short after so long a
prepossession the other way.  We never knew a person, she wrote;
but to think that Miss Betsey should seem to be so different from
what she had been thought to be, was a Moral! - that was her word. 
She was evidently still afraid of Miss Betsey, for she sent her
grateful duty to her but timidly; and she was evidently afraid of
me, too, and entertained the probability of my running away again
soon: if I might judge from the repeated hints she threw out, that
the coach-fare to Yarmouth was always to be had of her for the
asking.

She gave me one piece of intelligence which affected me very much,
namely, that there had been a sale of the furniture at our old
home, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were gone away, and the house
was shut up, to be let or sold.  God knows I had no part in it
while they remained there, but it pained me to think of the dear
old place as altogether abandoned; of the weeds growing tall in the
garden, and the fallen leaves lying thick and wet upon the paths. 
I imagined how the winds of winter would howl round it, how the
cold rain would beat upon the window-glass, how the moon would make
ghosts on the walls of the empty rooms, watching their solitude all
night.  I thought afresh of the grave in the churchyard, underneath
the tree: and it seemed as if the house were dead too, now, and all
connected with my father and mother were faded away.

There was no other news in Peggotty's letters.  Mr. Barkis was an
excellent husband, she said, though still a little near; but we all
had our faults, and she had plenty (though I am sure I don't know
what they were); and he sent his duty, and my little bedroom was
always ready for me.  Mr. Peggotty was well, and Ham was well, and
Mrs..  Gummidge was but poorly, and little Em'ly wouldn't send her
love, but said that Peggotty might send it, if she liked.

All this intelligence I dutifully imparted to my aunt, only
reserving to myself the mention of little Em'ly, to whom I
instinctively felt that she would not very tenderly incline.  While
I was yet new at Doctor Strong's, she made several excursions over
to Canterbury to see me, and always at unseasonable hours: with the
view, I suppose, of taking me by surprise.  But, finding me well
employed, and bearing a good character, and hearing on all hands
that I rose fast in the school, she soon discontinued these visits. 
I saw her on a Saturday, every third or fourth week, when I went
over to Dover for a treat; and I saw Mr. Dick every alternate
Wednesday, when he arrived by stage-coach at noon, to stay until
next morning.

On these occasions Mr. Dick never travelled without a leathern
writing-desk, containing a supply of stationery and the Memorial;
in relation to which document he had a notion that time was
beginning to press now, and that it really must be got out of hand.

Mr. Dick was very partial to gingerbread.  To render his visits the
more agreeable, my aunt had instructed me to open a credit for him
at a cake shop, which was hampered with the stipulation that he
should not be served with more than one shilling's-worth in the
course of any one day.  This, and the reference of all his little
bills at the county inn where he slept, to my aunt, before they
were paid, induced me to suspect that he was only allowed to rattle
his money, and not to spend it.  I found on further investigation
that this was so, or at least there was an agreement between him
and my aunt that he should account to her for all his
disbursements.  As he had no idea of deceiving her, and always
desired to please her, he was thus made chary of launching into
expense.  On this point, as well as on all other possible points,
Mr. Dick was convinced that my aunt was the wisest and most
wonderful of women; as he repeatedly told me with infinite secrecy,
and always in a whisper.

'Trotwood,' said Mr. Dick, with an air of mystery, after imparting
this confidence to me, one Wednesday; 'who's the man that hides
near our house and frightens her?'

'Frightens my aunt, sir?'

Mr. Dick nodded.  'I thought nothing would have frightened her,' he
said, 'for she's -' here he whispered softly, 'don't mention it -
the wisest and most wonderful of women.'  Having said which, he
drew back, to observe the effect which this description of her made
upon me.

'The first time he came,' said Mr. Dick, 'was- let me see- sixteen
hundred and forty-nine was the date of King Charles's execution. 
I think you said sixteen hundred and forty-nine?'

'Yes, sir.'

'I don't know how it can be,' said Mr. Dick, sorely puzzled and
shaking his head.  'I don't think I am as old as that.'

'Was it in that year that the man appeared, sir?' I asked.

'Why, really' said Mr. Dick, 'I don't see how it can have been in
that year, Trotwood.  Did you get that date out of history?'

'Yes, sir.'

'I suppose history never lies, does it?' said Mr. Dick, with a
gleam of hope.

'Oh dear, no, sir!' I replied, most decisively.  I was ingenuous
and young, and I thought so.

'I can't make it out,' said Mr. Dick, shaking his head.  'There's
something wrong, somewhere.  However, it was very soon after the
mistake was made of putting some of the trouble out of King
Charles's head into my head, that the man first came.  I was
walking out with Miss Trotwood after tea, just at dark, and there
he was, close to our house.'

'Walking about?' I inquired.

'Walking about?' repeated Mr. Dick.  'Let me see, I must recollect
a bit.  N-no, no; he was not walking about.'

I asked, as the shortest way to get at it, what he WAS doing.

'Well, he wasn't there at all,' said Mr. Dick, 'until he came up
behind her, and whispered.  Then she turned round and fainted, and
I stood still and looked at him, and he walked away; but that he
should have been hiding ever since (in the ground or somewhere), is
the most extraordinary thing!'

'HAS he been hiding ever since?' I asked.

'To be sure he has,' retorted Mr. Dick, nodding his head gravely. 
'Never came out, till last night!  We were walking last night, and
he came up behind her again, and I knew him again.'

'And did he frighten my aunt again?'

'All of a shiver,' said Mr. Dick, counterfeiting that affection and
making his teeth chatter.  'Held by the palings.  Cried.  But,
Trotwood, come here,' getting me close to him, that he might
whisper very softly; 'why did she give him money, boy, in the
moonlight?'

'He was a beggar, perhaps.'

Mr. Dick shook his head, as utterly renouncing the suggestion; and
having replied a great many times, and with great confidence, 'No
beggar, no beggar, no beggar, sir!' went on to say, that from his
window he had afterwards, and late at night, seen my aunt give this
person money outside the garden rails in the moonlight, who then
slunk away - into the ground again, as he thought probable - and
was seen no more: while my aunt came hurriedly and secretly back
into the house, and had, even that morning, been quite different
from her usual self; which preyed on Mr. Dick's mind.

I had not the least belief, in the outset of this story, that the
unknown was anything but a delusion of Mr. Dick's, and one of the
line of that ill-fated Prince who occasioned him so much
difficulty; but after some reflection I began to entertain the
question whether an attempt, or threat of an attempt, might have
been twice made to take poor Mr. Dick himself from under my aunt's
protection, and whether my aunt, the strength of whose kind feeling
towards him I knew from herself, might have been induced to pay a
price for his peace and quiet.  As I was already much attached to
Mr. Dick, and very solicitous for his welfare, my fears favoured
this supposition; and for a long time his Wednesday hardly ever
came round, without my entertaining a misgiving that he would not
be on the coach-box as usual.  There he always appeared, however,
grey-headed, laughing, and happy; and he never had anything more to
tell of the man who could frighten my aunt.

These Wednesdays were the happiest days of Mr. Dick's life; they
were far from being the least happy of mine.  He soon became known
to every boy in the school; and though he never took an active part
in any game but kite-flying, was as deeply interested in all our
sports as anyone among us.  How often have I seen him, intent upon
a match at marbles or pegtop, looking on with a face of unutterable
interest, and hardly breathing at the critical times!  How often,
at hare and hounds, have I seen him mounted on a little knoll,
cheering the whole field on to action, and waving his hat above his
grey head, oblivious of King Charles the Martyr's head, and all
belonging to it!  How many a summer hour have I known to be but
blissful minutes to him in the cricket-field!  How many winter days
have I seen him, standing blue-nosed, in the snow and east wind,
looking at the boys going down the long slide, and clapping his
worsted gloves in rapture!

He was an universal favourite, and his ingenuity in little things
was transcendent.  He could cut oranges into such devices as none
of us had an idea of.  He could make a boat out of anything, from
a skewer upwards.  He could turn cramp-bones into chessmen; fashion
Roman chariots from old court cards; make spoked wheels out of
cotton reels, and bird-cages of old wire.  But he was greatest of
all, perhaps, in the articles of string and straw; with which we
were all persuaded he could do anything that could be done by
hands.

Mr. Dick's renown was not long confined to us.  After a few
Wednesdays, Doctor Strong himself made some inquiries of me about
him, and I told him all my aunt had told me; which interested the
Doctor so much that he requested, on the occasion of his next
visit, to be presented to him.  This ceremony I performed; and the
Doctor begging Mr. Dick, whensoever he should not find me at the
coach office, to come on there, and rest himself until our
morning's work was over, it soon passed into a custom for Mr. Dick
to come on as a matter of course, and, if we were a little late, as
often happened on a Wednesday, to walk about the courtyard, waiting
for me.  Here he made the acquaintance of the Doctor's beautiful
young wife (paler than formerly, all this time; more rarely seen by
me or anyone, I think; and not so gay, but not less beautiful), and
so became more and more familiar by degrees, until, at last, he
would come into the school and wait.  He always sat in a particular
corner, on a particular stool, which was called 'Dick', after him;
here he would sit, with his grey head bent forward, attentively
listening to whatever might be going on, with a profound veneration
for the learning he had never been able to acquire.

This veneration Mr. Dick extended to the Doctor, whom he thought
the most subtle and accomplished philosopher of any age.  It was
long before Mr. Dick ever spoke to him otherwise than bareheaded;
and even when he and the Doctor had struck up quite a friendship,
and would walk together by the hour, on that side of the courtyard
which was known among us as The Doctor's Walk, Mr. Dick would pull
off his hat at intervals to show his respect for wisdom and
knowledge.  How it ever came about that the Doctor began to read
out scraps of the famous Dictionary, in these walks, I never knew;
perhaps he felt it all the same, at first, as reading to himself. 
However, it passed into a custom too; and Mr. Dick, listening with
a face shining with pride and pleasure, in his heart of hearts
believed the Dictionary to be the most delightful book in the
world.

As I think of them going up and down before those schoolroom
windows - the Doctor reading with his complacent smile, an
occasional flourish of the manuscript, or grave motion of his head;
and Mr. Dick listening, enchained by interest, with his poor wits
calmly wandering God knows where, upon the wings of hard words - I
think of it as one of the pleasantest things, in a quiet way, that
I have ever seen.  I feel as if they might go walking to and fro
for ever, and the world might somehow be the better for it - as if
a thousand things it makes a noise about, were not one half so good
for it, or me.

Agnes was one of Mr. Dick's friends, very soon; and in often coming
to the house, he made acquaintance with Uriah.  The friendship
between himself and me increased continually, and it was maintained
on this odd footing: that, while Mr. Dick came professedly to look
after me as my guardian, he always consulted me in any little
matter of doubt that arose, and invariably guided himself by my
advice; not only having a high respect for my native sagacity, but
considering that I inherited a good deal from my aunt.

One Thursday morning, when I was about to walk with Mr. Dick from
the hotel to the coach office before going back to school (for we
had an hour's school before breakfast), I met Uriah in the street,
who reminded me of the promise I had made to take tea with himself
and his mother: adding, with a writhe, 'But I didn't expect you to
keep it, Master Copperfield, we're so very umble.'

I really had not yet been able to make up my mind whether I liked
Uriah or detested him; and I was very doubtful about it still, as
I stood looking him in the face in the street.  But I felt it quite
an affront to be supposed proud, and said I only wanted to be
asked.

' Oh, if that's all, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah, 'and it
really isn't our umbleness that prevents you, will you come this
evening?  But if it is our umbleness, I hope you won't mind owning
to it, Master Copperfield; for we are well aware of our condition.'

I said I would mention it to Mr. Wickfield, and if he approved, as
I had no doubt he would, I would come with pleasure.  So, at six
o'clock that evening, which was one of the early office evenings,
I announced myself as ready, to Uriah.

'Mother will be proud, indeed,' he said, as we walked away
together.  'Or she would be proud, if it wasn't sinful, Master
Copperfield.'

'Yet you didn't mind supposing I was proud this morning,' I
returned.

'Oh dear, no, Master Copperfield!' returned Uriah.  'Oh, believe
me, no!  Such a thought never came into my head!  I shouldn't have
deemed it at all proud if you had thought US too umble for you. 
Because we are so very umble.'

'Have you been studying much law lately?' I asked, to change the
subject.

'Oh, Master Copperfield,' he said, with an air of self-denial, 'my
reading is hardly to be called study.  I have passed an hour or two
in the evening, sometimes, with Mr. Tidd.'

'Rather hard, I suppose?' said I.
'He is hard to me sometimes,' returned Uriah.  'But I don't know
what he might be to a gifted person.'

After beating a little tune on his chin as he walked on, with the
two forefingers of his skeleton right hand, he added:

'There are expressions, you see, Master Copperfield - Latin words
and terms - in Mr. Tidd, that are trying to a reader of my umble
attainments.'

'Would you like to be taught Latin?' I said briskly.  'I will teach
it you with pleasure, as I learn it.'

'Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,' he answered, shaking his head. 
'I am sure it's very kind of you to make the offer, but I am much
too umble to accept it.'

'What nonsense, Uriah!'

'Oh, indeed you must excuse me, Master Copperfield!  I am greatly
obliged, and I should like it of all things, I assure you; but I am
far too umble.  There are people enough to tread upon me in my
lowly state, without my doing outrage to their feelings by
possessing learning.  Learning ain't for me.  A person like myself
had better not aspire.  If he is to get on in life, he must get on
umbly, Master Copperfield!'

I never saw his mouth so wide, or the creases in his cheeks so
deep, as when he delivered himself of these sentiments: shaking his
head all the time, and writhing modestly.

'I think you are wrong, Uriah,' I said.  'I dare say there are
several things that I could teach you, if you would like to learn
them.'

'Oh, I don't doubt that, Master Copperfield,' he answered; 'not in
the least.  But not being umble yourself, you don't judge well,
perhaps, for them that are.  I won't provoke my betters with
knowledge, thank you.  I'm much too umble.  Here is my umble
dwelling, Master Copperfield!'

We entered a low, old-fashioned room, walked straight into from the
street, and found there Mrs. Heep, who was the dead image of Uriah,
only short.  She received me with the utmost humility, and
apologized to me for giving her son a kiss, observing that, lowly
as they were, they had their natural affections, which they hoped
would give no offence to anyone.  It was a perfectly decent room,
half parlour and half kitchen, but not at all a snug room.  The
tea-things were set upon the table, and the kettle was boiling on
the hob.  There was a chest of drawers with an escritoire top, for
Uriah to read or write at of an evening; there was Uriah's blue bag
lying down and vomiting papers; there was a company of Uriah's
books commanded by Mr. Tidd; there was a corner cupboard: and there
were the usual articles of furniture.  I don't remember that any
individual object had a bare, pinched, spare look; but I do
remember that the whole place had.

It was perhaps a part of Mrs. Heep's humility, that she still wore
weeds.  Notwithstanding the lapse of time that had occurred since
Mr. Heep's decease, she still wore weeds.  I think there was some
compromise in the cap; but otherwise she was as weedy as in the
early days of her mourning.

'This is a day to be remembered, my Uriah, I am sure,' said Mrs.
Heep, making the tea, 'when Master Copperfield pays us a visit.'

'I said you'd think so, mother,' said Uriah.

'If I could have wished father to remain among us for any reason,'
said Mrs. Heep, 'it would have been, that he might have known his
company this afternoon.'

I felt embarrassed by these compliments; but I was sensible, too,
of being entertained as an honoured guest, and I thought Mrs. Heep
an agreeable woman.

'My Uriah,' said Mrs. Heep, 'has looked forward to this, sir, a
long while.  He had his fears that our umbleness stood in the way,
and I joined in them myself.  Umble we are, umble we have been,
umble we shall ever be,' said Mrs. Heep.

'I am sure you have no occasion to be so, ma'am,' I said, 'unless
you like.'

'Thank you, sir,' retorted Mrs. Heep.  'We know our station and are
thankful in it.'

I found that Mrs. Heep gradually got nearer to me, and that Uriah
gradually got opposite to me, and that they respectfully plied me
with the choicest of the eatables on the table.  There was nothing
particularly choice there, to be sure; but I took the will for the
deed, and felt that they were very attentive.  Presently they began
to talk about aunts, and then I told them about mine; and about
fathers and mothers, and then I told them about mine; and then Mrs.
Heep began to talk about fathers-in-law, and then I began to tell
her about mine - but stopped, because my aunt had advised me to
observe a silence on that subject.  A tender young cork, however,
would have had no more chance against a pair of corkscrews, or a
tender young tooth against a pair of dentists, or a little
shuttlecock against two battledores, than I had against Uriah and
Mrs. Heep.  They did just what they liked with me; and wormed
things out of me that I had no desire to tell, with a certainty I
blush to think of.  the more especially, as in my juvenile
frankness, I took some credit to myself for being so confidential
and felt that I was quite the patron of my two respectful
entertainers.

They were very fond of one another: that was certain.  I take it,
that had its effect upon me, as a touch of nature; but the skill
with which the one followed up whatever the other said, was a touch
of art which I was still less proof against.  When there was
nothing more to be got out of me about myself (for on the Murdstone
and Grinby life, and on my journey, I was dumb), they began about
Mr. Wickfield and Agnes.  Uriah threw the ball to Mrs. Heep, Mrs.
Heep caught it and threw it back to Uriah, Uriah kept it up a
little while, then sent it back to Mrs. Heep, and so they went on
tossing it about until I had no idea who had got it, and was quite
bewildered.  The ball itself was always changing too.  Now it was
Mr. Wickfield, now Agnes, now the excellence of Mr. Wickfield, now
my admiration of Agnes; now the extent of Mr. Wickfield's business
and resources, now our domestic life after dinner; now, the wine
that Mr. Wickfield took, the reason why he took it, and the pity
that it was he took so much; now one thing, now another, then
everything at once; and all the time, without appearing to speak
very often, or to do anything but sometimes encourage them a
little, for fear they should be overcome by their humility and the
honour of my company, I found myself perpetually letting out
something or other that I had no business to let out and seeing the
effect of it in the twinkling of Uriah's dinted nostrils.

I had begun to be a little uncomfortable, and to wish myself well
out of the visit, when a figure coming down the street passed the
door - it stood open to air the room, which was warm, the weather
being close for the time of year - came back again, looked in, and
walked in, exclaiming loudly, 'Copperfield!  Is it possible?'

It was Mr. Micawber!  It was Mr. Micawber, with his eye-glass, and
his walking-stick, and his shirt-collar, and his genteel air, and
the condescending roll in his voice, all complete!

'My dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, putting out his hand,
'this is indeed a meeting which is calculated to impress the mind
with a sense of the instability and uncertainty of all human - in
short, it is a most extraordinary meeting.  Walking along the
street, reflecting upon the probability of something turning up (of
which I am at present rather sanguine), I find a young but valued
friend turn up, who is connected with the most eventful period of
my life; I may say, with the turning-point of my existence. 
Copperfield, my dear fellow, how do you do?'

I cannot say - I really cannot say - that I was glad to see Mr.
Micawber there; but I was glad to see him too, and shook hands with
him, heartily, inquiring how Mrs. Micawber was.

'Thank you,' said Mr. Micawber, waving his hand as of old, and
settling his chin in his shirt-collar.  'She is tolerably
convalescent.  The twins no longer derive their sustenance from
Nature's founts - in short,' said Mr. Micawber, in one of his
bursts of confidence, 'they are weaned - and Mrs. Micawber is, at
present, my travelling companion.  She will be rejoiced,
Copperfield, to renew her acquaintance with one who has proved
himself in all respects a worthy minister at the sacred altar of
friendship.'

I said I should be delighted to see her.

'You are very good,' said Mr. Micawber.

Mr. Micawber then smiled, settled his chin again, and looked about
him.

'I have discovered my friend Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber
genteelly, and without addressing himself particularly to anyone,
'not in solitude, but partaking of a social meal in company with a
widow lady, and one who is apparently her offspring - in short,'
said Mr. Micawber, in another of his bursts of confidence, 'her
son.  I shall esteem it an honour to be presented.'

I could do no less, under these circumstances, than make Mr.
Micawber known to Uriah Heep and his mother; which I accordingly
did.  As they abased themselves before him, Mr. Micawber took a
seat, and waved his hand in his most courtly manner.

'Any friend of my friend Copperfield's,' said Mr. Micawber, 'has a
personal claim upon myself.'

'We are too umble, sir,' said Mrs. Heep, 'my son and me, to be the
friends of Master Copperfield.  He has been so good as take his tea
with us, and we are thankful to him for his company, also to you,
sir, for your notice.'

'Ma'am,' returned Mr. Micawber, with a bow, 'you are very obliging:
and what are you doing, Copperfield?  Still in the wine trade?'

I was excessively anxious to get Mr. Micawber away; and replied,
with my hat in my hand, and a very red face, I have no doubt, that
I was a pupil at Doctor Strong's.

'A pupil?' said Mr. Micawber, raising his eyebrows.  'I am
extremely happy to hear it.  Although a mind like my friend
Copperfield's' - to Uriah and Mrs. Heep - 'does not require that
cultivation which, without his knowledge of men and things, it
would require, still it is a rich soil teeming with latent
vegetation - in short,' said Mr. Micawber, smiling, in another
burst of confidence, 'it is an intellect capable of getting up the
classics to any extent.'

Uriah, with his long hands slowly twining over one another, made a
ghastly writhe from the waist upwards, to express his concurrence
in this estimation of me.

'Shall we go and see Mrs. Micawber, sir?' I said, to get Mr.
Micawber away.

'If you will do her that favour, Copperfield,' replied Mr.
Micawber, rising.  'I have no scruple in saying, in the presence of
our friends here, that I am a man who has, for some years,
contended against the pressure of pecuniary difficulties.'  I knew
he was certain to say something of this kind; he always would be so
boastful about his difficulties.  'Sometimes I have risen superior
to my difficulties.  Sometimes my difficulties have - in short,
have floored me.  There have been times when I have administered a
succession of facers to them; there have been times when they have
been too many for me, and I have given in, and said to Mrs.
Micawber, in the words of Cato, "Plato, thou reasonest well.  It's
all up now.  I can show fight no more." But at no time of my life,'
said Mr. Micawber, 'have I enjoyed a higher degree of satisfaction
than in pouring my griefs (if I may describe difficulties, chiefly
arising out of warrants of attorney and promissory notes at two and
four months, by that word) into the bosom of my friend
Copperfield.'

Mr. Micawber closed this handsome tribute by saying, 'Mr. Heep!
Good evening.  Mrs. Heep!  Your servant,' and then walking out with
me in his most fashionable manner, making a good deal of noise on
the pavement with his shoes, and humming a tune as we went.

It was a little inn where Mr. Micawber put up, and he occupied a
little room in it, partitioned off from the commercial room, and
strongly flavoured with tobacco-smoke.  I think it was over the
kitchen, because a warm greasy smell appeared to come up through
the chinks in the floor, and there was a flabby perspiration on the
walls.  I know it was near the bar, on account of the smell of
spirits and jingling of glasses.  Here, recumbent on a small sofa,
underneath a picture of a race-horse, with her head close to the
fire, and her feet pushing the mustard off the dumb-waiter at the
other end of the room, was Mrs. Micawber, to whom Mr. Micawber
entered first, saying, 'My dear, allow me to introduce to you a
pupil of Doctor Strong's.'

I noticed, by the by, that although Mr. Micawber was just as much
confused as ever about my age and standing, he always remembered,
as a genteel thing, that I was a pupil of Doctor Strong's.

Mrs. Micawber was amazed, but very glad to see me.  I was very glad
to see her too, and, after an affectionate greeting on both sides,
sat down on the small sofa near her.

'My dear,' said Mr. Micawber, 'if you will mention to Copperfield
what our present position is, which I have no doubt he will like to
know, I will go and look at the paper the while, and see whether
anything turns up among the advertisements.'

'I thought you were at Plymouth, ma'am,' I said to Mrs. Micawber,
as he went out.

'My dear Master Copperfield,' she replied, 'we went to Plymouth.'

'To be on the spot,' I hinted.

'Just so,' said Mrs. Micawber.  'To be on the spot.  But, the truth
is, talent is not wanted in the Custom House.  The local influence
of my family was quite unavailing to obtain any employment in that
department, for a man of Mr. Micawber's abilities.  They would
rather NOT have a man of Mr. Micawber's abilities.  He would only
show the deficiency of the others.  Apart from which,' said Mrs.
Micawber, 'I will not disguise from you, my dear Master
Copperfield, that when that branch of my family which is settled in
Plymouth, became aware that Mr. Micawber was accompanied by myself,
and by little Wilkins and his sister, and by the twins, they did
not receive him with that ardour which he might have expected,
being so newly released from captivity.  In fact,' said Mrs.
Micawber, lowering her voice, - 'this is between ourselves - our
reception was cool.'

'Dear me!' I said.

'Yes,' said Mrs. Micawber.  'It is truly painful to contemplate
mankind in such an aspect, Master Copperfield, but our reception
was, decidedly, cool.  There is no doubt about it.  In fact, that
branch of my family which is settled in Plymouth became quite
personal to Mr. Micawber, before we had been there a week.'

I said, and thought, that they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

'Still, so it was,' continued Mrs. Micawber.  'Under such
circumstances, what could a man of Mr. Micawber's spirit do?  But
one obvious course was left.  To borrow, of that branch of my
family, the money to return to London, and to return at any
sacrifice.'

'Then you all came back again, ma'am?' I said.

'We all came back again,' replied Mrs. Micawber.  'Since then, I
have consulted other branches of my family on the course which it
is most expedient for Mr. Micawber to take - for I maintain that he
must take some course, Master Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber,
argumentatively.  'It is clear that a family of six, not including
a domestic, cannot live upon air.'

'Certainly, ma'am,' said I.

'The opinion of those other branches of my family,' pursued Mrs.
Micawber, 'is, that Mr. Micawber should immediately turn his
attention to coals.'

'To what, ma'am?'

'To coals,' said Mrs. Micawber.  'To the coal trade.  Mr. Micawber
was induced to think, on inquiry, that there might be an opening
for a man of his talent in the Medway Coal Trade.  Then, as Mr.
Micawber very properly said, the first step to be taken clearly
was, to come and see the Medway.  Which we came and saw.  I say
"we", Master Copperfield; for I never will,' said Mrs. Micawber
with emotion, 'I never will desert Mr. Micawber.'

I murmured my admiration and approbation.

'We came,' repeated Mrs. Micawber, 'and saw the Medway.  My opinion
of the coal trade on that river is, that it may require talent, but
that it certainly requires capital.  Talent, Mr. Micawber has;
capital, Mr. Micawber has not.  We saw, I think, the greater part
of the Medway; and that is my individual conclusion.  Being so near
here, Mr. Micawber was of opinion that it would be rash not to come
on, and see the Cathedral.  Firstly, on account of its being so
well worth seeing, and our never having seen it; and secondly, on
account of the great probability of something turning up in a
cathedral town.  We have been here,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'three
days.  Nothing has, as yet, turned up; and it may not surprise you,
my dear Master Copperfield, so much as it would a stranger, to know
that we are at present waiting for a remittance from London, to
discharge our pecuniary obligations at this hotel.  Until the
arrival of that remittance,' said Mrs. Micawber with much feeling,
'I am cut off from my home (I allude to lodgings in Pentonville),
from my boy and girl, and from my twins.'

I felt the utmost sympathy for Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in this
anxious extremity, and said as much to Mr. Micawber, who now
returned: adding that I only wished I had money enough, to lend
them the amount they needed.  Mr. Micawber's answer expressed the
disturbance of his mind.  He said, shaking hands with me,
'Copperfield, you are a true friend; but when the worst comes to
the worst, no man is without a friend who is possessed of shaving
materials.'  At this dreadful hint Mrs. Micawber threw her arms
round Mr. Micawber's neck and entreated him to be calm.  He wept;
but so far recovered, almost immediately, as to ring the bell for
the waiter, and bespeak a hot kidney pudding and a plate of shrimps
for breakfast in the morning.

When I took my leave of them, they both pressed me so much to come
and dine before they went away, that I could not refuse.  But, as
I knew I could not come next day, when I should have a good deal to
prepare in the evening, Mr. Micawber arranged that he would call at
Doctor Strong's in the course of the morning (having a presentiment
that the remittance would arrive by that post), and propose the day
after, if it would suit me better.  Accordingly I was called out of
school next forenoon, and found Mr. Micawber in the parlour; who
had called to say that the dinner would take place as proposed. 
When I asked him if the remittance had come, he pressed my hand and
departed.

As I was looking out of window that same evening, it surprised me,
and made me rather uneasy, to see Mr. Micawber and Uriah Heep walk
past, arm in arm: Uriah humbly sensible of the honour that was done
him, and Mr. Micawber taking a bland delight in extending his
patronage to Uriah.  But I was still more surprised, when I went to
the little hotel next day at the appointed dinner-hour, which was
four o'clock, to find, from what Mr. Micawber said, that he had
gone home with Uriah, and had drunk brandy-and-water at Mrs.
Heep's.

'And I'll tell you what, my dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber,
'your friend Heep is a young fellow who might be attorney-general. 
If I had known that young man, at the period when my difficulties
came to a crisis, all I can say is, that I believe my creditors
would have been a great deal better managed than they were.'

I hardly understood how this could have been, seeing that Mr.
Micawber had paid them nothing at all as it was; but I did not like
to ask.  Neither did I like to say, that I hoped he had not been
too communicative to Uriah; or to inquire if they had talked much
about me.  I was afraid of hurting Mr. Micawber's feelings, or, at
all events, Mrs. Micawber's, she being very sensitive; but I was
uncomfortable about it, too, and often thought about it afterwards.

We had a beautiful little dinner.  Quite an elegant dish of fish;
the kidney-end of a loin of veal, roasted; fried sausage-meat; a
partridge, and a pudding.  There was wine, and there was strong
ale; and after dinner Mrs. Micawber made us a bowl of hot punch
with her own hands.

Mr. Micawber was uncommonly convivial.  I never saw him such good
company.  He made his face shine with the punch, so that it looked
as if it had been varnished all over.  He got cheerfully
sentimental about the town, and proposed success to it; observing
that Mrs. Micawber and himself had been made extremely snug and
comfortable there and that he never should forget the agreeable
hours they had passed in Canterbury.  He proposed me afterwards;
and he, and Mrs. Micawber, and I, took a review of our past
acquaintance, in the course of which we sold the property all over
again.  Then I proposed Mrs. Micawber: or, at least, said,
modestly, 'If you'll allow me, Mrs. Micawber, I shall now have the
pleasure of drinking your health, ma'am.'  On which Mr. Micawber
delivered an eulogium on Mrs. Micawber's character, and said she
had ever been his guide, philosopher, and friend, and that he would
recommend me, when I came to a marrying time of life, to marry such
another woman, if such another woman could be found.

As the punch disappeared, Mr. Micawber became still more friendly
and convivial.  Mrs. Micawber's spirits becoming elevated, too, we
sang 'Auld Lang Syne'.  When we came to 'Here's a hand, my trusty
frere', we all joined hands round the table; and when we declared
we would 'take a right gude Willie Waught', and hadn't the least
idea what it meant, we were really affected.

In a word, I never saw anybody so thoroughly jovial as Mr. Micawber
was, down to the very last moment of the evening, when I took a
hearty farewell of himself and his amiable wife.  Consequently, I
was not prepared, at seven o'clock next morning, to receive the
following communication, dated half past nine in the evening; a
quarter of an hour after I had left him: -

'My DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,

'The die is cast - all is over.  Hiding the ravages of care with a
sickly mask of mirth, I have not informed you, this evening, that
there is no hope of the remittance!  Under these circumstances,
alike humiliating to endure, humiliating to contemplate, and
humiliating to relate, I have discharged the pecuniary liability
contracted at this establishment, by giving a note of hand, made
payable fourteen days after date, at my residence, Pentonville,
London.  When it becomes due, it will not be taken up.  The result
is destruction.  The bolt is impending, and the tree must fall.

'Let the wretched man who now addresses you, my dear Copperfield,
be a beacon to you through life.  He writes with that intention,
and in that hope.  If he could think himself of so much use, one
gleam of day might, by possibility, penetrate into the cheerless
dungeon of his remaining existence - though his longevity is, at
present (to say the least of it), extremely problematical.

'This is the last communication, my dear Copperfield, you will ever
receive

                         'From

                              'The

                                   'Beggared Outcast,

                                        'WILKINS MICAWBER.'

I was so shocked by the contents of this heart-rending letter, that
I ran off directly towards the little hotel with the intention of
taking it on my way to Doctor Strong's, and trying to soothe Mr.
Micawber with a word of comfort.  But, half-way there, I met the
London coach with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber up behind; Mr. Micawber,
the very picture of tranquil enjoyment, smiling at Mrs. Micawber's
conversation, eating walnuts out of a paper bag, with a bottle
sticking out of his breast pocket.  As they did not see me, I
thought it best, all things considered, not to see them.  So, with
a great weight taken off my mind, I turned into a by-street that
was the nearest way to school, and felt, upon the whole, relieved
that they were gone; though I still liked them very much,
nevertheless.

CHAPTER 18
A RETROSPECT

My school-days!  The silent gliding on of my existence - the
unseen, unfelt progress of my life - from childhood up to youth!
Let me think, as I look back upon that flowing water, now a dry
channel overgrown with leaves, whether there are any marks along
its course, by which I can remember how it ran.

A moment, and I occupy my place in the Cathedral, where we all went
together, every Sunday morning, assembling first at school for that
purpose.  The earthy smell, the sunless air, the sensation of the
world being shut out, the resounding of the organ through the black
and white arched galleries and aisles, are wings that take me back,
and hold me hovering above those days, in a half-sleeping and
half-waking dream.

I am not the last boy in the school.  I have risen in a few months,
over several heads.  But the first boy seems to me a mighty
creature, dwelling afar off, whose giddy height is unattainable. 
Agnes says 'No,' but I say 'Yes,' and tell her that she little
thinks what stores of knowledge have been mastered by the wonderful
Being, at whose place she thinks I, even I, weak aspirant, may
arrive in time.  He is not my private friend and public patron, as
Steerforth was, but I hold him in a reverential respect.  I chiefly
wonder what he'll be, when he leaves Doctor Strong's, and what
mankind will do to maintain any place against him.

But who is this that breaks upon me?  This is Miss Shepherd, whom
I love.

Miss Shepherd is a boarder at the Misses Nettingalls'
establishment.  I adore Miss Shepherd.  She is a little girl, in a
spencer, with a round face and curly flaxen hair.  The Misses
Nettingalls' young ladies come to the Cathedral too.  I cannot look
upon my book, for I must look upon Miss Shepherd.  When the
choristers chaunt, I hear Miss Shepherd.  In the service I mentally
insert Miss Shepherd's name - I put her in among the Royal Family. 
At home, in my own room, I am sometimes moved to cry out, 'Oh, Miss
Shepherd!' in a transport of love.

For some time, I am doubtful of Miss Shepherd's feelings, but, at
length, Fate being propitious, we meet at the dancing-school.  I
have Miss Shepherd for my partner.  I touch Miss Shepherd's glove,
and feel a thrill go up the right arm of my jacket, and come out at
my hair.  I say nothing to Miss Shepherd, but we understand each
other.  Miss Shepherd and myself live but to be united.

Why do I secretly give Miss Shepherd twelve Brazil nuts for a
present, I wonder?  They are not expressive of affection, they are
difficult to pack into a parcel of any regular shape, they are hard
to crack, even in room doors, and they are oily when cracked; yet
I feel that they are appropriate to Miss Shepherd.  Soft, seedy
biscuits, also, I bestow upon Miss Shepherd; and oranges
innumerable.  Once, I kiss Miss Shepherd in the cloak-room. 
Ecstasy!  What are my agony and indignation next day, when I hear
a flying rumour that the Misses Nettingall have stood Miss Shepherd
in the stocks for turning in her toes!

Miss Shepherd being the one pervading theme and vision of my life,
how do I ever come to break with her?  I can't conceive.  And yet
a coolness grows between Miss Shepherd and myself.  Whispers reach
me of Miss Shepherd having said she wished I wouldn't stare so, and
having avowed a preference for Master Jones - for Jones! a boy of
no merit whatever!  The gulf between me and Miss Shepherd widens. 
At last, one day, I meet the Misses Nettingalls' establishment out
walking.  Miss Shepherd makes a face as she goes by, and laughs to
her companion.  All is over.  The devotion of a life - it seems a
life, it is all the same - is at an end; Miss Shepherd comes out of
the morning service, and the Royal Family know her no more.

I am higher in the school, and no one breaks my peace.  I am not at
all polite, now, to the Misses Nettingalls' young ladies, and
shouldn't dote on any of them, if they were twice as many and
twenty times as beautiful.  I think the dancing-school a tiresome
affair, and wonder why the girls can't dance by themselves and
leave us alone.  I am growing great in Latin verses, and neglect
the laces of my boots.  Doctor Strong refers to me in public as a
promising young scholar.  Mr. Dick is wild with joy, and my aunt
remits me a guinea by the next post.

The shade of a young butcher rises, like the apparition of an armed
head in Macbeth.  Who is this young butcher?  He is the terror of
the youth of Canterbury.  There is a vague belief abroad, that the
beef suet with which he anoints his hair gives him unnatural
strength, and that he is a match for a man.  He is a broad-faced,
bull-necked, young butcher, with rough red cheeks, an
ill-conditioned mind, and an injurious tongue.  His main use of
this tongue, is, to disparage Doctor Strong's young gentlemen.  He
says, publicly, that if they want anything he'll give it 'em.  He
names individuals among them (myself included), whom he could
undertake to settle with one hand, and the other tied behind him. 
He waylays the smaller boys to punch their unprotected heads, and
calls challenges after me in the open streets.  For these
sufficient reasons I resolve to fight the butcher.

It is a summer evening, down in a green hollow, at the corner of a
wall.  I meet the butcher by appointment.  I am attended by a
select body of our boys; the butcher, by two other butchers, a
young publican, and a sweep.  The preliminaries are adjusted, and
the butcher and myself stand face to face.  In a moment the butcher
lights ten thousand candles out of my left eyebrow.  In another
moment, I don't know where the wall is, or where I am, or where
anybody is.  I hardly know which is myself and which the butcher,
we are always in such a tangle and tussle, knocking about upon the
trodden grass.  Sometimes I see the butcher, bloody but confident;
sometimes I see nothing, and sit gasping on my second's knee;
sometimes I go in at the butcher madly, and cut my knuckles open
against his face, without appearing to discompose him at all.  At
last I awake, very queer about the head, as from a giddy sleep, and
see the butcher walking off, congratulated by the two other
butchers and the sweep and publican, and putting on his coat as he
goes; from which I augur, justly, that the victory is his.

I am taken home in a sad plight, and I have beef-steaks put to my
eyes, and am rubbed with vinegar and brandy, and find a great puffy
place bursting out on my upper lip, which swells immoderately.  For
three or four days I remain at home, a very ill-looking subject,
with a green shade over my eyes; and I should be very dull, but
that Agnes is a sister to me, and condoles with me, and reads to
me, and makes the time light and happy.  Agnes has my confidence
completely, always; I tell her all about the butcher, and the
wrongs he has heaped upon me; she thinks I couldn't have done
otherwise than fight the butcher, while she shrinks and trembles at
my having fought him.

Time has stolen on unobserved, for Adams is not the head-boy in the
days that are come now, nor has he been this many and many a day. 
Adams has left the school so long, that when he comes back, on a
visit to Doctor Strong, there are not many there, besides myself,
who know him.  Adams is going to be called to the bar almost
directly, and is to be an advocate, and to wear a wig.  I am
surprised to find him a meeker man than I had thought, and less
imposing in appearance.  He has not staggered the world yet,
either; for it goes on (as well as I can make out) pretty much the
same as if he had never joined it.

A blank, through which the warriors of poetry and history march on
in stately hosts that seem to have no end - and what comes next! 
I am the head-boy, now!  I look down on the line of boys below me,
with a condescending interest in such of them as bring to my mind
the boy I was myself, when I first came there.  That little fellow
seems to be no part of me; I remember him as something left behind
upon the road of life - as something I have passed, rather than
have actually been - and almost think of him as of someone else.

And the little girl I saw on that first day at Mr. Wickfield's,
where is she?  Gone also.  In her stead, the perfect likeness of
the picture, a child likeness no more, moves about the house; and
Agnes - my sweet sister, as I call her in my thoughts, my
counsellor and friend, the better angel of the lives of all who
come within her calm, good, self-denying influence - is quite a
woman.

What other changes have come upon me, besides the changes in my
growth and looks, and in the knowledge I have garnered all this
while?  I wear a gold watch and chain, a ring upon my little
finger, and a long-tailed coat; and I use a great deal of bear's
grease - which, taken in conjunction with the ring, looks bad.  Am
I in love again?  I am.  I worship the eldest Miss Larkins.

The eldest Miss Larkins is not a little girl.  She is a tall, dark,
black-eyed, fine figure of a woman.  The eldest Miss Larkins is not
a chicken; for the youngest Miss Larkins is not that, and the
eldest must be three or four years older.  Perhaps the eldest Miss
Larkins may be about thirty.  My passion for her is beyond all
bounds.

The eldest Miss Larkins knows officers.  It is an awful thing to
bear.  I see them speaking to her in the street.  I see them cross
the way to meet her, when her bonnet (she has a bright taste in
bonnets) is seen coming down the pavement, accompanied by her
sister's bonnet.  She laughs and talks, and seems to like it.  I
spend a good deal of my own spare time in walking up and down to
meet her.  If I can bow to her once in the day (I know her to bow
to, knowing Mr. Larkins), I am happier.  I deserve a bow now and
then.  The raging agonies I suffer on the night of the Race Ball,
where I know the eldest Miss Larkins will be dancing with the
military, ought to have some compensation, if there be even-handed
justice in the world.

My passion takes away my appetite, and makes me wear my newest silk
neckerchief continually.  I have no relief but in putting on my
best clothes, and having my boots cleaned over and over again.  I
seem, then, to be worthier of the eldest Miss Larkins.  Everything
that belongs to her, or is connected with her, is precious to me. 
Mr. Larkins (a gruff old gentleman with a double chin, and one of
his eyes immovable in his head) is fraught with interest to me. 
When I can't meet his daughter, I go where I am likely to meet him. 
To say 'How do you do, Mr. Larkins?  Are the young ladies and all
the family quite well?' seems so pointed, that I blush.

I think continually about my age.  Say I am seventeen, and say that
seventeen is young for the eldest Miss Larkins, what of that? 
Besides, I shall be one-and-twenty in no time almost.  I regularly
take walks outside Mr. Larkins's house in the evening, though it
cuts me to the heart to see the officers go in, or to hear them up
in the drawing-room, where the eldest Miss Larkins plays the harp. 
I even walk, on two or three occasions, in a sickly, spoony manner,
round and round the house after the family are gone to bed,
wondering which is the eldest Miss Larkins's chamber (and pitching,
I dare say now, on Mr. Larkins's instead); wishing that a fire
would burst out; that the assembled crowd would stand appalled;
that I, dashing through them with a ladder, might rear it against
her window, save her in my arms, go back for something she had left
behind, and perish in the flames.  For I am generally disinterested
in my love, and think I could be content to make a figure before
Miss Larkins, and expire.

Generally, but not always.  Sometimes brighter visions rise before
me.  When I dress (the occupation of two hours), for a great ball
given at the Larkins's (the anticipation of three weeks), I indulge
my fancy with pleasing images.  I picture myself taking courage to
make a declaration to Miss Larkins.  I picture Miss Larkins sinking
her head upon my shoulder, and saying, 'Oh, Mr. Copperfield, can I
believe my ears!' I picture Mr. Larkins waiting on me next morning,
and saying, 'My dear Copperfield, my daughter has told me all. 
Youth is no objection.  Here are twenty thousand pounds.  Be
happy!' I picture my aunt relenting, and blessing us; and Mr. Dick
and Doctor Strong being present at the marriage ceremony.  I am a
sensible fellow, I believe - I believe, on looking back, I mean -
and modest I am sure; but all this goes on notwithstanding.
I repair to the enchanted house, where there are lights,
chattering, music, flowers, officers (I am sorry to see), and the
eldest Miss Larkins, a blaze of beauty.  She is dressed in blue,
with blue flowers in her hair - forget-me-nots - as if SHE had any
need to wear forget-me-nots.  It is the first really grown-up party
that I have ever been invited to, and I am a little uncomfortable;
for I appear not to belong to anybody, and nobody appears to have
anything to say to me, except Mr. Larkins, who asks me how my
schoolfellows are, which he needn't do, as I have not come there to
be insulted.

But after I have stood in the doorway for some time, and feasted my
eyes upon the goddess of my heart, she approaches me - she, the
eldest Miss Larkins! - and asks me pleasantly, if I dance?

I stammer, with a bow, 'With you, Miss Larkins.'

'With no one else?' inquires Miss Larkins.

'I should have no pleasure in dancing with anyone else.'

Miss Larkins laughs and blushes (or I think she blushes), and says,
'Next time but one, I shall be very glad.'

The time arrives.  'It is a waltz, I think,' Miss Larkins
doubtfully observes, when I present myself.  'Do you waltz?  If
not, Captain Bailey -'

But I do waltz (pretty well, too, as it happens), and I take Miss
Larkins out.  I take her sternly from the side of Captain Bailey. 
He is wretched, I have no doubt; but he is nothing to me.  I have
been wretched, too.  I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins!  I don't
know where, among whom, or how long.  I only know that I swim about
in space, with a blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until
I find myself alone with her in a little room, resting on a sofa. 
She admires a flower (pink camellia japonica, price half-a-crown),
in my button-hole.  I give it her, and say:

'I ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins.'

'Indeed!  What is that?' returns Miss Larkins.

'A flower of yours, that I may treasure it as a miser does gold.'

'You're a bold boy,' says Miss Larkins.  'There.'

She gives it me, not displeased; and I put it to my lips, and then
into my breast.  Miss Larkins, laughing, draws her hand through my
arm, and says, 'Now take me back to Captain Bailey.'

I am lost in the recollection of this delicious interview, and the
waltz, when she comes to me again, with a plain elderly gentleman
who has been playing whist all night, upon her arm, and says:

'Oh! here is my bold friend!  Mr. Chestle wants to know you, Mr.
Copperfield.'

I feel at once that he is a friend of the family, and am much
gratified.

'I admire your taste, sir,' says Mr. Chestle.  'It does you credit. 
I suppose you don't take much interest in hops; but I am a pretty
large grower myself; and if you ever like to come over to our
neighbourhood - neighbourhood of Ashford - and take a run about our
place, -we shall be glad for you to stop as long as you like.'

I thank Mr. Chestle warmly, and shake hands.  I think I am in a
happy dream.  I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins once again.  She
says I waltz so well!  I go home in a state of unspeakable bliss,
and waltz in imagination, all night long, with my arm round the
blue waist of my dear divinity.  For some days afterwards, I am
lost in rapturous reflections; but I neither see her in the street,
nor when I call.  I am imperfectly consoled for this disappointment
by the sacred pledge, the perished flower.

'Trotwood,' says Agnes, one day after dinner.  'Who do you think is
going to be married tomorrow?  Someone you admire.'

'Not you, I suppose, Agnes?'

'Not me!' raising her cheerful face from the music she is copying. 
'Do you hear him, Papa? - The eldest Miss Larkins.'

'To - to Captain Bailey?' I have just enough power to ask.

'No; to no Captain.  To Mr. Chestle, a hop-grower.'

I am terribly dejected for about a week or two.  I take off my
ring, I wear my worst clothes, I use no bear's grease, and I
frequently lament over the late Miss Larkins's faded flower. 
Being, by that time, rather tired of this kind of life, and having
received new provocation from the butcher, I throw the flower away,
go out with the butcher, and gloriously defeat him.

This, and the resumption of my ring, as well as of the bear's
grease in moderation, are the last marks I can discern, now, in my
progress to seventeen.

CHAPTER 19
I LOOK ABOUT ME, AND MAKE A DISCOVERY

I am doubtful whether I was at heart glad or sorry, when my
school-days drew to an end, and the time came for my leaving Doctor
Strong's.  I had been very happy there, I had a great attachment
for the Doctor, and I was eminent and distinguished in that little
world.  For these reasons I was sorry to go; but for other reasons,
unsubstantial enough, I was glad.  Misty ideas of being a young man
at my own disposal, of the importance attaching to a young man at
his own disposal, of the wonderful things to be seen and done by
that magnificent animal, and the wonderful effects he could not
fail to make upon society, lured me away.  So powerful were these
visionary considerations in my boyish mind, that I seem, according
to my present way of thinking, to have left school without natural
regret.  The separation has not made the impression on me, that
other separations have.  I try in vain to recall how I felt about
it, and what its circumstances were; but it is not momentous in my
recollection.  I suppose the opening prospect confused me.  I know
that my juvenile experiences went for little or nothing then; and
that life was more like a great fairy story, which I was just about
to begin to read, than anything else.

MY aunt and I had held many grave deliberations on the calling to
which I should be devoted.  For a year or more I had endeavoured to
find a satisfactory answer to her often-repeated question, 'What I
would like to be?'  But I had no particular liking, that I could
discover, for anything.  If I could have been inspired with a
knowledge of the science of navigation, taken the command of a
fast-sailing expedition, and gone round the world on a triumphant
voyage of discovery, I think I might have considered myself
completely suited.  But, in the absence of any such miraculous
provision, my desire was to apply myself to some pursuit that would
not lie too heavily upon her purse; and to do my duty in it,
whatever it might be.

Mr. Dick had regularly assisted at our councils, with a meditative
and sage demeanour.  He never made a suggestion but once; and on
that occasion (I don't know what put it in his head), he suddenly
proposed that I should be 'a Brazier'.  My aunt received this
proposal so very ungraciously, that he never ventured on a second;
but ever afterwards confined himself to looking watchfully at her
for her suggestions, and rattling his money.

'Trot, I tell you what, my dear,' said my aunt, one morning in the
Christmas season when I left school: 'as this knotty point is still
unsettled, and as we must not make a mistake in our decision if we
can help it, I think we had better take a little breathing-time. 
In the meanwhile, you must try to look at it from a new point of
view, and not as a schoolboy.'

'I will, aunt.'

'It has occurred to me,' pursued my aunt, 'that a little change,
and a glimpse of life out of doors, may be useful in helping you to
know your own mind, and form a cooler judgement.  Suppose you were
to go down into the old part of the country again, for instance,
and see that - that out-of-the-way woman with the savagest of
names,' said my aunt, rubbing her nose, for she could never
thoroughly forgive Peggotty for being so called.

'Of all things in the world, aunt, I should like it best!'

'Well,' said my aunt, 'that's lucky, for I should like it too.  But
it's natural and rational that you should like it.  And I am very
well persuaded that whatever you do, Trot, will always be natural
and rational.'

'I hope so, aunt.'

'Your sister, Betsey Trotwood,' said my aunt, 'would have been as
natural and rational a girl as ever breathed.  You'll be worthy of
her, won't you?'

'I hope I shall be worthy of YOU, aunt.  That will be enough for
me.'

'It's a mercy that poor dear baby of a mother of yours didn't
live,' said my aunt, looking at me approvingly, 'or she'd have been
so vain of her boy by this time, that her soft little head would
have been completely turned, if there was anything of it left to
turn.'  (My aunt always excused any weakness of her own in my
behalf, by transferring it in this way to my poor mother.) 'Bless
me, Trotwood, how you do remind me of her!'

'Pleasantly, I hope, aunt?' said I.

'He's as like her, Dick,' said my aunt, emphatically, 'he's as like
her, as she was that afternoon before she began to fret - bless my
heart, he's as like her, as he can look at me out of his two eyes!'

'Is he indeed?' said Mr. Dick.

'And he's like David, too,' said my aunt, decisively.

'He is very like David!' said Mr. Dick.

'But what I want you to be, Trot,' resumed my aunt, '- I don't mean
physically, but morally; you are very well physically - is, a firm
fellow.  A fine firm fellow, with a will of your own.  With
resolution,' said my aunt, shaking her cap at me, and clenching her
hand.  'With determination.  With character, Trot - with strength
of character that is not to be influenced, except on good reason,
by anybody, or by anything.  That's what I want you to be.  That's
what your father and mother might both have been, Heaven knows, and
been the better for it.'

I intimated that I hoped I should be what she described.

'That you may begin, in a small way, to have a reliance upon
yourself, and to act for yourself,' said my aunt, 'I shall send you
upon your trip, alone.  I did think, once, of Mr. Dick's going with
you; but, on second thoughts, I shall keep him to take care of me.'

Mr. Dick, for a moment, looked a little disappointed; until the
honour and dignity of having to take care of the most wonderful
woman in the world, restored the sunshine to his face.

'Besides,' said my aunt, 'there's the Memorial -'

'Oh, certainly,' said Mr. Dick, in a hurry, 'I intend, Trotwood, to
get that done immediately - it really must be done immediately! 
And then it will go in, you know - and then -' said Mr. Dick, after
checking himself, and pausing a long time, 'there'll be a pretty
kettle of fish!'

In pursuance of my aunt's kind scheme, I was shortly afterwards
fitted out with a handsome purse of money, and a portmanteau, and
tenderly dismissed upon my expedition.  At parting, my aunt gave me
some good advice, and a good many kisses; and said that as her
object was that I should look about me, and should think a little,
she would recommend me to stay a few days in London, if I liked it,
either on my way down into Suffolk, or in coming back.  In a word,
I was at liberty to do what I would, for three weeks or a month;
and no other conditions were imposed upon my freedom than the
before-mentioned thinking and looking about me, and a pledge to
write three times a week and faithfully report myself.

I went to Canterbury first, that I might take leave of Agnes and
Mr. Wickfield (my old room in whose house I had not yet
relinquished), and also of the good Doctor.  Agnes was very glad to
see me, and told me that the house had not been like itself since
I had left it.

'I am sure I am not like myself when I am away,' said I.  'I seem
to want my right hand, when I miss you.  Though that's not saying
much; for there's no head in my right hand, and no heart.  Everyone
who knows you, consults with you, and is guided by you, Agnes.'

'Everyone who knows me, spoils me, I believe,' she answered,
smiling.

'No.  it's because you are like no one else.  You are so good, and
so sweet-tempered.  You have such a gentle nature, and you are
always right.'

'You talk,' said Agnes, breaking into a pleasant laugh, as she sat
at work, 'as if I were the late Miss Larkins.'

'Come!  It's not fair to abuse my confidence,' I answered,
reddening at the recollection of my blue enslaver.  'But I shall
confide in you, just the same, Agnes.  I can never grow out of
that.  Whenever I fall into trouble, or fall in love, I shall
always tell you, if you'll let me - even when I come to fall in
love in earnest.'

'Why, you have always been in earnest!' said Agnes, laughing again.

'Oh! that was as a child, or a schoolboy,' said I, laughing in my
turn, not without being a little shame-faced.  'Times are altering
now, and I suppose I shall be in a terrible state of earnestness
one day or other.  My wonder is, that you are not in earnest
yourself, by this time, Agnes.'

Agnes laughed again, and shook her head.

'Oh, I know you are not!' said I, 'because if you had been you
would have told me.  Or at least' - for I saw a faint blush in her
face, 'you would have let me find it out for myself.  But there is
no one that I know of, who deserves to love you, Agnes.  Someone of
a nobler character, and more worthy altogether than anyone I have
ever seen here, must rise up, before I give my consent.  In the
time to come, I shall have a wary eye on all admirers; and shall
exact a great deal from the successful one, I assure you.'

We had gone on, so far, in a mixture of confidential jest and
earnest, that had long grown naturally out of our familiar
relations, begun as mere children.  But Agnes, now suddenly lifting
up her eyes to mine, and speaking in a different manner, said:

'Trotwood, there is something that I want to ask you, and that I
may not have another opportunity of asking for a long time, perhaps
- something I would ask, I think, of no one else.  Have you
observed any gradual alteration in Papa?'

I had observed it, and had often wondered whether she had too.  I
must have shown as much, now, in my face; for her eyes were in a
moment cast down, and I saw tears in them.

'Tell me what it is,' she said, in a low voice.

'I think - shall I be quite plain, Agnes, liking him so much?'

'Yes,' she said.

'I think he does himself no good by the habit that has increased
upon him since I first came here.  He is often very nervous - or I
fancy so.'

'It is not fancy,' said Agnes, shaking her head.

'His hand trembles, his speech is not plain, and his eyes look
wild.  I have remarked that at those times, and when he is least
like himself, he is most certain to be wanted on some business.'

'By Uriah,' said Agnes.

'Yes; and the sense of being unfit for it, or of not having
understood it, or of having shown his condition in spite of
himself, seems to make him so uneasy, that next day he is worse,
and next day worse, and so he becomes jaded and haggard.  Do not be
alarmed by what I say, Agnes, but in this state I saw him, only the
other evening, lay down his head upon his desk, and shed tears like
a child.'

Her hand passed softly before my lips while I was yet speaking, and
in a moment she had met her father at the door of the room, and was
hanging on his shoulder.  The expression of her face, as they both
looked towards me, I felt to be very touching.  There was such deep
fondness for him, and gratitude to him for all his love and care,
in her beautiful look; and there was such a fervent appeal to me to
deal tenderly by him, even in my inmost thoughts, and to let no
harsh construction find any place against him; she was, at once, so
proud of him and devoted to him, yet so compassionate and sorry,
and so reliant upon me to be so, too; that nothing she could have
said would have expressed more to me, or moved me more.

We were to drink tea at the Doctor's.  We went there at the usual
hour; and round the study fireside found the Doctor, and his young
wife, and her mother.  The Doctor, who made as much of my going
away as if I were going to China, received me as an honoured guest;
and called for a log of wood to be thrown on the fire, that he
might see the face of his old pupil reddening in the blaze.

'I shall not see many more new faces in Trotwood's stead,
Wickfield,' said the Doctor, warming his hands; 'I am getting lazy,
and want ease.  I shall relinquish all my young people in another
six months, and lead a quieter life.'

'You have said so, any time these ten years, Doctor,' Mr. Wickfield
answered.

'But now I mean to do it,' returned the Doctor.  'My first master
will succeed me - I am in earnest at last - so you'll soon have to
arrange our contracts, and to bind us firmly to them, like a couple
of knaves.'

'And to take care,' said Mr. Wickfield, 'that you're not imposed
on, eh?  As you certainly would be, in any contract you should make
for yourself.  Well!  I am ready.  There are worse tasks than that,
in my calling.'

'I shall have nothing to think of then,' said the Doctor, with a
smile, 'but my Dictionary; and this other contract-bargain -
Annie.'

As Mr. Wickfield glanced towards her, sitting at the tea table by
Agnes, she seemed to me to avoid his look with such unwonted
hesitation and timidity, that his attention became fixed upon her,
as if something were suggested to his thoughts.

'There is a post come in from India, I observe,' he said, after a
short silence.

'By the by! and letters from Mr. Jack Maldon!' said the Doctor.

'Indeed!'
'Poor dear Jack!' said Mrs. Markleham, shaking her head.  'That
trying climate! - like living, they tell me, on a sand-heap,
underneath a burning-glass!  He looked strong, but he wasn't.  My
dear Doctor, it was his spirit, not his constitution, that he
ventured on so boldly.  Annie, my dear, I am sure you must
perfectly recollect that your cousin never was strong - not what
can be called ROBUST, you know,' said Mrs. Markleham, with
emphasis, and looking round upon us generally, '- from the time
when my daughter and himself were children together, and walking
about, arm-in-arm, the livelong day.'

Annie, thus addressed, made no reply.

'Do I gather from what you say, ma'am, that Mr. Maldon is ill?'
asked Mr.  Wickfield.

'Ill!' replied the Old Soldier.  'My dear sir, he's all sorts of
things.'

'Except well?' said Mr. Wickfield.

'Except well, indeed!' said the Old Soldier.  'He has had dreadful
strokes of the sun, no doubt, and jungle fevers and agues, and
every kind of thing you can mention.  As to his liver,' said the
Old Soldier resignedly, 'that, of course, he gave up altogether,
when he first went out!'

'Does he say all this?' asked Mr. Wickfield.

'Say?  My dear sir,' returned Mrs. Markleham, shaking her head and
her fan, 'you little know my poor Jack Maldon when you ask that
question.  Say?  Not he.  You might drag him at the heels of four
wild horses first.'

'Mama!' said Mrs. Strong.

'Annie, my dear,' returned her mother, 'once for all, I must really
beg that you will not interfere with me, unless it is to confirm
what I say.  You know as well as I do that your cousin Maldon would
be dragged at the heels of any number of wild horses - why should
I confine myself to four!  I WON'T confine myself to four - eight,
sixteen, two-and-thirty, rather than say anything calculated to
overturn the Doctor's plans.'

'Wickfield's plans,' said the Doctor, stroking his face, and
looking penitently at his adviser.  'That is to say, our joint
plans for him.  I said myself, abroad or at home.'

'And I said' added Mr. Wickfield gravely, 'abroad.  I was the means
of sending him abroad.  It's my responsibility.'

'Oh!  Responsibility!' said the Old Soldier.  'Everything was done
for the best, my dear Mr. Wickfield; everything was done for the
kindest and best, we know.  But if the dear fellow can't live
there, he can't live there.  And if he can't live there, he'll die
there, sooner than he'll overturn the Doctor's plans.  I know him,'
said the Old Soldier, fanning herself, in a sort of calm prophetic
agony, 'and I know he'll die there, sooner than he'll overturn the
Doctor's plans.'

'Well, well, ma'am,' said the Doctor cheerfully, 'I am not bigoted
to my plans, and I can overturn them myself.  I can substitute some
other plans.  If Mr. Jack Maldon comes home on account of ill
health, he must not be allowed to go back, and we must endeavour to
make some more suitable and fortunate provision for him in this
country.'

Mrs. Markleham was so overcome by this generous speech - which, I
need not say, she had not at all expected or led up to - that she
could only tell the Doctor it was like himself, and go several
times through that operation of kissing the sticks of her fan, and
then tapping his hand with it.  After which she gently chid her
daughter Annie, for not being more demonstrative when such
kindnesses were showered, for her sake, on her old playfellow; and
entertained us with some particulars concerning other deserving
members of her family, whom it was desirable to set on their
deserving legs.

All this time, her daughter Annie never once spoke, or lifted up
her eyes.  All this time, Mr. Wickfield had his glance upon her as
she sat by his own daughter's side.  It appeared to me that he
never thought of being observed by anyone; but was so intent upon
her, and upon his own thoughts in connexion with her, as to be
quite absorbed.  He now asked what Mr. Jack Maldon had actually
written in reference to himself, and to whom he had written?

'Why, here,' said Mrs. Markleham, taking a letter from the
chimney-piece above the Doctor's head, 'the dear fellow says to the
Doctor himself - where is it?  Oh! - "I am sorry to inform you that
my health is suffering severely, and that I fear I may be reduced
to the necessity of returning home for a time, as the only hope of
restoration." That's pretty plain, poor fellow!  His only hope of
restoration!  But Annie's letter is plainer still.  Annie, show me
that letter again.'

'Not now, mama,' she pleaded in a low tone.

'My dear, you absolutely are, on some subjects, one of the most
ridiculous persons in the world,' returned her mother, 'and perhaps
the most unnatural to the claims of your own family.  We never
should have heard of the letter at all, I believe, unless I had
asked for it myself.  Do you call that confidence, my love, towards
Doctor Strong?  I am surprised.  You ought to know better.'

The letter was reluctantly produced; and as I handed it to the old
lady, I saw how the unwilling hand from which I took it, trembled.

'Now let us see,' said Mrs. Markleham, putting her glass to her
eye, 'where the passage is.  "The remembrance of old times, my
dearest Annie" - and so forth - it's not there.  "The amiable old
Proctor" - who's he?  Dear me, Annie, how illegibly your cousin
Maldon writes, and how stupid I am!  "Doctor," of course.  Ah!
amiable indeed!' Here she left off, to kiss her fan again, and
shake it at the Doctor, who was looking at us in a state of placid
satisfaction.  'Now I have found it.  "You may not be surprised to
hear, Annie," - no, to be sure, knowing that he never was really
strong; what did I say just now? - "that I have undergone so much
in this distant place, as to have decided to leave it at all
hazards; on sick leave, if I can; on total resignation, if that is
not to be obtained.  What I have endured, and do endure here, is
insupportable." And but for the promptitude of that best of
creatures,' said Mrs. Markleham, telegraphing the Doctor as before,
and refolding the letter, 'it would be insupportable to me to think
of.'

Mr. Wickfield said not one word, though the old lady looked to him
as if for his commentary on this intelligence; but sat severely
silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground.  Long after the subject
was dismissed, and other topics occupied us, he remained so; seldom
raising his eyes, unless to rest them for a moment, with a
thoughtful frown, upon the Doctor, or his wife, or both.

The Doctor was very fond of music.  Agnes sang with great sweetness
and expression, and so did Mrs. Strong.  They sang together, and
played duets together, and we had quite a little concert.  But I
remarked two things: first, that though Annie soon recovered her
composure, and was quite herself, there was a blank between her and
Mr. Wickfield which separated them wholly from each other;
secondly, that Mr. Wickfield seemed to dislike the intimacy between
her and Agnes, and to watch it with uneasiness.  And now, I must
confess, the recollection of what I had seen on that night when Mr.
Maldon went away, first began to return upon me with a meaning it
had never had, and to trouble me.  The innocent beauty of her face
was not as innocent to me as it had been; I mistrusted the natural
grace and charm of her manner; and when I looked at Agnes by her
side, and thought how good and true Agnes was, suspicions arose
within me that it was an ill-assorted friendship.

She was so happy in it herself, however, and the other was so happy
too, that they made the evening fly away as if it were but an hour. 
It closed in an incident which I well remember.  They were taking
leave of each other, and Agnes was going to embrace her and kiss
her, when Mr. Wickfield stepped between them, as if by accident,
and drew Agnes quickly away.  Then I saw, as though all the
intervening time had been cancelled, and I were still standing in
the doorway on the night of the departure, the expression of that
night in the face of Mrs. Strong, as it confronted his.

I cannot say what an impression this made upon me, or how
impossible I found it, when I thought of her afterwards, to
separate her from this look, and remember her face in its innocent
loveliness again.  It haunted me when I got home.  I seemed to have
left the Doctor's roof with a dark cloud lowering on it.  The
reverence that I had for his grey head, was mingled with
commiseration for his faith in those who were treacherous to him,
and with resentment against those who injured him.  The impending
shadow of a great affliction, and a great disgrace that had no
distinct form in it yet, fell like a stain upon the quiet place
where I had worked and played as a boy, and did it a cruel wrong. 
I had no pleasure in thinking, any more, of the grave old
broad-leaved aloe-trees, which remained shut up in themselves a
hundred years together, and of the trim smooth grass-plot, and the
stone urns, and the Doctor's walk, and the congenial sound of the
Cathedral bell hovering above them all.  It was as if the tranquil
sanctuary of my boyhood had been sacked before my face, and its
peace and honour given to the winds.

But morning brought with it my parting from the old house, which
Agnes had filled with her influence; and that occupied my mind
sufficiently.  I should be there again soon, no doubt; I might
sleep again - perhaps often - in my old room; but the days of my
inhabiting there were gone, and the old time was past.  I was
heavier at heart when I packed up such of my books and clothes as
still remained there to be sent to Dover, than I cared to show to
Uriah Heep; who was so officious to help me, that I uncharitably
thought him mighty glad that I was going.

I got away from Agnes and her father, somehow, with an indifferent
show of being very manly, and took my seat upon the box of the
London coach.  I was so softened and forgiving, going through the
town, that I had half a mind to nod to my old enemy the butcher,
and throw him five shillings to drink.  But he looked such a very
obdurate butcher as he stood scraping the great block in the shop,
and moreover, his appearance was so little improved by the loss of
a front tooth which I had knocked out, that I thought it best to
make no advances.

The main object on my mind, I remember, when we got fairly on the
road, was to appear as old as possible to the coachman, and to
speak extremely gruff.  The latter point I achieved at great
personal inconvenience; but I stuck to it, because I felt it was a
grown-up sort of thing.

'You are going through, sir?' said the coachman.

'Yes, William,' I said, condescendingly (I knew him); 'I am going
to London.  I shall go down into Suffolk afterwards.'

'Shooting, sir?' said the coachman.

He knew as well as I did that it was just as likely, at that time
of year, I was going down there whaling; but I felt complimented,
too.

'I don't know,' I said, pretending to be undecided, 'whether I
shall take a shot or not.'
'Birds is got wery shy, I'm told,' said William.

'So I understand,' said I.

'Is Suffolk your county, sir?' asked William.

'Yes,' I said, with some importance.  'Suffolk's my county.'

'I'm told the dumplings is uncommon fine down there,' said William.

I was not aware of it myself, but I felt it necessary to uphold the
institutions of my county, and to evince a familiarity with them;
so I shook my head, as much as to say, 'I believe you!'

'And the Punches,' said William.  'There's cattle!  A Suffolk
Punch, when he's a good un, is worth his weight in gold.  Did you
ever breed any Suffolk Punches yourself, sir?'

'N-no,' I said, 'not exactly.'

'Here's a gen'lm'n behind me, I'll pound it,' said William, 'as has
bred 'em by wholesale.'

The gentleman spoken of was a gentleman with a very unpromising
squint, and a prominent chin, who had a tall white hat on with a
narrow flat brim, and whose close-fitting drab trousers seemed to
button all the way up outside his legs from his boots to his hips. 
His chin was cocked over the coachman's shoulder, so near to me,
that his breath quite tickled the back of my head; and as I looked
at him, he leered at the leaders with the eye with which he didn't
squint, in a very knowing manner.

'Ain't you?' asked William.

'Ain't I what?' said the gentleman behind.

'Bred them Suffolk Punches by wholesale?'

'I should think so,' said the gentleman.  'There ain't no sort of
orse that I ain't bred, and no sort of dorg.  Orses and dorgs is
some men's fancy.  They're wittles and drink to me - lodging, wife,
and children - reading, writing, and Arithmetic - snuff, tobacker,
and sleep.'

'That ain't a sort of man to see sitting behind a coach-box, is it
though?' said William in my ear, as he handled the reins.

I construed this remark into an indication of a wish that he should
have my place, so I blushingly offered to resign it.

'Well, if you don't mind, sir,' said William, 'I think it would be
more correct.'

I have always considered this as the first fall I had in life. 
When I booked my place at the coach office I had had 'Box Seat'
written against the entry, and had given the book-keeper
half-a-crown.  I was got up in a special great-coat and shawl,
expressly to do honour to that distinguished eminence; had
glorified myself upon it a good deal; and had felt that I was a
credit to the coach.  And here, in the very first stage, I was
supplanted by a shabby man with a squint, who had no other merit
than smelling like a livery-stables, and being able to walk across
me, more like a fly than a human being, while the horses were at a
canter!

A distrust of myself, which has often beset me in life on small
occasions, when it would have been better away, was assuredly not
stopped in its growth by this little incident outside the
Canterbury coach.  It was in vain to take refuge in gruffness of
speech.  I spoke from the pit of my stomach for the rest of the
journey, but I felt completely extinguished, and dreadfully young.

It was curious and interesting, nevertheless, to be sitting up
there behind four horses: well educated, well dressed, and with
plenty of money in my pocket; and to look out for the places where
I had slept on my weary journey.  I had abundant occupation for my
thoughts, in every conspicuous landmark on the road.  When I looked
down at the trampers whom we passed, and saw that well-remembered
style of face turned up, I felt as if the tinker's blackened hand
were in the bosom of my shirt again.  When we clattered through the
narrow street of Chatham, and I caught a glimpse, in passing, of
the lane where the old monster lived who had bought my jacket, I
stretched my neck eagerly to look for the place where I had sat, in
the sun and in the shade, waiting for my money.  When we came, at
last, within a stage of London, and passed the veritable Salem
House where Mr. Creakle had laid about him with a heavy hand, I
would have given all I had, for lawful permission to get down and
thrash him, and let all the boys out like so many caged sparrows.

We went to the Golden Cross at Charing Cross, then a mouldy sort of
establishment in a close neighbourhood.  A waiter showed me into
the coffee-room; and a chambermaid introduced me to my small
bedchamber, which smelt like a hackney-coach, and was shut up like
a family vault.  I was still painfully conscious of my youth, for
nobody stood in any awe of me at all: the chambermaid being utterly
indifferent to my opinions on any subject, and the waiter being
familiar with me, and offering advice to my inexperience.

'Well now,' said the waiter, in a tone of confidence, 'what would
you like for dinner?  Young gentlemen likes poultry in general:
have a fowl!'

I told him, as majestically as I could, that I wasn't in the humour
for a fowl.

'Ain't you?' said the waiter.  'Young gentlemen is generally tired
of beef and mutton: have a weal cutlet!'

I assented to this proposal, in default of being able to suggest
anything else.

'Do you care for taters?' said the waiter, with an insinuating
smile, and his head on one side.  'Young gentlemen generally has
been overdosed with taters.'

I commanded him, in my deepest voice, to order a veal cutlet and
potatoes, and all things fitting; and to inquire at the bar if
there were any letters for Trotwood Copperfield, Esquire - which I
knew there were not, and couldn't be, but thought it manly to
appear to expect.

He soon came back to say that there were none (at which I was much
surprised) and began to lay the cloth for my dinner in a box by the
fire.  While he was so engaged, he asked me what I would take with
it; and on my replying 'Half a pint of sherry,'thought it a
favourable opportunity, I am afraid, to extract that measure of
wine from the stale leavings at the bottoms of several small
decanters.  I am of this opinion, because, while I was reading the
newspaper, I observed him behind a low wooden partition, which was
his private apartment, very busy pouring out of a number of those
vessels into one, like a chemist and druggist making up a
prescription.  When the wine came, too, I thought it flat; and it
certainly had more English crumbs in it, than were to be expected
in a foreign wine in anything like a pure state, but I was bashful
enough to drink it, and say nothing.

Being then in a pleasant frame of mind (from which I infer that
poisoning is not always disagreeable in some stages of the
process), I resolved to go to the play.  It was Covent Garden
Theatre that I chose; and there, from the back of a centre box, I
saw Julius Caesar and the new Pantomime.  To have all those noble
Romans alive before me, and walking in and out for my
entertainment, instead of being the stern taskmasters they had been
at school, was a most novel and delightful effect.  But the mingled
reality and mystery of the whole show, the influence upon me of the
poetry, the lights, the music, the company, the smooth stupendous
changes of glittering and brilliant scenery, were so dazzling, and
opened up such illimitable regions of delight, that when I came out
into the rainy street, at twelve o'clock at night, I felt as if I
had come from the clouds, where I had been leading a romantic life
for ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted,
umbrella-struggling, hackney-coach-jostling, patten-clinking,
muddy, miserable world.

I had emerged by another door, and stood in the street for a little
while, as if I really were a stranger upon earth: but the
unceremonious pushing and hustling that I received, soon recalled
me to myself, and put me in the road back to the hotel; whither I
went, revolving the glorious vision all the way; and where, after
some porter and oysters, I sat revolving it still, at past one
o'clock, with my eyes on the coffee-room fire.

I was so filled with the play, and with the past - for it was, in
a manner, like a shining transparency, through which I saw my
earlier life moving along - that I don't know when the figure of a
handsome well-formed young man dressed with a tasteful easy
negligence which I have reason to remember very well, became a real
presence to me.  But I recollect being conscious of his company
without having noticed his coming in - and my still sitting,
musing, over the coffee-room fire.

At last I rose to go to bed, much to the relief of the sleepy
waiter, who had got the fidgets in his legs, and was twisting them,
and hitting them, and putting them through all kinds of contortions
in his small pantry.  In going towards the door, I passed the
person who had come in, and saw him plainly.  I turned directly,
came back, and looked again.  He did not know me, but I knew him in
a moment.

At another time I might have wanted the confidence or the decision
to speak to him, and might have put it off until next day, and
might have lost him.  But, in the then condition of my mind, where
the play was still running high, his former protection of me
appeared so deserving of my gratitude, and my old love for him
overflowed my breast so freshly and spontaneously, that I went up
to him at once, with a fast-beating heart, and said:

'Steerforth! won't you speak to me?'

He looked at me - just as he used to look, sometimes -but I saw no
recognition in his face.

'You don't remember me, I am afraid,' said I.

'My God!' he suddenly exclaimed.  'It's little Copperfield!'

I grasped him by both hands, and could not let them go.  But for
very shame, and the fear that it might displease him, I could have
held him round the neck and cried.

'I never, never, never was so glad!  My dear Steerforth, I am so
overjoyed to see you!'

'And I am rejoiced to see you, too!' he said, shaking my hands
heartily.  'Why, Copperfield, old boy, don't be overpowered!' And
yet he was glad, too, I thought, to see how the delight I had in
meeting him affected me.

I brushed away the tears that my utmost resolution had not been
able to keep back, and I made a clumsy laugh of it, and we sat down
together, side by side.

'Why, how do you come to be here?' said Steerforth, clapping me on
the shoulder.

'I came here by the Canterbury coach, today.  I have been adopted
by an aunt down in that part of the country, and have just finished
my education there.  How do YOU come to be here, Steerforth?'

'Well, I am what they call an Oxford man,' he returned; 'that is to
say, I get bored to death down there, periodically - and I am on my
way now to my mother's.  You're a devilish amiable-looking fellow,
Copperfield.  just what you used to be, now I look at you!  Not
altered in the least!'

'I knew you immediately,' I said; 'but you are more easily
remembered.'

He laughed as he ran his hand through the clustering curls of his
hair, and said gaily:

'Yes, I am on an expedition of duty.  My mother lives a little way
out of town; and the roads being in a beastly condition, and our
house tedious enough, I remained here tonight instead of going on. 
I have not been in town half-a-dozen hours, and those I have been
dozing and grumbling away at the play.'

'I have been at the play, too,' said I.  'At Covent Garden.  What
a delightful and magnificent entertainment, Steerforth!'

Steerforth laughed heartily.

'My dear young Davy,' he said, clapping me on the shoulder again,
'you are a very Daisy.  The daisy of the field, at sunrise, is not
fresher than you are.  I have been at Covent Garden, too, and there
never was a more miserable business.  Holloa, you sir!'

This was addressed to the waiter, who had been very attentive to
our recognition, at a distance, and now came forward deferentially.

'Where have you put my friend, Mr. Copperfield?' said Steerforth.

'Beg your pardon, sir?'

'Where does he sleep?  What's his number?  You know what I mean,'
said Steerforth.

'Well, sir,' said the waiter, with an apologetic air.  'Mr.
Copperfield is at present in forty-four, sir.'

'And what the devil do you mean,' retorted Steerforth, 'by putting
Mr. Copperfield into a little loft over a stable?'

'Why, you see we wasn't aware, sir,' returned the waiter, still
apologetically, 'as Mr. Copperfield was anyways particular.  We can
give Mr. Copperfield seventy-two, sir, if it would be preferred. 
Next you, sir.'

'Of course it would be preferred,' said Steerforth.  'And do it at
once.'
The waiter immediately withdrew to make the exchange.  Steerforth,
very much amused at my having been put into forty-four, laughed
again, and clapped me on the shoulder again, and invited me to
breakfast with him next morning at ten o'clock - an invitation I
was only too proud and happy to accept.  It being now pretty late,
we took our candles and went upstairs, where we parted with
friendly heartiness at his door, and where I found my new room a
great improvement on my old one, it not being at all musty, and
having an immense four-post bedstead in it, which was quite a
little landed estate.  Here, among pillows enough for six, I soon
fell asleep in a blissful condition, and dreamed of ancient Rome,
Steerforth, and friendship, until the early morning coaches,
rumbling out of the archway underneath, made me dream of thunder
and the gods.

CHAPTER 20
STEERFORTH'S HOME

When the chambermaid tapped at my door at eight o'clock, and
informed me that my shaving-water was outside, I felt severely the
having no occasion for it, and blushed in my bed.  The suspicion
that she laughed too, when she said it, preyed upon my mind all the
time I was dressing; and gave me, I was conscious, a sneaking and
guilty air when I passed her on the staircase, as I was going down
to breakfast.  I was so sensitively aware, indeed, of being younger
than I could have wished, that for some time I could not make up my
mind to pass her at all, under the ignoble circumstances of the
case; but, hearing her there with a broom, stood peeping out of
window at King Charles on horseback, surrounded by a maze of
hackney-coaches, and looking anything but regal in a drizzling rain
and a dark-brown fog, until I was admonished by the waiter that the
gentleman was waiting for me.

It was not in the coffee-room that I found Steerforth expecting me,
but in a snug private apartment, red-curtained and Turkey-carpeted,
where the fire burnt bright, and a fine hot breakfast was set forth
on a table covered with a clean cloth; and a cheerful miniature of
the room, the fire, the breakfast, Steerforth, and all, was shining
in the little round mirror over the sideboard.  I was rather
bashful at first, Steerforth being so self-possessed, and elegant,
and superior to me in all respects (age included); but his easy
patronage soon put that to rights, and made me quite at home.  I
could not enough admire the change he had wrought in the Golden
Cross; or compare the dull forlorn state I had held yesterday, with
this morning's comfort and this morning's entertainment.  As to the
waiter's familiarity, it was quenched as if it had never been.  He
attended on us, as I may say, in sackcloth and ashes.

'Now, Copperfield,' said Steerforth, when we were alone, 'I should
like to hear what you are doing, and where you are going, and all
about you.  I feel as if you were my property.'
Glowing with pleasure to find that he had still this interest in
me, I told him how my aunt had proposed the little expedition that
I had before me, and whither it tended.

'As you are in no hurry, then,' said Steerforth, 'come home with me
to Highgate, and stay a day or two.  You will be pleased with my
mother - she is a little vain and prosy about me, but that you can
forgive her - and she will be pleased with you.'

'I should like to be as sure of that, as you are kind enough to say
you are,' I answered, smiling.

'Oh!' said Steerforth, 'everyone who likes me, has a claim on her
that is sure to be acknowledged.'

'Then I think I shall be a favourite,' said I.

'Good!' said Steerforth.  'Come and prove it.  We will go and see
the lions for an hour or two - it's something to have a fresh
fellow like you to show them to, Copperfield - and then we'll
journey out to Highgate by the coach.'

I could hardly believe but that I was in a dream, and that I should
wake presently in number forty-four, to the solitary box in the
coffee-room and the familiar waiter again.  After I had written to
my aunt and told her of my fortunate meeting with my admired old
schoolfellow, and my acceptance of his invitation, we went out in
a hackney-chariot, and saw a Panorama and some other sights, and
took a walk through the Museum, where I could not help observing
how much Steerforth knew, on an infinite variety of subjects, and
of how little account he seemed to make his knowledge.

'You'll take a high degree at college, Steerforth,' said I, 'if you
have not done so already; and they will have good reason to be
proud of you.'

'I take a degree!' cried Steerforth.  'Not I! my dear Daisy - will
you mind my calling you Daisy?'

'Not at all!' said I.

'That's a good fellow!  My dear Daisy,' said Steerforth, laughing. 
'I have not the least desire or intention to distinguish myself in
that way.  I have done quite sufficient for my purpose.  I find
that I am heavy company enough for myself as I am.'

'But the fame -' I was beginning.

'You romantic Daisy!' said Steerforth, laughing still more
heartily: 'why should I trouble myself, that a parcel of
heavy-headed fellows may gape and hold up their hands?  Let them do
it at some other man.  There's fame for him, and he's welcome to
it.'

I was abashed at having made so great a mistake, and was glad to
change the subject.  Fortunately it was not difficult to do, for
Steerforth could always pass from one subject to another with a
carelessness and lightness that were his own.

Lunch succeeded to our sight-seeing, and the short winter day wore
away so fast, that it was dusk when the stage-coach stopped with us
at an old brick house at Highgate on the summit of the hill.  An
elderly lady, though not very far advanced in years, with a proud
carriage and a handsome face, was in the doorway as we alighted;
and greeting Steerforth as 'My dearest James,' folded him in her
arms.  To this lady he presented me as his mother, and she gave me
a stately welcome.

It was a genteel old-fashioned house, very quiet and orderly.  From
the windows of my room I saw all London lying in the distance like
a great vapour, with here and there some lights twinkling through
it.  I had only time, in dressing, to glance at the solid
furniture, the framed pieces of work (done, I supposed, by
Steerforth's mother when she was a girl), and some pictures in
crayons of ladies with powdered hair and bodices, coming and going
on the walls, as the newly-kindled fire crackled and sputtered,
when I was called to dinner.

There was a second lady in the dining-room, of a slight short
figure, dark, and not agreeable to look at, but with some
appearance of good looks too, who attracted my attention: perhaps
because I had not expected to see her; perhaps because I found
myself sitting opposite to her; perhaps because of something really
remarkable in her.  She had black hair and eager black eyes, and
was thin, and had a scar upon her lip.  It was an old scar - I
should rather call it seam, for it was not discoloured, and had
healed years ago - which had once cut through her mouth, downward
towards the chin, but was now barely visible across the table,
except above and on her upper lip, the shape of which it had
altered.  I concluded in my own mind that she was about thirty
years of age, and that she wished to be married.  She was a little
dilapidated - like a house - with having been so long to let; yet
had, as I have said, an appearance of good looks.  Her thinness
seemed to be the effect of some wasting fire within her, which
found a vent in her gaunt eyes.

She was introduced as Miss Dartle, and both Steerforth and his
mother called her Rosa.  I found that she lived there, and had been
for a long time Mrs. Steerforth's companion.  It appeared to me
that she never said anything she wanted to say, outright; but
hinted it, and made a great deal more of it by this practice.  For
example, when Mrs. Steerforth observed, more in jest than earnest,
that she feared her son led but a wild life at college, Miss Dartle
put in thus:

'Oh, really?  You know how ignorant I am, and that I only ask for
information, but isn't it always so?  I thought that kind of life
was on all hands understood to be - eh?'
'It is education for a very grave profession, if you mean that,
Rosa,' Mrs. Steerforth answered with some coldness.

'Oh!  Yes!  That's very true,' returned Miss Dartle.  'But isn't
it, though? - I want to be put right, if I am wrong - isn't it,
really?'

'Really what?' said Mrs. Steerforth.

'Oh!  You mean it's not!' returned Miss Dartle.  'Well, I'm very
glad to hear it!  Now, I know what to do!  That's the advantage of
asking.  I shall never allow people to talk before me about
wastefulness and profligacy, and so forth, in connexion with that
life, any more.'

'And you will be right,' said Mrs. Steerforth.  'My son's tutor is
a conscientious gentleman; and if I had not implicit reliance on my
son, I should have reliance on him.'

'Should you?' said Miss Dartle.  'Dear me!  Conscientious, is he? 
Really conscientious, now?'

'Yes, I am convinced of it,' said Mrs. Steerforth.

'How very nice!' exclaimed Miss Dartle.  'What a comfort!  Really
conscientious?  Then he's not - but of course he can't be, if he's
really conscientious.  Well, I shall be quite happy in my opinion
of him, from this time.  You can't think how it elevates him in my
opinion, to know for certain that he's really conscientious!'

Her own views of every question, and her correction of everything
that was said to which she was opposed, Miss Dartle insinuated in
the same way: sometimes, I could not conceal from myself, with
great power, though in contradiction even of Steerforth.  An
instance happened before dinner was done.  Mrs. Steerforth speaking
to me about my intention of going down into Suffolk, I said at
hazard how glad I should be, if Steerforth would only go there with
me; and explaining to him that I was going to see my old nurse, and
Mr. Peggotty's family, I reminded him of the boatman whom he had
seen at school.

'Oh!  That bluff fellow!' said Steerforth.  'He had a son with him,
hadn't he?'

'No.  That was his nephew,' I replied; 'whom he adopted, though, as
a son.  He has a very pretty little niece too, whom he adopted as
a daughter.  In short, his house - or rather his boat, for he lives
in one, on dry land - is full of people who are objects of his
generosity and kindness.  You would be delighted to see that
household.'

'Should I?' said Steerforth.  'Well, I think I should.  I must see
what can be done.  It would be worth a journey (not to mention the
pleasure of a journey with you, Daisy), to see that sort of people
together, and to make one of 'em.'

My heart leaped with a new hope of pleasure.  But it was in
reference to the tone in which he had spoken of 'that sort of
people', that Miss Dartle, whose sparkling eyes had been watchful
of us, now broke in again.

'Oh, but, really?  Do tell me.  Are they, though?' she said.

'Are they what?  And are who what?' said Steerforth.

'That sort of people.  - Are they really animals and clods, and
beings of another order?  I want to know SO much.'

'Why, there's a pretty wide separation between them and us,' said
Steerforth, with indifference.  'They are not to be expected to be
as sensitive as we are.  Their delicacy is not to be shocked, or
hurt easily.  They are wonderfully virtuous, I dare say - some
people contend for that, at least; and I am sure I don't want to
contradict them - but they have not very fine natures, and they may
be thankful that, like their coarse rough skins, they are not
easily wounded.'

'Really!' said Miss Dartle.  'Well, I don't know, now, when I have
been better pleased than to hear that.  It's so consoling!  It's
such a delight to know that, when they suffer, they don't feel!
Sometimes I have been quite uneasy for that sort of people; but now
I shall just dismiss the idea of them, altogether.  Live and learn. 
I had my doubts, I confess, but now they're cleared up.  I didn't
know, and now I do know, and that shows the advantage of asking -
don't it?'

I believed that Steerforth had said what he had, in jest, or to
draw Miss Dartle out; and I expected him to say as much when she
was gone, and we two were sitting before the fire.  But he merely
asked me what I thought of her.

'She is very clever, is she not?' I asked.

'Clever!  She brings everything to a grindstone,' said Steerforth,
and sharpens it, as she has sharpened her own face and figure these
years past.  She has worn herself away by constant sharpening.  She
is all edge.'

'What a remarkable scar that is upon her lip!' I said.

Steerforth's face fell, and he paused a moment.

'Why, the fact is,' he returned, 'I did that.'

'By an unfortunate accident!'

'No.  I was a young boy, and she exasperated me, and I threw a
hammer at her.  A promising young angel I must have been!'
I was deeply sorry to have touched on such a painful theme, but
that was useless now.

'She has borne the mark ever since, as you see,' said Steerforth;
'and she'll bear it to her grave, if she ever rests in one - though
I can hardly believe she will ever rest anywhere.  She was the
motherless child of a sort of cousin of my father's.  He died one
day.  My mother, who was then a widow, brought her here to be
company to her.  She has a couple of thousand pounds of her own,
and saves the interest of it every year, to add to the principal. 
There's the history of Miss Rosa Dartle for you.'

'And I have no doubt she loves you like a brother?' said I.

'Humph!' retorted Steerforth, looking at the fire.  'Some brothers
are not loved over much; and some love - but help yourself,
Copperfield!  We'll drink the daisies of the field, in compliment
to you; and the lilies of the valley that toil not, neither do they
spin, in compliment to me - the more shame for me!' A moody smile
that had overspread his features cleared off as he said this
merrily, and he was his own frank, winning self again.

I could not help glancing at the scar with a painful interest when
we went in to tea.  It was not long before I observed that it was
the most susceptible part of her face, and that, when she turned
pale, that mark altered first, and became a dull, lead-coloured
streak, lengthening out to its full extent, like a mark in
invisible ink brought to the fire.  There was a little altercation
between her and Steerforth about a cast of the dice at back gammon
- when I thought her, for one moment, in a storm of rage; and then
I saw it start forth like the old writing on the wall.

It was no matter of wonder to me to find Mrs. Steerforth devoted to
her son.  She seemed to be able to speak or think about nothing
else.  She showed me his picture as an infant, in a locket, with
some of his baby-hair in it; she showed me his picture as he had
been when I first knew him; and she wore at her breast his picture
as he was now.  All the letters he had ever written to her, she
kept in a cabinet near her own chair by the fire; and she would
have read me some of them, and I should have been very glad to hear
them too, if he had not interposed, and coaxed her out of the
design.

'It was at Mr. Creakle's, my son tells me, that you first became
acquainted,' said Mrs. Steerforth, as she and I were talking at one
table, while they played backgammon at another.  'Indeed, I
recollect his speaking, at that time, of a pupil younger than
himself who had taken his fancy there; but your name, as you may
suppose, has not lived in my memory.'

'He was very generous and noble to me in those days, I assure you,
ma'am,' said I, 'and I stood in need of such a friend.  I should
have been quite crushed without him.'

'He is always generous and noble,' said Mrs. Steerforth, proudly.

I subscribed to this with all my heart, God knows.  She knew I did;
for the stateliness of her manner already abated towards me, except
when she spoke in praise of him, and then her air was always lofty.

'It was not a fit school generally for my son,' said she; 'far from
it; but there were particular circumstances to be considered at the
time, of more importance even than that selection.  My son's high
spirit made it desirable that he should be placed with some man who
felt its superiority, and would be content to bow himself before
it; and we found such a man there.'

I knew that, knowing the fellow.  And yet I did not despise him the
more for it, but thought it a redeeming quality in him if he could
be allowed any grace for not resisting one so irresistible as
Steerforth.

'My son's great capacity was tempted on, there, by a feeling of
voluntary emulation and conscious pride,' the fond lady went on to
say.  'He would have risen against all constraint; but he found
himself the monarch of the place, and he haughtily determined to be
worthy of his station.  It was like himself.'

I echoed, with all my heart and soul, that it was like himself.

'So my son took, of his own will, and on no compulsion, to the
course in which he can always, when it is his pleasure, outstrip
every competitor,' she pursued.  'My son informs me, Mr.
Copperfield, that you were quite devoted to him, and that when you
met yesterday you made yourself known to him with tears of joy.  I
should be an affected woman if I made any pretence of being
surprised by my son's inspiring such emotions; but I cannot be
indifferent to anyone who is so sensible of his merit, and I am
very glad to see you here, and can assure you that he feels an
unusual friendship for you, and that you may rely on his
protection.'

Miss Dartle played backgammon as eagerly as she did everything
else.  If I had seen her, first, at the board, I should have
fancied that her figure had got thin, and her eyes had got large,
over that pursuit, and no other in the world.  But I am very much
mistaken if she missed a word of this, or lost a look of mine as I
received it with the utmost pleasure, and honoured by Mrs.
Steerforth's confidence, felt older than I had done since I left
Canterbury.

When the evening was pretty far spent, and a tray of glasses and
decanters came in, Steerforth promised, over the fire, that he
would seriously think of going down into the country with me. 
There was no hurry, he said; a week hence would do; and his mother
hospitably said the same.  While we were talking, he more than once
called me Daisy; which brought Miss Dartle out again.

'But really, Mr. Copperfield,' she asked, 'is it a nickname?  And
why does he give it you?  Is it - eh? - because he thinks you young
and innocent?  I am so stupid in these things.'

I coloured in replying that I believed it was.

'Oh!' said Miss Dartle.  'Now I am glad to know that!  I ask for
information, and I am glad to know it.  He thinks you young and
innocent; and so you are his friend.  Well, that's quite
delightful!'

She went to bed soon after this, and Mrs. Steerforth retired too. 
Steerforth and I, after lingering for half-an-hour over the fire,
talking about Traddles and all the rest of them at old Salem House,
went upstairs together.  Steerforth's room was next to mine, and I
went in to look at it.  It was a picture of comfort, full of
easy-chairs, cushions and footstools, worked by his mother's hand,
and with no sort of thing omitted that could help to render it
complete.  Finally, her handsome features looked down on her
darling from a portrait on the wall, as if it were even something
to her that her likeness should watch him while he slept.

I found the fire burning clear enough in my room by this time, and
the curtains drawn before the windows and round the bed, giving it
a very snug appearance.  I sat down in a great chair upon the
hearth to meditate on my happiness; and had enjoyed the
contemplation of it for some time, when I found a likeness of Miss
Dartle looking eagerly at me from above the chimney-piece.

It was a startling likeness, and necessarily had a startling look. 
The painter hadn't made the scar, but I made it; and there it was,
coming and going; now confined to the upper lip as I had seen it at
dinner, and now showing the whole extent of the wound inflicted by
the hammer, as I had seen it when she was passionate.

I wondered peevishly why they couldn't put her anywhere else
instead of quartering her on me.  To get rid of her, I undressed
quickly, extinguished my light, and went to bed.  But, as I fell
asleep, I could not forget that she was still there looking, 'Is it
really, though?  I want to know'; and when I awoke in the night, I
found that I was uneasily asking all sorts of people in my dreams
whether it really was or not - without knowing what I meant.

CHAPTER 21
LITTLE EM'LY

There was a servant in that house, a man who, I understood, was
usually with Steerforth, and had come into his service at the
University, who was in appearance a pattern of respectability.  I
believe there never existed in his station a more
respectable-looking man.  He was taciturn, soft-footed, very quiet
in his manner, deferential, observant, always at hand when wanted,
and never near when not wanted; but his great claim to
consideration was his respectability.  He had not a pliant face, he
had rather a stiff neck, rather a tight smooth head with short hair
clinging to it at the sides, a soft way of speaking, with a
peculiar habit of whispering the letter S so distinctly, that he
seemed to use it oftener than any other man; but every peculiarity
that he had he made respectable.  If his nose had been upside-down,
he would have made that respectable.  He surrounded himself with an
atmosphere of respectability, and walked secure in it.  It would
have been next to impossible to suspect him of anything wrong, he
was so thoroughly respectable.  Nobody could have thought of
putting him in a livery, he was so highly respectable.  To have
imposed any derogatory work upon him, would have been to inflict a
wanton insult on the feelings of a most respectable man.  And of
this, I noticed- the women-servants in the household were so
intuitively conscious, that they always did such work themselves,
and generally while he read the paper by the pantry fire.

Such a self-contained man I never saw.  But in that quality, as in
every other he possessed, he only seemed to be the more
respectable.  Even the fact that no one knew his Christian name,
seemed to form a part of his respectability.  Nothing could be
objected against his surname, Littimer, by which he was known. 
Peter might have been hanged, or Tom transported; but Littimer was
perfectly respectable.

It was occasioned, I suppose, by the reverend nature of
respectability in the abstract, but I felt particularly young in
this man's presence.  How old he was himself, I could not guess -
and that again went to his credit on the same score; for in the
calmness of respectability he might have numbered fifty years as
well as thirty.

Littimer was in my room in the morning before I was up, to bring me
that reproachful shaving-water, and to put out my clothes.  When I
undrew the curtains and looked out of bed, I saw him, in an equable
temperature of respectability, unaffected by the east wind of
January, and not even breathing frostily, standing my boots right
and left in the first dancing position, and blowing specks of dust
off my coat as he laid it down like a baby.

I gave him good morning, and asked him what o'clock it was.  He
took out of his pocket the most respectable hunting-watch I ever
saw, and preventing the spring with his thumb from opening far,
looked in at the face as if he were consulting an oracular oyster,
shut it up again, and said, if I pleased, it was half past eight.

'Mr. Steerforth will be glad to hear how you have rested, sir.'

'Thank you,' said I, 'very well indeed.  Is Mr. Steerforth quite
well?'

'Thank you, sir, Mr. Steerforth is tolerably well.'  Another of his
characteristics - no use of superlatives.  A cool calm medium
always.

'Is there anything more I can have the honour of doing for you,
sir?  The warning-bell will ring at nine; the family take breakfast
at half past nine.'

'Nothing, I thank you.'

'I thank YOU, sir, if you please'; and with that, and with a little
inclination of his head when he passed the bed-side, as an apology
for correcting me, he went out, shutting the door as delicately as
if I had just fallen into a sweet sleep on which my life depended.

Every morning we held exactly this conversation: never any more,
and never any less: and yet, invariably, however far I might have
been lifted out of myself over-night, and advanced towards maturer
years, by Steerforth's companionship, or Mrs. Steerforth's
confidence, or Miss Dartle's conversation, in the presence of this
most respectable man I became, as our smaller poets sing, 'a boy
again'.

He got horses for us; and Steerforth, who knew everything, gave me
lessons in riding.  He provided foils for us, and Steerforth gave
me lessons in fencing - gloves, and I began, of the same master, to
improve in boxing.  It gave me no manner of concern that Steerforth
should find me a novice in these sciences, but I never could bear
to show my want of skill before the respectable Littimer.  I had no
reason to believe that Littimer understood such arts himself; he
never led me to suppose anything of the kind, by so much as the
vibration of one of his respectable eyelashes; yet whenever he was
by, while we were practising, I felt myself the greenest and most
inexperienced of mortals.

I am particular about this man, because he made a particular effect
on me at that time, and because of what took place thereafter.

The week passed away in a most delightful manner.  It passed
rapidly, as may be supposed, to one entranced as I was; and yet it
gave me so many occasions for knowing Steerforth better, and
admiring him more in a thousand respects, that at its close I
seemed to have been with him for a much longer time.  A dashing way
he had of treating me like a plaything, was more agreeable to me
than any behaviour he could have adopted.  It reminded me of our
old acquaintance; it seemed the natural sequel of it; it showed me
that he was unchanged; it relieved me of any uneasiness I might
have felt, in comparing my merits with his, and measuring my claims
upon his friendship by any equal standard; above all, it was a
familiar, unrestrained, affectionate demeanour that he used towards
no one else.  As he had treated me at school differently from all
the rest, I joyfully believed that he treated me in life unlike any
other friend he had.  I believed that I was nearer to his heart
than any other friend, and my own heart warmed with attachment to
him.
He made up his mind to go with me into the country, and the day
arrived for our departure.  He had been doubtful at first whether
to take Littimer or not, but decided to leave him at home.  The
respectable creature, satisfied with his lot whatever it was,
arranged our portmanteaux on the little carriage that was to take
us into London, as if they were intended to defy the shocks of
ages, and received my modestly proffered donation with perfect
tranquillity.

We bade adieu to Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle, with many thanks
on my part, and much kindness on the devoted mother's.  The last
thing I saw was Littimer's unruffled eye; fraught, as I fancied,
with the silent conviction that I was very young indeed.

What I felt, in returning so auspiciously to the old familiar
places, I shall not endeavour to describe.  We went down by the
Mail.  I was so concerned, I recollect, even for the honour of
Yarmouth, that when Steerforth said, as we drove through its dark
streets to the inn, that, as well as he could make out, it was a
good, queer, out-of-the-way kind of hole, I was highly pleased.  We
went to bed on our arrival (I observed a pair of dirty shoes and
gaiters in connexion with my old friend the Dolphin as we passed
that door), and breakfasted late in the morning.  Steerforth, who
was in great spirits, had been strolling about the beach before I
was up, and had made acquaintance, he said, with half the boatmen
in the place.  Moreover, he had seen, in the distance, what he was
sure must be the identical house of Mr. Peggotty, with smoke coming
out of the chimney; and had had a great mind, he told me, to walk
in and swear he was myself grown out of knowledge.

'When do you propose to introduce me there, Daisy?' he said.  'I am
at your disposal.  Make your own arrangements.'

'Why, I was thinking that this evening would be a good time,
Steerforth, when they are all sitting round the fire.  I should
like you to see it when it's snug, it's such a curious place.'

'So be it!' returned Steerforth.  'This evening.'

'I shall not give them any notice that we are here, you know,' said
I, delighted.  'We must take them by surprise.'

'Oh, of course!  It's no fun,' said Steerforth, 'unless we take
them by surprise.  Let us see the natives in their aboriginal
condition.'

'Though they ARE that sort of people that you mentioned,' I
returned.

'Aha!  What! you recollect my skirmishes with Rosa, do you?' he
exclaimed with a quick look.  'Confound the girl, I am half afraid
of her.  She's like a goblin to me.  But never mind her.  Now what
are you going to do?  You are going to see your nurse, I suppose?'

'Why, yes,' I said, 'I must see Peggotty first of all.'

'Well,' replied Steerforth, looking at his watch.  'Suppose I
deliver you up to be cried over for a couple of hours.  Is that
long enough?'

I answered, laughing, that I thought we might get through it in
that time, but that he must come also; for he would find that his
renown had preceded him, and that he was almost as great a
personage as I was.

'I'll come anywhere you like,' said Steerforth, 'or do anything you
like.  Tell me where to come to; and in two hours I'll produce
myself in any state you please, sentimental or comical.'

I gave him minute directions for finding the residence of Mr.
Barkis, carrier to Blunderstone and elsewhere; and, on this
understanding, went out alone.  There was a sharp bracing air; the
ground was dry; the sea was crisp and clear; the sun was diffusing
abundance of light, if not much warmth; and everything was fresh
and lively.  I was so fresh and lively myself, in the pleasure of
being there, that I could have stopped the people in the streets
and shaken hands with them.

The streets looked small, of course.  The streets that we have only
seen as children always do, I believe, when we go back to them. 
But I had forgotten nothing in them, and found nothing changed,
until I came to Mr. Omer's shop.  OMER AND Joram was now written
up, where OMER used to be; but the inscription, DRAPER, TAILOR,
HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER, &c., remained as it was.

My footsteps seemed to tend so naturally to the shop door, after I
had read these words from over the way, that I went across the road
and looked in.  There was a pretty woman at the back of the shop,
dancing a little child in her arms, while another little fellow
clung to her apron.  I had no difficulty in recognizing either
Minnie or Minnie's children.  The glass door of the parlour was not
open; but in the workshop across the yard I could faintly hear the
old tune playing, as if it had never left off.

'Is Mr. Omer at home?' said I, entering.  'I should like to see
him, for a moment, if he is.'

'Oh yes, sir, he is at home,' said Minnie; 'the weather don't suit
his asthma out of doors.  Joe, call your grandfather!'

The little fellow, who was holding her apron, gave such a lusty
shout, that the sound of it made him bashful, and he buried his
face in her skirts, to her great admiration.  I heard a heavy
puffing and blowing coming towards us, and soon Mr. Omer,
shorter-winded than of yore, but not much older-looking, stood
before me.

'Servant, sir,' said Mr. Omer.  'What can I do for you, sir?'
'You can shake hands with me, Mr. Omer, if you please,' said I,
putting out my own.  'You were very good-natured to me once, when
I am afraid I didn't show that I thought so.'

'Was I though?' returned the old man.  'I'm glad to hear it, but I
don't remember when.  Are you sure it was me?'

'Quite.'

'I think my memory has got as short as my breath,' said Mr. Omer,
looking at me and shaking his head; 'for I don't remember you.'

'Don't you remember your coming to the coach to meet me, and my
having breakfast here, and our riding out to Blunderstone together:
you, and I, and Mrs. Joram, and Mr. Joram too - who wasn't her
husband then?'

'Why, Lord bless my soul!' exclaimed Mr. Omer, after being thrown
by his surprise into a fit of coughing, 'you don't say so!  Minnie,
my dear, you recollect?  Dear me, yes; the party was a lady, I
think?'

'My mother,' I rejoined.

'To - be - sure,' said Mr. Omer, touching my waistcoat with his
forefinger, 'and there was a little child too!  There was two
parties.  The little party was laid along with the other party. 
Over at Blunderstone it was, of course.  Dear me!  And how have you
been since?'

Very well, I thanked him, as I hoped he had been too.

'Oh! nothing to grumble at, you know,' said Mr. Omer.  'I find my
breath gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. 
I take it as it comes, and make the most of it.  That's the best
way, ain't it?'

Mr. Omer coughed again, in consequence of laughing, and was
assisted out of his fit by his daughter, who now stood close beside
us, dancing her smallest child on the counter.

'Dear me!' said Mr. Omer.  'Yes, to be sure.  Two parties!  Why, in
that very ride, if you'll believe me, the day was named for my
Minnie to marry Joram.  "Do name it, sir," says Joram.  "Yes, do,
father," says Minnie.  And now he's come into the business.  And
look here!  The youngest!'

Minnie laughed, and stroked her banded hair upon her temples, as
her father put one of his fat fingers into the hand of the child
she was dancing on the counter.

'Two parties, of course!' said Mr. Omer, nodding his head
retrospectively.  'Ex-actly so!  And Joram's at work, at this
minute, on a grey one with silver nails, not this measurement' -
the measurement of the dancing child upon the counter - 'by a good
two inches.  - Will you take something?'

I thanked him, but declined.

'Let me see,' said Mr. Omer.  'Barkis's the carrier's wife -
Peggotty's the boatman's sister - she had something to do with your
family?  She was in service there, sure?'

My answering in the affirmative gave him great satisfaction.

'I believe my breath will get long next, my memory's getting so
much so,' said Mr. Omer.  'Well, sir, we've got a young relation of
hers here, under articles to us, that has as elegant a taste in the
dress-making business - I assure you I don't believe there's a
Duchess in England can touch her.'

'Not little Em'ly?' said I, involuntarily.

'Em'ly's her name,' said Mr. Omer, 'and she's little too.  But if
you'll believe me, she has such a face of her own that half the
women in this town are mad against her.'

'Nonsense, father!' cried Minnie.

'My dear,' said Mr. Omer, 'I don't say it's the case with you,'
winking at me, 'but I say that half the women in Yarmouth - ah! and
in five mile round - are mad against that girl.'

'Then she should have kept to her own station in life, father,'
said Minnie, 'and not have given them any hold to talk about her,
and then they couldn't have done it.'

'Couldn't have done it, my dear!' retorted Mr. Omer.  'Couldn't
have done it!  Is that YOUR knowledge of life?  What is there that
any woman couldn't do, that she shouldn't do - especially on the
subject of another woman's good looks?'

I really thought it was all over with Mr. Omer, after he had
uttered this libellous pleasantry.  He coughed to that extent, and
his breath eluded all his attempts to recover it with that
obstinacy, that I fully expected to see his head go down behind the
counter, and his little black breeches, with the rusty little
bunches of ribbons at the knees, come quivering up in a last
ineffectual struggle.  At length, however, he got better, though he
still panted hard, and was so exhausted that he was obliged to sit
on the stool of the shop-desk.

'You see,' he said, wiping his head, and breathing with difficulty,
'she hasn't taken much to any companions here; she hasn't taken
kindly to any particular acquaintances and friends, not to mention
sweethearts.  In consequence, an ill-natured story got about, that
Em'ly wanted to be a lady.  Now my opinion is, that it came into
circulation principally on account of her sometimes saying, at the
school, that if she was a lady she would like to do so-and-so for
her uncle - don't you see? - and buy him such-and-such fine
things.'

'I assure you, Mr. Omer, she has said so to me,' I returned
eagerly, 'when we were both children.'

Mr. Omer nodded his head and rubbed his chin.  'Just so.  Then out
of a very little, she could dress herself, you see, better than
most others could out of a deal, and that made things unpleasant. 
Moreover, she was rather what might be called wayward - I'll go so
far as to say what I should call wayward myself,' said Mr. Omer; '-
didn't know her own mind quite - a little spoiled - and couldn't,
at first, exactly bind herself down.  No more than that was ever
said against her, Minnie?'

'No, father,' said Mrs. Joram.  'That's the worst, I believe.'

'So when she got a situation,' said Mr. Omer, 'to keep a fractious
old lady company, they didn't very well agree, and she didn't stop.
At last she came here, apprenticed for three years.  Nearly two of
'em are over, and she has been as good a girl as ever was.  Worth
any six!  Minnie, is she worth any six, now?'

'Yes, father,' replied Minnie.  'Never say I detracted from her!'

'Very good,' said Mr. Omer.  'That's right.  And so, young
gentleman,' he added, after a few moments' further rubbing of his
chin, 'that you may not consider me long-winded as well as
short-breathed, I believe that's all about it.'

As they had spoken in a subdued tone, while speaking of Em'ly, I
had no doubt that she was near.  On my asking now, if that were not
so, Mr. Omer nodded yes, and nodded towards the door of the
parlour.  My hurried inquiry if I might peep in, was answered with
a free permission; and, looking through the glass, I saw her
sitting at her work.  I saw her, a most beautiful little creature,
with the cloudless blue eyes, that had looked into my childish
heart, turned laughingly upon another child of Minnie's who was
playing near her; with enough of wilfulness in her bright face to
justify what I had heard; with much of the old capricious coyness
lurking in it; but with nothing in her pretty looks, I am sure, but
what was meant for goodness and for happiness, and what was on a
good and

happy course.

The tune across the yard that seemed as if it never had left off -
alas! it was the tune that never DOES leave off - was beating,
softly, all the while.

'Wouldn't you like to step in,' said Mr. Omer, 'and speak to her? 
Walk in and speak to her, sir!  Make yourself at home!'

I was too bashful to do so then - I was afraid of confusing her,
and I was no less afraid of confusing myself.- but I informed
myself of the hour at which she left of an evening, in order that
our visit might be timed accordingly; and taking leave of Mr. Omer,
and his pretty daughter, and her little children, went away to my
dear old Peggotty's.

Here she was, in the tiled kitchen, cooking dinner!  The moment I
knocked at the door she opened it, and asked me what I pleased to
want.  I looked at her with a smile, but she gave me no smile in
return.  I had never ceased to write to her, but it must have been
seven years since we had met.

'Is Mr. Barkis at home, ma'am?' I said, feigning to speak roughly
to her.

'He's at home, sir,' returned Peggotty, 'but he's bad abed with the
rheumatics.'

'Don't he go over to Blunderstone now?' I asked.

'When he's well he do,' she answered.

'Do YOU ever go there, Mrs. Barkis?'

She looked at me more attentively, and I noticed a quick movement
of her hands towards each other.

'Because I want to ask a question about a house there, that they
call the - what is it? - the Rookery,' said I.

She took a step backward, and put out her hands in an undecided
frightened way, as if to keep me off.

'Peggotty!' I cried to her.

She cried, 'My darling boy!' and we both burst into tears, and were
locked in one another's arms.

What extravagances she committed; what laughing and crying over me;
what pride she showed, what joy, what sorrow that she whose pride
and joy I might have been, could never hold me in a fond embrace;
I have not the heart to tell.  I was troubled with no misgiving
that it was young in me to respond to her emotions.  I had never
laughed and cried in all my life, I dare say - not even to her -
more freely than I did that morning.

'Barkis will be so glad,' said Peggotty, wiping her eyes with her
apron, 'that it'll do him more good than pints of liniment.  May I
go and tell him you are here?  Will you come up and see him, my
dear?'

Of course I would.  But Peggotty could not get out of the room as
easily as she meant to, for as often as she got to the door and
looked round at me, she came back again to have another laugh and
another cry upon my shoulder.  At last, to make the matter easier,
I went upstairs with her; and having waited outside for a minute,
while she said a word of preparation to Mr. Barkis, presented
myself before that invalid.

He received me with absolute enthusiasm.  He was too rheumatic to
be shaken hands with, but he begged me to shake the tassel on the
top of his nightcap, which I did most cordially.  When I sat down
by the side of the bed, he said that it did him a world of good to
feel as if he was driving me on the Blunderstone road again.  As he
lay in bed, face upward, and so covered, with that exception, that
he seemed to be nothing but a face - like a conventional cherubim
- he looked the queerest object I ever beheld.

'What name was it, as I wrote up in the cart, sir?' said Mr.
Barkis, with a slow rheumatic smile.

'Ah! Mr. Barkis, we had some grave talks about that matter, hadn't
we?'

'I was willin' a long time, sir?' said Mr. Barkis.

'A long time,' said I.

'And I don't regret it,' said Mr. Barkis.  'Do you remember what
you told me once, about her making all the apple parsties and doing
all the cooking?'

'Yes, very well,' I returned.

'It was as true,' said Mr. Barkis, 'as turnips is.  It was as
true,' said Mr. Barkis, nodding his nightcap, which was his only
means of emphasis, 'as taxes is.  And nothing's truer than them.'

Mr. Barkis turned his eyes upon me, as if for my assent to this
result of his reflections in bed; and I gave it.

'Nothing's truer than them,' repeated Mr. Barkis; 'a man as poor as
I am, finds that out in his mind when he's laid up.  I'm a very
poor man, sir!'

'I am sorry to hear it, Mr. Barkis.'

'A very poor man, indeed I am,' said Mr. Barkis.

Here his right hand came slowly and feebly from under the
bedclothes, and with a purposeless uncertain grasp took hold of a
stick which was loosely tied to the side of the bed.  After some
poking about with this instrument, in the course of which his face
assumed a variety of distracted expressions, Mr. Barkis poked it
against a box, an end of which had been visible to me all the time. 
Then his face became composed.

'Old clothes,' said Mr. Barkis.

'Oh!' said I.

'I wish it was Money, sir,' said Mr. Barkis.

'I wish it was, indeed,' said I.

'But it AIN'T,' said Mr. Barkis, opening both his eyes as wide as
he possibly could.

I expressed myself quite sure of that, and Mr. Barkis, turning his
eyes more gently to his wife, said:

'She's the usefullest and best of women, C. P.  Barkis.  All the
praise that anyone can give to C. P.  Barkis, she deserves, and
more! My dear, you'll get a dinner today, for company; something
good to eat and drink, will you?'

I should have protested against this unnecessary demonstration in
my honour, but that I saw Peggotty, on the opposite side of the
bed, extremely anxious I should not.  So I held my peace.

'I have got a trifle of money somewhere about me, my dear,' said
Mr. Barkis, 'but I'm a little tired.  If you and Mr. David will
leave me for a short nap, I'll try and find it when I wake.'

We left the room, in compliance with this request.  When we got
outside the door, Peggotty informed me that Mr. Barkis, being now
'a little nearer' than he used to be, always resorted to this same
device before producing a single coin from his store; and that he
endured unheard-of agonies in crawling out of bed alone, and taking
it from that unlucky box.  In effect, we presently heard him
uttering suppressed groans of the most dismal nature, as this
magpie proceeding racked him in every joint; but while Peggotty's
eyes were full of compassion for him, she said his generous impulse
would do him good, and it was better not to check it.  So he
groaned on, until he had got into bed again, suffering, I have no
doubt, a martyrdom; and then called us in, pretending to have just
woke up from a refreshing sleep, and to produce a guinea from under
his pillow.  His satisfaction in which happy imposition on us, and
in having preserved the impenetrable secret of the box, appeared to
be a sufficient compensation to him for all his tortures.

I prepared Peggotty for Steerforth's arrival and it was not long
before he came.  I am persuaded she knew no difference between his
having been a personal benefactor of hers, and a kind friend to me,
and that she would have received him with the utmost gratitude and
devotion in any case.  But his easy, spirited good humour; his
genial manner, his handsome looks, his natural gift of adapting
himself to whomsoever he pleased, and making direct, when he cared
to do it, to the main point of interest in anybody's heart; bound
her to him wholly in five minutes.  His manner to me, alone, would
have won her.  But, through all these causes combined, I sincerely
believe she had a kind of adoration for him before he left the
house that night.

He stayed there with me to dinner - if I were to say willingly, I
should not half express how readily and gaily.  He went into Mr.
Barkis's room like light and air, brightening and refreshing it as
if he were healthy weather.  There was no noise, no effort, no
consciousness, in anything he did; but in everything an
indescribable lightness, a seeming impossibility of doing anything
else, or doing anything better, which was so graceful, so natural,
and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even now, in the remembrance.

We made merry in the little parlour, where the Book of Martyrs,
unthumbed since my time, was laid out upon the desk as of old, and
where I now turned over its terrific pictures, remembering the old
sensations they had awakened, but not feeling them.  When Peggotty
spoke of what she called my room, and of its being ready for me at
night, and of her hoping I would occupy it, before I could so much
as look at Steerforth, hesitating, he was possessed of the whole
case.

'Of course,' he said.  'You'll sleep here, while we stay, and I
shall sleep at the hotel.'

'But to bring you so far,' I returned, 'and to separate, seems bad
companionship, Steerforth.'

'Why, in the name of Heaven, where do you naturally belong?' he
said.  'What is "seems", compared to that?'  It was settled at
once.

He maintained all his delightful qualities to the last, until we
started forth, at eight o'clock, for Mr. Peggotty's boat.  Indeed,
they were more and more brightly exhibited as the hours went on;
for I thought even then, and I have no doubt now, that the
consciousness of success in his determination to please, inspired
him with a new delicacy of perception, and made it, subtle as it
was, more easy to him.  If anyone had told me, then, that all this
was a brilliant game, played for the excitement of the moment, for
the employment of high spirits, in the thoughtless love of
superiority, in a mere wasteful careless course of winning what was
worthless to him, and next minute thrown away - I say, if anyone
had told me such a lie that night, I wonder in what manner of
receiving it my indignation would have found a vent!  Probably only
in an increase, had that been possible, of the romantic feelings of
fidelity and friendship with which I walked beside him, over the
dark wintry sands towards the old boat; the wind sighing around us
even more mournfully, than it had sighed and moaned upon the night
when I first darkened Mr. Peggotty's door.

'This is a wild kind of place, Steerforth, is it not?'

'Dismal enough in the dark,' he said: 'and the sea roars as if it
were hungry for us.  Is that the boat, where I see a light yonder?'
'That's the boat,' said I.

'And it's the same I saw this morning,' he returned.  'I came
straight to it, by instinct, I suppose.'

We said no more as we approached the light, but made softly for the
door.  I laid my hand upon the latch; and whispering Steerforth to
keep close to me, went in.

A murmur of voices had been audible on the outside, and, at the
moment of our entrance, a clapping of hands: which latter noise, I
was surprised to see, proceeded from the generally disconsolate
Mrs. Gummidge.  But Mrs. Gummidge was not the only person there who
was unusually excited.  Mr. Peggotty, his face lighted up with
uncommon satisfaction, and laughing with all his might, held his
rough arms wide open, as if for little Em'ly to run into them; Ham,
with a mixed expression in his face of admiration, exultation, and
a lumbering sort of bashfulness that sat upon him very well, held
little Em'ly by the hand, as if he were presenting her to Mr.
Peggotty; little Em'ly herself, blushing and shy, but delighted
with Mr. Peggotty's delight, as her joyous eyes expressed, was
stopped by our entrance (for she saw us first) in the very act of
springing from Ham to nestle in Mr. Peggotty's embrace.  In the
first glimpse we had of them all, and at the moment of our passing
from the dark cold night into the warm light room, this was the way
in which they were all employed: Mrs. Gummidge in the background,
clapping her hands like a madwoman.

The little picture was so instantaneously dissolved by our going
in, that one might have doubted whether it had ever been.  I was in
the midst of the astonished family, face to face with Mr. Peggotty,
and holding out my hand to him, when Ham shouted:

'Mas'r Davy!  It's Mas'r Davy!'

In a moment we were all shaking hands with one another, and asking
one another how we did, and telling one another how glad we were to
meet, and all talking at once.  Mr. Peggotty was so proud and
overjoyed to see us, that he did not know what to say or do, but
kept over and over again shaking hands with me, and then with
Steerforth, and then with me, and then ruffling his shaggy hair all
over his head, and laughing with such glee and triumph, that it was
a treat to see him.

'Why, that you two gent'lmen - gent'lmen growed - should come to
this here roof tonight, of all nights in my life,' said Mr.
Peggotty, 'is such a thing as never happened afore, I do rightly
believe!  Em'ly, my darling, come here!  Come here, my little
witch!  There's Mas'r Davy's friend, my dear!  There's the
gent'lman as you've heerd on, Em'ly.  He comes to see you, along
with Mas'r Davy, on the brightest night of your uncle's life as
ever was or will be, Gorm the t'other one, and horroar for it!'

After delivering this speech all in a breath, and with
extraordinary animation and pleasure, Mr. Peggotty put one of his
large hands rapturously on each side of his niece's face, and
kissing it a dozen times, laid it with a gentle pride and love upon
his broad chest, and patted it as if his hand had been a lady's. 
Then he let her go; and as she ran into the little chamber where I
used to sleep, looked round upon us, quite hot and out of breath
with his uncommon satisfaction.

'If you two gent'lmen - gent'lmen growed now, and such gent'lmen -'
said Mr. Peggotty.

'So th' are, so th' are!' cried Ham.  'Well said!  So th' are. 
Mas'r Davy bor' - gent'lmen growed - so th' are!'

'If you two gent'lmen, gent'lmen growed,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'don't
ex-cuse me for being in a state of mind, when you understand
matters, I'll arks your pardon.  Em'ly, my dear! - She knows I'm a
going to tell,' here his delight broke out again, 'and has made
off.  Would you be so good as look arter her, Mawther, for a
minute?'

Mrs. Gummidge nodded and disappeared.

'If this ain't,' said Mr. Peggotty, sitting down among us by the
fire, 'the brightest night o' my life, I'm a shellfish - biled too
- and more I can't say.  This here little Em'ly, sir,' in a low
voice to Steerforth, '- her as you see a blushing here just now -'

Steerforth only nodded; but with such a pleased expression of
interest, and of participation in Mr. Peggotty's feelings, that the
latter answered him as if he had spoken.

'To be sure,' said Mr. Peggotty.  'That's her, and so she is. 
Thankee, sir.'

Ham nodded to me several times, as if he would have said so too.

'This here little Em'ly of ours,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'has been, in
our house, what I suppose (I'm a ignorant man, but that's my
belief) no one but a little bright-eyed creetur can be in a house. 
She ain't my child; I never had one; but I couldn't love her more. 
You understand!  I couldn't do it!'

'I quite understand,' said Steerforth.

'I know you do, sir,' returned Mr. Peggotty, 'and thankee again. 
Mas'r Davy, he can remember what she was; you may judge for your
own self what she is; but neither of you can't fully know what she
has been, is, and will be, to my loving art.  I am rough, sir,'
said Mr. Peggotty, 'I am as rough as a Sea Porkypine; but no one,
unless, mayhap, it is a woman, can know, I think, what our little
Em'ly is to me.  And betwixt ourselves,' sinking his voice lower
yet, 'that woman's name ain't Missis Gummidge neither, though she
has a world of merits.'
Mr. Peggotty ruffled his hair again, with both hands, as a further
preparation for what he was going to say, and went on, with a hand
upon each of his knees:

'There was a certain person as had know'd our Em'ly, from the time
when her father was drownded; as had seen her constant; when a
babby, when a young gal, when a woman.  Not much of a person to
look at, he warn't,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'something o' my own build
- rough - a good deal o' the sou'-wester in him - wery salt - but,
on the whole, a honest sort of a chap, with his art in the right
place.'

I thought I had never seen Ham grin to anything like the extent to
which he sat grinning at us now.

'What does this here blessed tarpaulin go and do,' said Mr.
Peggotty, with his face one high noon of enjoyment, 'but he loses
that there art of his to our little Em'ly.  He follers her about,
he makes hisself a sort o' servant to her, he loses in a great
measure his relish for his wittles, and in the long-run he makes it
clear to me wot's amiss.  Now I could wish myself, you see, that
our little Em'ly was in a fair way of being married.  I could wish
to see her, at all ewents, under articles to a honest man as had a
right to defend her.  I don't know how long I may live, or how soon
I may die; but I know that if I was capsized, any night, in a gale
of wind in Yarmouth Roads here, and was to see the town-lights
shining for the last time over the rollers as I couldn't make no
head against, I could go down quieter for thinking "There's a man
ashore there, iron-true to my little Em'ly, God bless her, and no
wrong can touch my Em'ly while so be as that man lives."'

Mr. Peggotty, in simple earnestness, waved his right arm, as if he
were waving it at the town-lights for the last time, and then,
exchanging a nod with Ham, whose eye he caught, proceeded as
before.

'Well! I counsels him to speak to Em'ly.  He's big enough, but he's
bashfuller than a little un, and he don't like.  So I speak. 
"What!  Him!" says Em'ly.  "Him that I've know'd so intimate so
many years, and like so much.  Oh, Uncle!  I never can have him. 
He's such a good fellow!" I gives her a kiss, and I says no more to
her than, "My dear, you're right to speak out, you're to choose for
yourself, you're as free as a little bird." Then I aways to him,
and I says, "I wish it could have been so, but it can't.  But you
can both be as you was, and wot I say to you is, Be as you was with
her, like a man." He says to me, a-shaking of my hand, "I will!" he
says.  And he was - honourable and manful - for two year going on,
and we was just the same at home here as afore.'

Mr. Peggotty's face, which had varied in its expression with the
various stages of his narrative, now resumed all its former
triumphant delight, as he laid a hand upon my knee and a hand upon
Steerforth's (previously wetting them both, for the greater
emphasis of the action), and divided the following speech between
us:

'All of a sudden, one evening - as it might be tonight - comes
little Em'ly from her work, and him with her!  There ain't so much
in that, you'll say.  No, because he takes care on her, like a
brother, arter dark, and indeed afore dark, and at all times.  But
this tarpaulin chap, he takes hold of her hand, and he cries out to
me, joyful, "Look here!  This is to be my little wife!" And she
says, half bold and half shy, and half a laughing and half a
crying, "Yes, Uncle!  If you please." - If I please!' cried Mr.
Peggotty, rolling his head in an ecstasy at the idea; 'Lord, as if
I should do anythink else! - "If you please, I am steadier now, and
I have thought better of it, and I'll be as good a little wife as
I can to him, for he's a dear, good fellow!" Then Missis Gummidge,
she claps her hands like a play, and you come in.  Theer! the
murder's out!' said Mr. Peggotty - 'You come in!  It took place
this here present hour; and here's the man that'll marry her, the
minute she's out of her time.'

Ham staggered, as well he might, under the blow Mr. Peggotty dealt
him in his unbounded joy, as a mark of confidence and friendship;
but feeling called upon to say something to us, he said, with much
faltering and great difficulty:

'She warn't no higher than you was, Mas'r Davy - when you first
come - when I thought what she'd grow up to be.  I see her grown up
- gent'lmen - like a flower.  I'd lay down my life for her - Mas'r
Davy - Oh! most content and cheerful!  She's more to me - gent'lmen
- than - she's all to me that ever I can want, and more than ever
I - than ever I could say.  I - I love her true.  There ain't a
gent'lman in all the land - nor yet sailing upon all the sea - that
can love his lady more than I love her, though there's many a
common man - would say better - what he meant.'

I thought it affecting to see such a sturdy fellow as Ham was now,
trembling in the strength of what he felt for the pretty little
creature who had won his heart.  I thought the simple confidence
reposed in us by Mr. Peggotty and by himself, was, in itself,
affecting.  I was affected by the story altogether.  How far my
emotions were influenced by the recollections of my childhood, I
don't know.  Whether I had come there with any lingering fancy that
I was still to love little Em'ly, I don't know.  I know that I was
filled with pleasure by all this; but, at first, with an
indescribably sensitive pleasure, that a very little would have
changed to pain.

Therefore, if it had depended upon me to touch the prevailing chord
among them with any skill, I should have made a poor hand of it. 
But it depended upon Steerforth; and he did it with such address,
that in a few minutes we were all as easy and as happy as it was
possible to be.

'Mr. Peggotty,' he said, 'you are a thoroughly good fellow, and
deserve to be as happy as you are tonight.  My hand upon it!  Ham,
I give you joy, my boy.  My hand upon that, too!  Daisy, stir the
fire, and make it a brisk one! and Mr. Peggotty, unless you can
induce your gentle niece to come back (for whom I vacate this seat
in the corner), I shall go.  Any gap at your fireside on such a
night - such a gap least of all - I wouldn't make, for the wealth
of the Indies!'

So Mr. Peggotty went into my old room to fetch little Em'ly.  At
first little Em'ly didn't like to come, and then Ham went. 
Presently they brought her to the fireside, very much confused, and
very shy, - but she soon became more assured when she found how
gently and respectfully Steerforth spoke to her; how skilfully he
avoided anything that would embarrass her; how he talked to Mr.
Peggotty of boats, and ships, and tides, and fish; how he referred
to me about the time when he had seen Mr. Peggotty at Salem House;
how delighted he was with the boat and all belonging to it; how
lightly and easily he carried on, until he brought us, by degrees,
into a charmed circle, and we were all talking away without any
reserve.

Em'ly, indeed, said little all the evening; but she looked, and
listened, and her face got animated, and she was charming. 
Steerforth told a story of a dismal shipwreck (which arose out of
his talk with Mr. Peggotty), as if he saw it all before him - and
little Em'ly's eyes were fastened on him all the time, as if she
saw it too.  He told us a merry adventure of his own, as a relief
to that, with as much gaiety as if the narrative were as fresh to
him as it was to us - and little Em'ly laughed until the boat rang
with the musical sounds, and we all laughed (Steerforth too), in
irresistible sympathy with what was so pleasant and light-hearted. 
He got Mr. Peggotty to sing, or rather to roar, 'When the stormy
winds do blow, do blow, do blow'; and he sang a sailor's song
himself, so pathetically and beautifully, that I could have almost
fancied that the real wind creeping sorrowfully round the house,
and murmuring low through our unbroken silence, was there to
listen.

As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despondency with a
success never attained by anyone else (so Mr. Peggotty informed
me), since the decease of the old one.  He left her so little
leisure for being miserable, that she said next day she thought she
must have been bewitched.

But he set up no monopoly of the general attention, or the
conversation.  When little Em'ly grew more courageous, and talked
(but still bashfully) across the fire to me, of our old wanderings
upon the beach, to pick up shells and pebbles; and when I asked her
if she recollected how I used to be devoted to her; and when we
both laughed and reddened, casting these looks back on the pleasant
old times, so unreal to look at now; he was silent and attentive,
and observed us thoughtfully.  She sat, at this time, and all the
evening, on the old locker in her old little corner by the fire -
Ham beside her, where I used to sit.  I could not satisfy myself
whether it was in her own little tormenting way, or in a maidenly
reserve before us, that she kept quite close to the wall, and away
from him; but I observed that she did so, all the evening.

As I remember, it was almost midnight when we took our leave.  We
had had some biscuit and dried fish for supper, and Steerforth had
produced from his pocket a full flask of Hollands, which we men (I
may say we men, now, without a blush) had emptied.  We parted
merrily; and as they all stood crowded round the door to light us
as far as they could upon our road, I saw the sweet blue eyes of
little Em'ly peeping after us, from behind Ham, and heard her soft
voice calling to us to be careful how we went.

'A most engaging little Beauty!' said Steerforth, taking my arm. 
'Well!  It's a quaint place, and they are quaint company, and it's
quite a new sensation to mix with them.'

'How fortunate we are, too,' I returned, 'to have arrived to
witness their happiness in that intended marriage!  I never saw
people so happy.  How delightful to see it, and to be made the
sharers in their honest joy, as we have been!'

'That's rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl; isn't he?'
said Steerforth.

He had been so hearty with him, and with them all, that I felt a
shock in this unexpected and cold reply.  But turning quickly upon
him, and seeing a laugh in his eyes, I answered, much relieved:

'Ah, Steerforth!  It's well for you to joke about the poor!  You
may skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in
jest from me, but I know better.  When I see how perfectly you
understand them, how exquisitely you can enter into happiness like
this plain fisherman's, or humour a love like my old nurse's, I
know that there is not a joy or sorrow, not an emotion, of such
people, that can be indifferent to you.  And I admire and love you
for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more!'

He stopped, and, looking in my face, said, 'Daisy, I believe you
are in earnest, and are good.  I wish we all were!' Next moment he
was gaily singing Mr. Peggotty's song, as we walked at a round pace
back to Yarmouth.

CHAPTER 22
SOME OLD SCENES, AND SOME NEW PEOPLE

Steerforth and I stayed for more than a fortnight in that part of
the country.  We were very much together, I need not say; but
occasionally we were asunder for some hours at a time.  He was a
good sailor, and I was but an indifferent one; and when he went out
boating with Mr. Peggotty, which was a favourite amusement of his,
I generally remained ashore.  My occupation of Peggotty's
spare-room put a constraint upon me, from which he was free: for,
knowing how assiduously she attended on Mr. Barkis all day, I did
not like to remain out late at night; whereas Steerforth, lying at
the Inn, had nothing to consult but his own humour.  Thus it came
about, that I heard of his making little treats for the fishermen
at Mr. Peggotty's house of call, 'The Willing Mind', after I was in
bed, and of his being afloat, wrapped in fishermen's clothes, whole
moonlight nights, and coming back when the morning tide was at
flood.  By this time, however, I knew that his restless nature and
bold spirits delighted to find a vent in rough toil and hard
weather, as in any other means of excitement that presented itself
freshly to him; so none of his proceedings surprised me.

Another cause of our being sometimes apart, was, that I had
naturally an interest in going over to Blunderstone, and revisiting
the old familiar scenes of my childhood; while Steerforth, after
being there once, had naturally no great interest in going there
again.  Hence, on three or four days that I can at once recall, we
went our several ways after an early breakfast, and met again at a
late dinner.  I had no idea how he employed his time in the
interval, beyond a general knowledge that he was very popular in
the place, and had twenty means of actively diverting himself where
another man might not have found one.

For my own part, my occupation in my solitary pilgrimages was to
recall every yard of the old road as I went along it, and to haunt
the old spots, of which I never tired.  I haunted them, as my
memory had often done, and lingered among them as my younger
thoughts had lingered when I was far away.  The grave beneath the
tree, where both my parents lay - on which I had looked out, when
it was my father's only, with such curious feelings of compassion,
and by which I had stood, so desolate, when it was opened to
receive my pretty mother and her baby - the grave which Peggotty's
own faithful care had ever since kept neat, and made a garden of,
I walked near, by the hour.  It lay a little off the churchyard
path, in a quiet corner, not so far removed but I could read the
names upon the stone as I walked to and fro, startled by the sound
of the church-bell when it struck the hour, for it was like a
departed voice to me.  My reflections at these times were always
associated with the figure I was to make in life, and the
distinguished things I was to do.  My echoing footsteps went to no
other tune, but were as constant to that as if I had come home to
build my castles in the air at a living mother's side.

There were great changes in my old home.  The ragged nests, so long
deserted by the rooks, were gone; and the trees were lopped and
topped out of their remembered shapes.  The garden had run wild,
and half the windows of the house were shut up.  It was occupied,
but only by a poor lunatic gentleman, and the people who took care
of him.  He was always sitting at my little window, looking out
into the churchyard; and I wondered whether his rambling thoughts
ever went upon any of the fancies that used to occupy mine, on the
rosy mornings when I peeped out of that same little window in my
night-clothes, and saw the sheep quietly feeding in the light of
the rising sun.

Our old neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Grayper, were gone to South
America, and the rain had made its way through the roof of their
empty house, and stained the outer walls.  Mr. Chillip was married
again to a tall, raw-boned, high-nosed wife; and they had a weazen
little baby, with a heavy head that it couldn't hold up, and two
weak staring eyes, with which it seemed to be always wondering why
it had ever been born.

It was with a singular jumble of sadness and pleasure that I used
to linger about my native place, until the reddening winter sun
admonished me that it was time to start on my returning walk.  But,
when the place was left behind, and especially when Steerforth and
I were happily seated over our dinner by a blazing fire, it was
delicious to think of having been there.  So it was, though in a
softened degree, when I went to my neat room at night; and, turning
over the leaves of the crocodile-book (which was always there, upon
a little table), remembered with a grateful heart how blest I was
in having such a friend as Steerforth, such a friend as Peggotty,
and such a substitute for what I had lost as my excellent and
generous aunt.

MY nearest way to Yarmouth, in coming back from these long walks,
was by a ferry.  It landed me on the flat between the town and the
sea, which I could make straight across, and so save myself a
considerable circuit by the high road.  Mr. Peggotty's house being
on that waste-place, and not a hundred yards out of my track, I
always looked in as I went by.  Steerforth was pretty sure to be
there expecting me, and we went on together through the frosty air
and gathering fog towards the twinkling lights of the town.

One dark evening, when I was later than usual - for I had, that
day, been making my parting visit to Blunderstone, as we were now
about to return home - I found him alone in Mr. Peggotty's house,
sitting thoughtfully before the fire.  He was so intent upon his
own reflections that he was quite unconscious of my approach. 
This, indeed, he might easily have been if he had been less
absorbed, for footsteps fell noiselessly on the sandy ground
outside; but even my entrance failed to rouse him.  I was standing
close to him, looking at him; and still, with a heavy brow, he was
lost in his meditations.

He gave such a start when I put my hand upon his shoulder, that he
made me start too.

'You come upon me,' he said, almost angrily, 'like a reproachful
ghost!'

'I was obliged to announce myself, somehow,' I replied.  'Have I
called you down from the stars?'

'No,' he answered.  'No.'

'Up from anywhere, then?' said I, taking my seat near him.

'I was looking at the pictures in the fire,' he returned.

'But you are spoiling them for me,' said I, as he stirred it
quickly with a piece of burning wood, striking out of it a train of
red-hot sparks that went careering up the little chimney, and
roaring out into the air.

'You would not have seen them,' he returned.  'I detest this
mongrel time, neither day nor night.  How late you are!  Where have
you been?'

'I have been taking leave of my usual walk,' said I.

'And I have been sitting here,' said Steerforth, glancing round the
room, 'thinking that all the people we found so glad on the night
of our coming down, might - to judge from the present wasted air of
the place - be dispersed, or dead, or come to I don't know what
harm.  David, I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last
twenty years!'

'My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?'

'I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!' he exclaimed. 
'I wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!'

There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed
me.  He was more unlike himself than I could have supposed
possible.

'It would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of a
nephew,' he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the
chimney-piece, with his face towards the fire, 'than to be myself,
twenty times richer and twenty times wiser, and be the torment to
myself that I have been, in this Devil's bark of a boat, within the
last half-hour!'

I was so confounded by the alteration in him, that at first I could
only observe him in silence, as he stood leaning his head upon his
hand, and looking gloomily down at the fire.  At length I begged
him, with all the earnestness I felt, to tell me what had occurred
to cross him so unusually, and to let me sympathize with him, if I
could not hope to advise him.  Before I had well concluded, he
began to laugh - fretfully at first, but soon with returning
gaiety.

'Tut, it's nothing, Daisy! nothing!' he replied.  'I told you at
the inn in London, I am heavy company for myself, sometimes.  I
have been a nightmare to myself, just now - must have had one, I
think.  At odd dull times, nursery tales come up into the memory,
unrecognized for what they are.  I believe I have been confounding
myself with the bad boy who "didn't care", and became food for
lions - a grander kind of going to the dogs, I suppose.  What old
women call the horrors, have been creeping over me from head to
foot.  I have been afraid of myself.'

'You are afraid of nothing else, I think,' said I.

'Perhaps not, and yet may have enough to be afraid of too,' he
answered.  'Well!  So it goes by!  I am not about to be hipped
again, David; but I tell you, my good fellow, once more, that it
would have been well for me (and for more than me) if I had had a
steadfast and judicious father!'

His face was always full of expression, but I never saw it express
such a dark kind of earnestness as when he said these words, with
his glance bent on the fire.

'So much for that!' he said, making as if he tossed something light
into the air, with his hand.  "'Why, being gone, I am a man again,"
like Macbeth.  And now for dinner!  If I have not (Macbeth-like)
broken up the feast with most admired disorder, Daisy.'

'But where are they all, I wonder!' said I.

'God knows,' said Steerforth.  'After strolling to the ferry
looking for you, I strolled in here and found the place deserted. 
That set me thinking, and you found me thinking.'

The advent of Mrs. Gummidge with a basket, explained how the house
had happened to be empty.  She had hurried out to buy something
that was needed, against Mr. Peggotty's return with the tide; and
had left the door open in the meanwhile, lest Ham and little Em'ly,
with whom it was an early night, should come home while she was
gone.  Steerforth, after very much improving Mrs. Gummidge's
spirits by a cheerful salutation and a jocose embrace, took my arm,
and hurried me away.

He had improved his own spirits, no less than Mrs. Gummidge's, for
they were again at their usual flow, and he was full of vivacious
conversation as we went along.

'And so,' he said, gaily, 'we abandon this buccaneer life tomorrow,
do we?'

'So we agreed,' I returned.  'And our places by the coach are
taken, you know.'

'Ay! there's no help for it, I suppose,' said Steerforth.  'I have
almost forgotten that there is anything to do in the world but to
go out tossing on the sea here.  I wish there was not.'

'As long as the novelty should last,' said I, laughing.

'Like enough,' he returned; 'though there's a sarcastic meaning in
that observation for an amiable piece of innocence like my young
friend.  Well! I dare say I am a capricious fellow, David.  I know
I am; but while the iron is hot, I can strike it vigorously too. 
I could pass a reasonably good examination already, as a pilot in
these waters, I think.'

'Mr. Peggotty says you are a wonder,' I returned.

'A nautical phenomenon, eh?' laughed Steerforth.

'Indeed he does, and you know how truly; I know how ardent you are
in any pursuit you follow, and how easily you can master it.  And
that amazes me most in you, Steerforth- that you should be
contented with such fitful uses of your powers.'

'Contented?' he answered, merrily.  'I am never contented, except
with your freshness, my gentle Daisy.  As to fitfulness, I have
never learnt the art of binding myself to any of the wheels on
which the Ixions of these days are turning round and round.  I
missed it somehow in a bad apprenticeship, and now don't care about
it.  - You know I have bought a boat down here?'

'What an extraordinary fellow you are, Steerforth!' I exclaimed,
stopping - for this was the first I had heard of it.  'When you may
never care to come near the place again!'

'I don't know that,' he returned.  'I have taken a fancy to the
place.  At all events,' walking me briskly on, 'I have bought a
boat that was for sale - a clipper, Mr. Peggotty says; and so she
is - and Mr. Peggotty will be master of her in my absence.'

'Now I understand you, Steerforth!' said I, exultingly.  'You
pretend to have bought it for yourself, but you have really done so
to confer a benefit on him.  I might have known as much at first,
knowing you.  My dear kind Steerforth, how can I tell you what I
think of your generosity?'

'Tush!' he answered, turning red.  'The less said, the better.'

'Didn't I know?' cried I, 'didn't I say that there was not a joy,
or sorrow, or any emotion of such honest hearts that was
indifferent to you?'

'Aye, aye,' he answered, 'you told me all that.  There let it rest. 
We have said enough!'

Afraid of offending him by pursuing the subject when he made so
light of it, I only pursued it in my thoughts as we went on at even
a quicker pace than before.

'She must be newly rigged,' said Steerforth, 'and I shall leave
Littimer behind to see it done, that I may know she is quite
complete.  Did I tell you Littimer had come down?'

' No.'

'Oh yes! came down this morning, with a letter from my mother.'

As our looks met, I observed that he was pale even to his lips,
though he looked very steadily at me.  I feared that some
difference between him and his mother might have led to his being
in the frame of mind in which I had found him at the solitary
fireside.  I hinted so.

'Oh no!' he said, shaking his head, and giving a slight laugh. 
'Nothing of the sort!  Yes.  He is come down, that man of mine.'

'The same as ever?' said I.

'The same as ever,' said Steerforth.  'Distant and quiet as the
North Pole.  He shall see to the boat being fresh named.  She's the
"Stormy Petrel" now.  What does Mr. Peggotty care for Stormy
Petrels!  I'll have her christened again.'

'By what name?' I asked.

'The "Little Em'ly".'

As he had continued to look steadily at me, I took it as a reminder
that he objected to being extolled for his consideration.  I could
not help showing in my face how much it pleased me, but I said
little, and he resumed his usual smile, and seemed relieved.

'But see here,' he said, looking before us, 'where the original
little Em'ly comes!  And that fellow with her, eh?  Upon my soul,
he's a true knight.  He never leaves her!'

Ham was a boat-builder in these days, having improved a natural
ingenuity in that handicraft, until he had become a skilled
workman.  He was in his working-dress, and looked rugged enough,
but manly withal, and a very fit protector for the blooming little
creature at his side.  Indeed, there was a frankness in his face,
an honesty, and an undisguised show of his pride in her, and his
love for her, which were, to me, the best of good looks.  I
thought, as they came towards us, that they were well matched even
in that particular.

She withdrew her hand timidly from his arm as we stopped to speak
to them, and blushed as she gave it to Steerforth and to me.  When
they passed on, after we had exchanged a few words, she did not
like to replace that hand, but, still appearing timid and
constrained, walked by herself.  I thought all this very pretty and
engaging, and Steerforth seemed to think so too, as we looked after
them fading away in the light of a young moon.

Suddenly there passed us - evidently following them - a young woman
whose approach we had not observed, but whose face I saw as she
went by, and thought I had a faint remembrance of.  She was lightly
dressed; looked bold, and haggard, and flaunting, and poor; but
seemed, for the time, to have given all that to the wind which was
blowing, and to have nothing in her mind but going after them.  As
the dark distant level, absorbing their figures into itself, left
but itself visible between us and the sea and clouds, her figure
disappeared in like manner, still no nearer to them than before.

'That is a black shadow to be following the girl,' said Steerforth,
standing still; 'what does it mean?'

He spoke in a low voice that sounded almost strange to Me.

'She must have it in her mind to beg of them, I think,' said I.

'A beggar would be no novelty,' said Steerforth; 'but it is a
strange thing that the beggar should take that shape tonight.'

'Why?' I asked.

'For no better reason, truly, than because I was thinking,' he
said, after a pause, 'of something like it, when it came by.  Where
the Devil did it come from, I wonder!'

'From the shadow of this wall, I think,' said I, as we emerged upon
a road on which a wall abutted.

'It's gone!' he returned, looking over his shoulder.  'And all ill
go with it.  Now for our dinner!'

But he looked again over his shoulder towards the sea-line
glimmering afar off, and yet again.  And he wondered about it, in
some broken expressions, several times, in the short remainder of
our walk; and only seemed to forget it when the light of fire and
candle shone upon us, seated warm and merry, at table.

Littimer was there, and had his usual effect upon me.  When I said
to him that I hoped Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle were well, he
answered respectfully (and of course respectably), that they were
tolerably well, he thanked me, and had sent their compliments. 
This was all, and yet he seemed to me to say as plainly as a man
could say: 'You are very young, sir; you are exceedingly young.'

We had almost finished dinner, when taking a step or two towards
the table, from the corner where he kept watch upon us, or rather
upon me, as I felt, he said to his master:

'I beg your pardon, sir.  Miss Mowcher is down here.'

'Who?' cried Steerforth, much astonished.

'Miss Mowcher, sir.'

'Why, what on earth does she do here?' said Steerforth.

'It appears to be her native part of the country, sir.  She informs
me that she makes one of her professional visits here, every year,
sir.  I met her in the street this afternoon, and she wished to
know if she might have the honour of waiting on you after dinner,
sir.'

'Do you know the Giantess in question, Daisy?' inquired Steerforth.

I was obliged to confess - I felt ashamed, even of being at this
disadvantage before Littimer - that Miss Mowcher and I were wholly
unacquainted.

'Then you shall know her,' said Steerforth, 'for she is one of the
seven wonders of the world.  When Miss Mowcher comes, show her in.'

I felt some curiosity and excitement about this lady, especially as
Steerforth burst into a fit of laughing when I referred to her, and
positively refused to answer any question of which I made her the
subject.  I remained, therefore, in a state of considerable
expectation until the cloth had been removed some half an hour, and
we were sitting over our decanter of wine before the fire, when the
door opened, and Littimer, with his habitual serenity quite
undisturbed, announced:

'Miss Mowcher!'

I looked at the doorway and saw nothing.  I was still looking at
the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher was a long while making her
appearance, when, to my infinite astonishment, there came waddling
round a sofa which stood between me and it, a pursy dwarf, of about
forty or forty-five, with a very large head and face, a pair of
roguish grey eyes, and such extremely little arms, that, to enable
herself to lay a finger archly against her snub nose, as she ogled
Steerforth, she was obliged to meet the finger half-way, and lay
her nose against it.  Her chin, which was what is called a double
chin, was so fat that it entirely swallowed up the strings of her
bonnet, bow and all.  Throat she had none; waist she had none; legs
she had none, worth mentioning; for though she was more than
full-sized down to where her waist would have been, if she had had
any, and though she terminated, as human beings generally do, in a
pair of feet, she was so short that she stood at a common-sized
chair as at a table, resting a bag she carried on the seat.  This
lady - dressed in an off-hand, easy style; bringing her nose and
her forefinger together, with the difficulty I have described;
standing with her head necessarily on one side, and, with one of
her sharp eyes shut up, making an uncommonly knowing face - after
ogling Steerforth for a few moments, broke into a torrent of words.

'What!  My flower!' she pleasantly began, shaking her large head at
him.  'You're there, are you!  Oh, you naughty boy, fie for shame,
what do you do so far away from home?  Up to mischief, I'll be
bound.  Oh, you're a downy fellow, Steerforth, so you are, and I'm
another, ain't I?  Ha, ha, ha!  You'd have betted a hundred pound
to five, now, that you wouldn't have seen me here, wouldn't you? 
Bless you, man alive, I'm everywhere.  I'm here and there, and
where not, like the conjurer's half-crown in the lady's
handkercher.  Talking of handkerchers - and talking of ladies -
what a comfort you are to your blessed mother, ain't you, my dear
boy, over one of my shoulders, and I don't say which!'

Miss Mowcher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her discourse,
threw back the strings, and sat down, panting, on a footstool in
front of the fire - making a kind of arbour of the dining table,
which spread its mahogany shelter above her head.

'Oh my stars and what's-their-names!' she went on, clapping a hand
on each of her little knees, and glancing shrewdly at me, 'I'm of
too full a habit, that's the fact, Steerforth.  After a flight of
stairs, it gives me as much trouble to draw every breath I want, as
if it was a bucket of water.  If you saw me looking out of an upper
window, you'd think I was a fine woman, wouldn't you?'

'I should think that, wherever I saw you,' replied Steerforth.

'Go along, you dog, do!' cried the little creature, making a whisk
at him with the handkerchief with which she was wiping her face,
'and don't be impudent!  But I give you my word and honour I was at
Lady Mithers's last week - THERE'S a woman!  How SHE wears! - and
Mithers himself came into the room where I was waiting for her -
THERE'S a man!  How HE wears! and his wig too, for he's had it
these ten years - and he went on at that rate in the complimentary
line, that I began to think I should be obliged to ring the bell. 
Ha! ha! ha!  He's a pleasant wretch, but he wants principle.'

'What were you doing for Lady Mithers?' asked Steerforth.

'That's tellings, my blessed infant,' she retorted, tapping her
nose again, screwing up her face, and twinkling her eyes like an
imp of supernatural intelligence.  'Never YOU mind!  You'd like to
know whether I stop her hair from falling off, or dye it, or touch
up her complexion, or improve her eyebrows, wouldn't you?  And so
you shall, my darling - when I tell you!  Do you know what my great
grandfather's name was?'

'No,' said Steerforth.

'It was Walker, my sweet pet,' replied Miss Mowcher, 'and he came
of a long line of Walkers, that I inherit all the Hookey estates
from.'

I never beheld anything approaching to Miss Mowcher's wink except
Miss Mowcher's self-possession.  She had a wonderful way too, when
listening to what was said to her, or when waiting for an answer to
what she had said herself, of pausing with her head cunningly on
one side, and one eye turned up like a magpie's.  Altogether I was
lost in amazement, and sat staring at her, quite oblivious, I am
afraid, of the laws of politeness.

She had by this time drawn the chair to her side, and was busily
engaged in producing from the bag (plunging in her short arm to the
shoulder, at every dive) a number of small bottles, sponges, combs,
brushes, bits of flannel, little pairs of curling-irons, and other
instruments, which she tumbled in a heap upon the chair.  From this
employment she suddenly desisted, and said to Steerforth, much to
my confusion:

'Who's your friend?'

'Mr. Copperfield,' said Steerforth; 'he wants to know you.'

'Well, then, he shall!  I thought he looked as if he did!' returned
Miss Mowcher, waddling up to me, bag in hand, and laughing on me as
she came.  'Face like a peach!' standing on tiptoe to pinch my
cheek as I sat.  'Quite tempting!  I'm very fond of peaches.  Happy
to make your acquaintance, Mr. Copperfield, I'm sure.'

I said that I congratulated myself on having the honour to make
hers, and that the happiness was mutual.

'Oh, my goodness, how polite we are!' exclaimed Miss Mowcher,
making a preposterous attempt to cover her large face with her
morsel of a hand.  'What a world of gammon and spinnage it is,
though, ain't it!'

This was addressed confidentially to both of us, as the morsel of
a hand came away from the face, and buried itself, arm and all, in
the bag again.

'What do you mean, Miss Mowcher?' said Steerforth.

'Ha! ha! ha!  What a refreshing set of humbugs we are, to be sure,
ain't we, my sweet child?' replied that morsel of a woman, feeling
in the bag with her head on one side and her eye in the air.  'Look
here!' taking something out.  'Scraps of the Russian Prince's
nails.  Prince Alphabet turned topsy-turvy, I call him, for his
name's got all the letters in it, higgledy-piggledy.'

'The Russian Prince is a client of yours, is he?' said Steerforth.

'I believe you, my pet,' replied Miss Mowcher.  'I keep his nails
in order for him.  Twice a week!  Fingers and toes.'

'He pays well, I hope?' said Steerforth.

'Pays, as he speaks, my dear child - through the nose,' replied
Miss Mowcher.  'None of your close shavers the Prince ain't.  You'd
say so, if you saw his moustachios.  Red by nature, black by art.'

'By your art, of course,' said Steerforth.

Miss Mowcher winked assent.  'Forced to send for me.  Couldn't help
it.  The climate affected his dye; it did very well in Russia, but
it was no go here.  You never saw such a rusty Prince in all your
born days as he was.  Like old iron!'
'Is that why you called him a humbug, just now?' inquired
Steerforth.

'Oh, you're a broth of a boy, ain't you?' returned Miss Mowcher,
shaking her head violently.  'I said, what a set of humbugs we were
in general, and I showed you the scraps of the Prince's nails to
prove it.  The Prince's nails do more for me in private families of
the genteel sort, than all my talents put together.  I always carry
'em about.  They're the best introduction.  If Miss Mowcher cuts
the Prince's nails, she must be all right.  I give 'em away to the
young ladies.  They put 'em in albums, I believe.  Ha!  ha! ha! 
Upon my life, "the whole social system" (as the men call it when
they make speeches in Parliament) is a system of Prince's nails!'
said this least of women, trying to fold her short arms, and
nodding her large head.

Steerforth laughed heartily, and I laughed too.  Miss Mowcher
continuing all the time to shake her head (which was very much on
one side), and to look into the air with one eye, and to wink with
the other.

'Well, well!' she said, smiting her small knees, and rising, 'this
is not business.  Come, Steerforth, let's explore the polar
regions, and have it over.'

She then selected two or three of the little instruments, and a
little bottle, and asked (to my surprise) if the table would bear. 
On Steerforth's replying in the affirmative, she pushed a chair
against it, and begging the assistance of my hand, mounted up,
pretty nimbly, to the top, as if it were a stage.

'If either of you saw my ankles,' she said, when she was safely
elevated, 'say so, and I'll go home and destroy myself!'

'I did not,' said Steerforth.

'I did not,' said I.

'Well then,' cried Miss Mowcher,' I'll consent to live.  Now,
ducky, ducky, ducky, come to Mrs. Bond and be killed.'

This was an invocation to Steerforth to place himself under her
hands; who, accordingly, sat himself down, with his back to the
table, and his laughing face towards me, and submitted his head to
her inspection, evidently for no other purpose than our
entertainment.  To see Miss Mowcher standing over him, looking at
his rich profusion of brown hair through a large round magnifying
glass, which she took out of her pocket, was a most amazing
spectacle.

'You're a pretty fellow!' said Miss Mowcher, after a brief
inspection.  'You'd be as bald as a friar on the top of your head
in twelve months, but for me.  just half a minute, my young friend,
and we'll give you a polishing that shall keep your curls on for
the next ten years!'

With this, she tilted some of the contents of the little bottle on
to one of the little bits of flannel, and, again imparting some of
the virtues of that preparation to one of the little brushes, began
rubbing and scraping away with both on the crown of Steerforth's
head in the busiest manner I ever witnessed, talking all the time.

'There's Charley Pyegrave, the duke's son,' she said.  'You know
Charley?' peeping round into his face.

'A little,' said Steerforth.

'What a man HE is!  THERE'S a whisker!  As to Charley's legs, if
they were only a pair (which they ain't), they'd defy competition. 
Would you believe he tried to do without me - in the Life-Guards,
too?'

'Mad!' said Steerforth.

'It looks like it.  However, mad or sane, he tried,' returned Miss
Mowcher.  'What does he do, but, lo and behold you, he goes into a
perfumer's shop, and wants to buy a bottle of the Madagascar
Liquid.'

'Charley does?' said Steerforth.

'Charley does.  But they haven't got any of the Madagascar Liquid.'

'What is it?  Something to drink?' asked Steerforth.

'To drink?' returned Miss Mowcher, stopping to slap his cheek.  'To
doctor his own moustachios with, you know.  There was a woman in
the shop - elderly female - quite a Griffin - who had never even
heard of it by name.  "Begging pardon, sir," said the Griffin to
Charley, "it's not - not - not ROUGE, is it?"  "Rouge," said
Charley to the Griffin.  "What the unmentionable to ears polite, do
you think I want with rouge?"  "No offence, sir," said the Griffin;
"we have it asked for by so many names, I thought it might be." Now
that, my child,' continued Miss Mowcher, rubbing all the time as
busily as ever, 'is another instance of the refreshing humbug I was
speaking of.  I do something in that way myself - perhaps a good
deal - perhaps a little - sharp's the word, my dear boy - never
mind!'

'In what way do you mean?  In the rouge way?' said Steerforth.

'Put this and that together, my tender pupil,' returned the wary
Mowcher, touching her nose, 'work it by the rule of Secrets in all
trades, and the product will give you the desired result.  I say I
do a little in that way myself.  One Dowager, SHE calls it
lip-salve.  Another, SHE calls it gloves.  Another, SHE calls it
tucker-edging.  Another, SHE calls it a fan.  I call it whatever
THEY call it.  I supply it for 'em, but we keep up the trick so, to
one another, and make believe with such a face, that they'd as soon
think of laying it on, before a whole drawing-room, as before me. 
And when I wait upon 'em, they'll say to me sometimes - WITH IT ON
- thick, and no mistake - "How am I looking, Mowcher?  Am I pale?"
Ha! ha! ha! ha!  Isn't THAT refreshing, my young friend!'

I never did in my days behold anything like Mowcher as she stood
upon the dining table, intensely enjoying this refreshment, rubbing
busily at Steerforth's head, and winking at me over it.

'Ah!' she said.  'Such things are not much in demand hereabouts. 
That sets me off again!  I haven't seen a pretty woman since I've
been here, jemmy.'

'No?' said Steerforth.

'Not the ghost of one,' replied Miss Mowcher.

'We could show her the substance of one, I think?' said Steerforth,
addressing his eyes to mine.  'Eh, Daisy?'

'Yes, indeed,' said I.

'Aha?' cried the little creature, glancing sharply at my face, and
then peeping round at Steerforth's.  'Umph?'

The first exclamation sounded like a question put to both of us,
and the second like a question put to Steerforth only.  She seemed
to have found no answer to either, but continued to rub, with her
head on one side and her eye turned up, as if she were looking for
an answer in the air and were confident of its appearing presently.

'A sister of yours, Mr. Copperfield?' she cried, after a pause, and
still keeping the same look-out.  'Aye, aye?'

'No,' said Steerforth, before I could reply.  'Nothing of the sort. 
On the contrary, Mr. Copperfield used - or I am much mistaken - to
have a great admiration for her.'

'Why, hasn't he now?' returned Miss Mowcher.  'Is he fickle?  Oh,
for shame!  Did he sip every flower, and change every hour, until
Polly his passion requited? - Is her name Polly?'

The Elfin suddenness with which she pounced upon me with this
question, and a searching look, quite disconcerted me for a moment.

'No, Miss Mowcher,' I replied.  'Her name is Emily.'

'Aha?' she cried exactly as before.  'Umph?  What a rattle I am!
Mr. Copperfield, ain't I volatile?'

Her tone and look implied something that was not agreeable to me in
connexion with the subject.  So I said, in a graver manner than any
of us had yet assumed:
'She is as virtuous as she is pretty.  She is engaged to be married
to a most worthy and deserving man in her own station of life.  I
esteem her for her good sense, as much as I admire her for her good
looks.'

'Well said!' cried Steerforth.  'Hear, hear, hear!  Now I'll quench
the curiosity of this little Fatima, my dear Daisy, by leaving her
nothing to guess at.  She is at present apprenticed, Miss Mowcher,
or articled, or whatever it may be, to Omer and Joram,
Haberdashers, Milliners, and so forth, in this town.  Do you
observe?  Omer and Joram.  The promise of which my friend has
spoken, is made and entered into with her cousin; Christian name,
Ham; surname, Peggotty; occupation, boat-builder; also of this
town.  She lives with a relative; Christian name, unknown; surname,
Peggotty; occupation, seafaring; also of this town.  She is the
prettiest and most engaging little fairy in the world.  I admire
her - as my friend does - exceedingly.  If it were not that I might
appear to disparage her Intended, which I know my friend would not
like, I would add, that to me she seems to be throwing herself
away; that I am sure she might do better; and that I swear she was
born to be a lady.'

Miss Mowcher listened to these words, which were very slowly and
distinctly spoken, with her head on one side, and her eye in the
air as if she were still looking for that answer.  When he ceased
she became brisk again in an instant, and rattled away with
surprising volubility.

'Oh!  And that's all about it, is it?' she exclaimed, trimming his
whiskers with a little restless pair of scissors, that went
glancing round his head in all directions.  'Very well: very well!
Quite a long story.  Ought to end "and they lived happy ever
afterwards"; oughtn't it?  Ah!  What's that game at forfeits?  I
love my love with an E, because she's enticing; I hate her with an
E, because she's engaged.  I took her to the sign of the exquisite,
and treated her with an elopement, her name's Emily, and she lives
in the east?  Ha! ha! ha!  Mr. Copperfield, ain't I volatile?'

Merely looking at me with extravagant slyness, and not waiting for
any reply, she continued, without drawing breath:

'There!  If ever any scapegrace was trimmed and touched up to
perfection, you are, Steerforth.  If I understand any noddle in the
world, I understand yours.  Do you hear me when I tell you that, my
darling?  I understand yours,' peeping down into his face.  'Now
you may mizzle, jemmy (as we say at Court), and if Mr. Copperfield
will take the chair I'll operate on him.'

'What do you say, Daisy?' inquired Steerforth, laughing, and
resigning his seat.  'Will you be improved?'

'Thank you, Miss Mowcher, not this evening.'

'Don't say no,' returned the little woman, looking at me with the
aspect of a connoisseur; 'a little bit more eyebrow?'

'Thank you,' I returned, 'some other time.'

'Have it carried half a quarter of an inch towards the temple,'
said Miss Mowcher.  'We can do it in a fortnight.'

'No, I thank you.  Not at present.'

'Go in for a tip,' she urged.  'No?  Let's get the scaffolding up,
then, for a pair of whiskers.  Come!'

I could not help blushing as I declined, for I felt we were on my
weak point, now.  But Miss Mowcher, finding that I was not at
present disposed for any decoration within the range of her art,
and that I was, for the time being, proof against the blandishments
of the small bottle which she held up before one eye to enforce her
persuasions, said we would make a beginning on an early day, and
requested the aid of my hand to descend from her elevated station. 
Thus assisted, she skipped down with much agility, and began to tie
her double chin into her bonnet.

'The fee,' said Steerforth, 'is -'

'Five bob,' replied Miss Mowcher, 'and dirt cheap, my chicken. 
Ain't I volatile, Mr. Copperfield?'

I replied politely: 'Not at all.'  But I thought she was rather so,
when she tossed up his two half-crowns like a goblin pieman, caught
them, dropped them in her pocket, and gave it a loud slap.

'That's the Till!' observed Miss Mowcher, standing at the chair
again, and replacing in the bag a miscellaneous collection of
little objects she had emptied out of it.  'Have I got all my
traps?  It seems so.  It won't do to be like long Ned Beadwood,
when they took him to church "to marry him to somebody", as he
says, and left the bride behind.  Ha! ha! ha!  A wicked rascal,
Ned, but droll!  Now, I know I'm going to break your hearts, but I
am forced to leave you.  You must call up all your fortitude, and
try to bear it.  Good-bye, Mr. Copperfield!  Take care of yourself,
jockey of Norfolk!  How I have been rattling on!  It's all the
fault of you two wretches.  I forgive you!  "Bob swore!" - as the
Englishman said for "Good night", when he first learnt French, and
thought it so like English.  "Bob swore," my ducks!'

With the bag slung over her arm, and rattling as she waddled away,
she waddled to the door, where she stopped to inquire if she should
leave us a lock of her hair.  'Ain't I volatile?' she added, as a
commentary on this offer, and, with her finger on her nose,
departed.

Steerforth laughed to that degree, that it was impossible for me to
help laughing too; though I am not sure I should have done so, but
for this inducement.  When we had had our laugh quite out, which
was after some time, he told me that Miss Mowcher had quite an
extensive connexion, and made herself useful to a variety of people
in a variety of ways.  Some people trifled with her as a mere
oddity, he said; but she was as shrewdly and sharply observant as
anyone he knew, and as long-headed as she was short-armed.  He told
me that what she had said of being here, and there, and everywhere,
was true enough; for she made little darts into the provinces, and
seemed to pick up customers everywhere, and to know everybody.  I
asked him what her disposition was: whether it was at all
mischievous, and if her sympathies were generally on the right side
of things: but, not succeeding in attracting his attention to these
questions after two or three attempts, I forbore or forgot to
repeat them.  He told me instead, with much rapidity, a good deal
about her skill, and her profits; and about her being a scientific
cupper, if I should ever have occasion for her service in that
capacity.

She was the principal theme of our conversation during the evening:
and when we parted for the night Steerforth called after me over
the banisters, 'Bob swore!' as I went downstairs.

I was surprised, when I came to Mr. Barkis's house, to find Ham
walking up and down in front of it, and still more surprised to
learn from him that little Em'ly was inside.  I naturally inquired
why he was not there too, instead of pacing the streets by himself?

'Why, you see, Mas'r Davy,' he rejoined, in a hesitating manner,
'Em'ly, she's talking to some 'un in here.'

'I should have thought,' said I, smiling, 'that that was a reason
for your being in here too, Ham.'

'Well, Mas'r Davy, in a general way, so 't would be,' he returned;
'but look'ee here, Mas'r Davy,' lowering his voice, and speaking
very gravely.  'It's a young woman, sir - a young woman, that Em'ly
knowed once, and doen't ought to know no more.'

When I heard these words, a light began to fall upon the figure I
had seen following them, some hours ago.

'It's a poor wurem, Mas'r Davy,' said Ham, 'as is trod under foot
by all the town.  Up street and down street.  The mowld o' the
churchyard don't hold any that the folk shrink away from, more.'

'Did I see her tonight, Ham, on the sand, after we met you?'

'Keeping us in sight?' said Ham.  'It's like you did, Mas'r Davy. 
Not that I know'd then, she was theer, sir, but along of her
creeping soon arterwards under Em'ly's little winder, when she see
the light come, and whispering "Em'ly, Em'ly, for Christ's sake,
have a woman's heart towards me.  I was once like you!" Those was
solemn words, Mas'r Davy, fur to hear!'

'They were indeed, Ham.  What did Em'ly do?'
'Says Em'ly, "Martha, is it you?  Oh, Martha, can it be you?" - for
they had sat at work together, many a day, at Mr. Omer's.'

'I recollect her now!' cried I, recalling one of the two girls I
had seen when I first went there.  'I recollect her quite well!'

'Martha Endell,' said Ham.  'Two or three year older than Em'ly,
but was at the school with her.'

'I never heard her name,' said I.  'I didn't mean to interrupt
you.'

'For the matter o' that, Mas'r Davy,' replied Ham, 'all's told
a'most in them words, "Em'ly, Em'ly, for Christ's sake, have a
woman's heart towards me.  I was once like you!" She wanted to
speak to Em'ly.  Em'ly couldn't speak to her theer, for her loving
uncle was come home, and he wouldn't - no, Mas'r Davy,' said Ham,
with great earnestness, 'he couldn't, kind-natur'd, tender-hearted
as he is, see them two together, side by side, for all the
treasures that's wrecked in the sea.'

I felt how true this was.  I knew it, on the instant, quite as well
as Ham.

'So Em'ly writes in pencil on a bit of paper,' he pursued, 'and
gives it to her out o' winder to bring here.  "Show that," she
says, "to my aunt, Mrs. Barkis, and she'll set you down by her
fire, for the love of me, till uncle is gone out, and I can come."
By and by she tells me what I tell you, Mas'r Davy, and asks me to
bring her.  What can I do?  She doen't ought to know any such, but
I can't deny her, when the tears is on her face.'

He put his hand into the breast of his shaggy jacket, and took out
with great care a pretty little purse.

'And if I could deny her when the tears was on her face, Mas'r
Davy,' said Ham, tenderly adjusting it on the rough palm of his
hand, 'how could I deny her when she give me this to carry for her
- knowing what she brought it for?  Such a toy as it is!' said Ham,
thoughtfully looking on it.  'With such a little money in it, Em'ly
my dear.'

I shook him warmly by the hand when he had put it away again - for
that was more satisfactory to me than saying anything - and we
walked up and down, for a minute or two, in silence.  The door
opened then, and Peggotty appeared, beckoning to Ham to come in. 
I would have kept away, but she came after me, entreating me to
come in too.  Even then, I would have avoided the room where they
all were, but for its being the neat-tiled kitchen I have mentioned
more than once.  The door opening immediately into it, I found
myself among them before I considered whither I was going.

The girl - the same I had seen upon the sands - was near the fire. 
She was sitting on the ground, with her head and one arm lying on
a chair.  I fancied, from the disposition of her figure, that Em'ly
had but newly risen from the chair, and that the forlorn head might
perhaps have been lying on her lap.  I saw but little of the girl's
face, over which her hair fell loose and scattered, as if she had
been disordering it with her own hands; but I saw that she was
young, and of a fair complexion.  Peggotty had been crying.  So had
little Em'ly.  Not a word was spoken when we first went in; and the
Dutch clock by the dresser seemed, in the silence, to tick twice as
loud as usual.  Em'ly spoke first.

'Martha wants,' she said to Ham, 'to go to London.'

'Why to London?' returned Ham.

He stood between them, looking on the prostrate girl with a mixture
of compassion for her, and of jealousy of her holding any
companionship with her whom he loved so well, which I have always
remembered distinctly.  They both spoke as if she were ill; in a
soft, suppressed tone that was plainly heard, although it hardly
rose above a whisper.

'Better there than here,' said a third voice aloud - Martha's,
though she did not move.  'No one knows me there.  Everybody knows
me here.'

'What will she do there?' inquired Ham.

She lifted up her head, and looked darkly round at him for a
moment; then laid it down again, and curved her right arm about her
neck, as a woman in a fever, or in an agony of pain from a shot,
might twist herself.

'She will try to do well,' said little Em'ly.  'You don't know what
she has said to us.  Does he - do they - aunt?'

Peggotty shook her head compassionately.

'I'll try,' said Martha, 'if you'll help me away.  I never can do
worse than I have done here.  I may do better.  Oh!' with a
dreadful shiver, 'take me out of these streets, where the whole
town knows me from a child!'

As Em'ly held out her hand to Ham, I saw him put in it a little
canvas bag.  She took it, as if she thought it were her purse, and
made a step or two forward; but finding her mistake, came back to
where he had retired near me, and showed it to him.

'It's all yourn, Em'ly,' I could hear him say.  'I haven't nowt in
all the wureld that ain't yourn, my dear.  It ain't of no delight
to me, except for you!'

The tears rose freshly in her eyes, but she turned away and went to
Martha.  What she gave her, I don't know.  I saw her stooping over
her, and putting money in her bosom.  She whispered something, as
she asked was that enough?  'More than enough,' the other said, and
took her hand and kissed it.

Then Martha arose, and gathering her shawl about her, covering her
face with it, and weeping aloud, went slowly to the door.  She
stopped a moment before going out, as if she would have uttered
something or turned back; but no word passed her lips.  Making the
same low, dreary, wretched moaning in her shawl, she went away.

As the door closed, little Em'ly looked at us three in a hurried
manner and then hid her face in her hands, and fell to sobbing.

'Doen't, Em'ly!' said Ham, tapping her gently on the shoulder. 
'Doen't, my dear!  You doen't ought to cry so, pretty!'

'Oh, Ham!' she exclaimed, still weeping pitifully, 'I am not so
good a girl as I ought to be!  I know I have not the thankful
heart, sometimes, I ought to have!'

'Yes, yes, you have, I'm sure,' said Ham.

'No! no! no!' cried little Em'ly, sobbing, and shaking her head. 
'I am not as good a girl as I ought to be.  Not near! not near!'
And still she cried, as if her heart would break.

'I try your love too much.  I know I do!' she sobbed.  'I'm often
cross to you, and changeable with you, when I ought to be far
different.  You are never so to me.  Why am I ever so to you, when
I should think of nothing but how to be grateful, and to make you
happy!'

'You always make me so,' said Ham, 'my dear!  I am happy in the
sight of you.  I am happy, all day long, in the thoughts of you.'

'Ah! that's not enough!' she cried.  'That is because you are good;
not because I am!  Oh, my dear, it might have been a better fortune
for you, if you had been fond of someone else - of someone steadier
and much worthier than me, who was all bound up in you, and never
vain and changeable like me!'

'Poor little tender-heart,' said Ham, in a low voice.  'Martha has
overset her, altogether.'

'Please, aunt,' sobbed Em'ly, 'come here, and let me lay my head
upon you.  Oh, I am very miserable tonight, aunt!  Oh, I am not as
good a girl as I ought to be.  I am not, I know!'

Peggotty had hastened to the chair before the fire.  Em'ly, with
her arms around her neck, kneeled by her, looking up most earnestly
into her face.

'Oh, pray, aunt, try to help me!  Ham, dear, try to help me!  Mr.
David, for the sake of old times, do, please, try to help me!  I
want to be a better girl than I am.  I want to feel a hundred times
more thankful than I do.  I want to feel more, what a blessed thing
it is to be the wife of a good man, and to lead a peaceful life. 
Oh me, oh me!  Oh my heart, my heart!'

She dropped her face on my old nurse's breast, and, ceasing this
supplication, which in its agony and grief was half a woman's, half
a child's, as all her manner was (being, in that, more natural, and
better suited to her beauty, as I thought, than any other manner
could have been), wept silently, while my old nurse hushed her like
an infant.

She got calmer by degrees, and then we soothed her; now talking
encouragingly, and now jesting a little with her, until she began
to raise her head and speak to us.  So we got on, until she was
able to smile, and then to laugh, and then to sit up, half ashamed;
while Peggotty recalled her stray ringlets, dried her eyes, and
made her neat again, lest her uncle should wonder, when she got
home, why his darling had been crying.

I saw her do, that night, what I had never seen her do before.  I
saw her innocently kiss her chosen husband on the cheek, and creep
close to his bluff form as if it were her best support.  When they
went away together, in the waning moonlight, and I looked after
them, comparing their departure in my mind with Martha's, I saw
that she held his arm with both her hands, and still kept close to
him.

CHAPTER 23
I CORROBORATE Mr. DICK, AND CHOOSE A PROFESSION

When I awoke in the morning I thought very much of little Em'ly,
and her emotion last night, after Martha had left.  I felt as if I
had come into the knowledge of those domestic weaknesses and
tendernesses in a sacred confidence, and that to disclose them,
even to Steerforth, would be wrong.  I had no gentler feeling
towards anyone than towards the pretty creature who had been my
playmate, and whom I have always been persuaded, and shall always
be persuaded, to my dying day, I then devotedly loved.  The
repetition to any ears - even to Steerforth's - of what she had
been unable to repress when her heart lay open to me by an
accident, I felt would be a rough deed, unworthy of myself,
unworthy of the light of our pure childhood, which I always saw
encircling her head.  I made a resolution, therefore, to keep it in
my own breast; and there it gave her image a new grace.

While we were at breakfast, a letter was delivered to me from my
aunt.  As it contained matter on which I thought Steerforth could
advise me as well as anyone, and on which I knew I should be
delighted to consult him, I resolved to make it a subject of
discussion on our journey home.  For the present we had enough to
do, in taking leave of all our friends.  Mr. Barkis was far from
being the last among them, in his regret at our departure; and I
believe would even have opened the box again, and sacrificed
another guinea, if it would have kept us eight-and-forty hours in
Yarmouth.  Peggotty and all her family were full of grief at our
going.  The whole house of Omer and Joram turned out to bid us
good-bye; and there were so many seafaring volunteers in attendance
on Steerforth, when our portmanteaux went to the coach, that if we
had had the baggage of a regiment with us, we should hardly have
wanted porters to carry it.  In a word, we departed to the regret
and admiration of all concerned, and left a great many people very
sorry behind US.

Do you stay long here, Littimer?' said I, as he stood waiting to
see the coach start.

'No, sir,' he replied; 'probably not very long, sir.'

'He can hardly say, just now,' observed Steerforth, carelessly. 
'He knows what he has to do, and he'll do it.'

'That I am sure he will,' said I.

Littimer touched his hat in acknowledgement of my good opinion, and
I felt about eight years old.  He touched it once more, wishing us
a good journey; and we left him standing on the pavement, as
respectable a mystery as any pyramid in Egypt.

For some little time we held no conversation, Steerforth being
unusually silent, and I being sufficiently engaged in wondering,
within myself, when I should see the old places again, and what new
changes might happen to me or them in the meanwhile.  At length
Steerforth, becoming gay and talkative in a moment, as he could
become anything he liked at any moment, pulled me by the arm:

'Find a voice, David.  What about that letter you were speaking of
at breakfast?'

'Oh!' said I, taking it out of my pocket.  'It's from my aunt.'

'And what does she say, requiring consideration?'

'Why, she reminds me, Steerforth,' said I, 'that I came out on
this expedition to look about me, and to think a little.'

'Which, of course, you have done?'

'Indeed I can't say I have, particularly.  To tell you the truth,
I am afraid I have forgotten it.'

'Well! look about you now, and make up for your negligence,' said
Steerforth.  'Look to the right, and you'll see a flat country,
with a good deal of marsh in it; look to the left, and you'll see
the same.  Look to the front, and you'll find no difference; look
to the rear, and there it is still.'
I laughed, and replied that I saw no suitable profession in the
whole prospect; which was perhaps to be attributed to its flatness.

'What says our aunt on the subject?' inquired Steerforth, glancing
at the letter in my hand.  'Does she suggest anything?'

'Why, yes,' said I.  'She asks me, here, if I think I should like
to be a proctor?  What do you think of it?'

'Well, I don't know,' replied Steerforth, coolly.  'You may as well
do that as anything else, I suppose?'

I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all callings and
professions so equally; and I told him so.

'What is a proctor, Steerforth?' said I.

'Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney,' replied Steerforth.  'He
is, to some faded courts held in Doctors' Commons, - a lazy old
nook near St. Paul's Churchyard - what solicitors are to the courts
of law and equity.  He is a functionary whose existence, in the
natural course of things, would have terminated about two hundred
years ago.  I can tell you best what he is, by telling you what
Doctors' Commons is.  It's a little out-of-the-way place, where
they administer what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all
kinds of tricks with obsolete old monsters of acts of Parliament,
which three-fourths of the world know nothing about, and the other
fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in the days
of the Edwards.  It's a place that has an ancient monopoly in suits
about people's wills and people's marriages, and disputes among
ships and boats.'

'Nonsense, Steerforth!' I exclaimed.  'You don't mean to say that
there is any affinity between nautical matters and ecclesiastical
matters?'

'I don't, indeed, my dear boy,' he returned; 'but I mean to say
that they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down
in that same Doctors' Commons.  You shall go there one day, and
find them blundering through half the nautical terms in Young's
Dictionary, apropos of the "Nancy" having run down the "Sarah
Jane", or Mr. Peggotty and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in
a gale of wind with an anchor and cable to the "Nelson" Indiaman in
distress; and you shall go there another day, and find them deep in
the evidence, pro and con, respecting a clergyman who has
misbehaved himself; and you shall find the judge in the nautical
case, the advocate in the clergyman's case, or contrariwise.  They
are like actors: now a man's a judge, and now he is not a judge;
now he's one thing, now he's another; now he's something else,
change and change about; but it's always a very pleasant,
profitable little affair of private theatricals, presented to an
uncommonly select audience.'

'But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?' said I, a
little puzzled.  'Are they?'

'No,' returned Steerforth, 'the advocates are civilians - men who
have taken a doctor's degree at college - which is the first reason
of my knowing anything about it.  The proctors employ the
advocates.  Both get very comfortable fees, and altogether they
make a mighty snug little party.  On the whole, I would recommend
you to take to Doctors' Commons kindly, David.  They plume them-
selves on their gentility there, I can tell you, if that's any
satisfaction.'

I made allowance for Steerforth's light way of treating the
subject, and, considering it with reference to the staid air of
gravity and antiquity which I associated with that 'lazy old nook
near St. Paul's Churchyard', did not feel indisposed towards my
aunt's suggestion; which she left to my free decision, making no
scruple of telling me that it had occurred to her, on her lately
visiting her own proctor in Doctors' Commons for the purpose of
settling her will in my favour.

'That's a laudable proceeding on the part of our aunt, at all
events,' said Steerforth, when I mentioned it; 'and one deserving
of all encouragement.  Daisy, my advice is that you take kindly to
Doctors' Commons.'

I quite made up my mind to do so.  I then told Steerforth that my
aunt was in town awaiting me (as I found from her letter), and that
she had taken lodgings for a week at a kind of private hotel at
Lincoln's Inn Fields, where there was a stone staircase, and a
convenient door in the roof; my aunt being firmly persuaded that
every house in London was going to be burnt down every night.

We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring
to Doctors' Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I
should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety
of humorous and whimsical lights, that made us both merry.  When we
came to our journey's end, he went home, engaging to call upon me
next day but one; and I drove to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where I
found my aunt up, and waiting supper.

If I had been round the world since we parted, we could hardly have
been better pleased to meet again.  My aunt cried outright as she
embraced me; and said, pretending to laugh, that if my poor mother
had been alive, that silly little creature would have shed tears,
she had no doubt.

'So you have left Mr. Dick behind, aunt?' said I.  'I am sorry for
that.  Ah, Janet, how do you do?'

As Janet curtsied, hoping I was well, I observed my aunt's visage
lengthen very much.

'I am sorry for it, too,' said my aunt, rubbing her nose.  'I have
had no peace of mind, Trot, since I have been here.'
Before I could ask why, she told me.

'I am convinced,' said my aunt, laying her hand with melancholy
firmness on the table, 'that Dick's character is not a character to
keep the donkeys off.  I am confident he wants strength of purpose. 
I ought to have left Janet at home, instead, and then my mind might
perhaps have been at ease.  If ever there was a donkey trespassing
on my green,' said my aunt, with emphasis, 'there was one this
afternoon at four o'clock.  A cold feeling came over me from head
to foot, and I know it was a donkey!'

I tried to comfort her on this point, but she rejected consolation.

'It was a donkey,' said my aunt; 'and it was the one with the
stumpy tail which that Murdering sister of a woman rode, when she
came to my house.'  This had been, ever since, the only name my
aunt knew for Miss Murdstone.  'If there is any Donkey in Dover,
whose audacity it is harder to me to bear than another's, that,'
said my aunt, striking the table, 'is the animal!'

Janet ventured to suggest that my aunt might be disturbing herself
unnecessarily, and that she believed the donkey in question was
then engaged in the sand-and-gravel line of business, and was not
available for purposes of trespass.  But my aunt wouldn't hear of
it.

Supper was comfortably served and hot, though my aunt's rooms were
very high up - whether that she might have more stone stairs for
her money, or might be nearer to the door in the roof, I don't know
- and consisted of a roast fowl, a steak, and some vegetables, to
all of which I did ample justice, and which were all excellent. 
But my aunt had her own ideas concerning London provision, and ate
but little.

'I suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought up in a
cellar,' said my aunt, 'and never took the air except on a hackney
coach-stand.  I hope the steak may be beef, but I don't believe it. 
Nothing's genuine in the place, in my opinion, but the dirt.'

'Don't you think the fowl may have come out of the country, aunt?'
I hinted.

'Certainly not,' returned my aunt.  'It would be no pleasure to a
London tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it
was.'

I did not venture to controvert this opinion, but I made a good
supper, which it greatly satisfied her to see me do.  When the
table was cleared, Janet assisted her to arrange her hair, to put
on her nightcap, which was of a smarter construction than usual
('in case of fire', my aunt said), and to fold her gown back over
her knees, these being her usual preparations for warming herself
before going to bed.  I then made her, according to certain
established regulations from which no deviation, however slight,
could ever be permitted, a glass of hot wine and water, and a slice
of toast cut into long thin strips.  With these accompaniments we
were left alone to finish the evening, my aunt sitting opposite to
me drinking her wine and water; soaking her strips of toast in it,
one by one, before eating them; and looking benignantly on me, from
among the borders of her nightcap.

'Well, Trot,' she began, 'what do you think of the proctor plan? 
Or have you not begun to think about it yet?'

'I have thought a good deal about it, my dear aunt, and I have
talked a good deal about it with Steerforth.  I like it very much
indeed.  I like it exceedingly.'

'Come!' said my aunt.  'That's cheering!'

'I have only one difficulty, aunt.'

'Say what it is, Trot,' she returned.

'Why, I want to ask, aunt, as this seems, from what I understand,
to be a limited profession, whether my entrance into it would not
be very expensive?'

'It will cost,' returned my aunt, 'to article you, just a thousand
pounds.'

'Now, my dear aunt,' said I, drawing my chair nearer, 'I am uneasy
in my mind about that.  It's a large sum of money.  You have
expended a great deal on my education, and have always been as
liberal to me in all things as it was possible to be.  You have
been the soul of generosity.  Surely there are some ways in which
I might begin life with hardly any outlay, and yet begin with a
good hope of getting on by resolution and exertion.  Are you sure
that it would not be better to try that course?  Are you certain
that you can afford to part with so much money, and that it is
right that it should be so expended?  I only ask you, my second
mother, to consider.  Are you certain?'

My aunt finished eating the piece of toast on which she was then
engaged, looking me full in the face all the while; and then
setting her glass on the chimney-piece, and folding her hands upon
her folded skirts, replied as follows:

'Trot, my child, if I have any object in life, it is to provide for
your being a good, a sensible, and a happy man.  I am bent upon it
- so is Dick.  I should like some people that I know to hear Dick's
conversation on the subject.  Its sagacity is wonderful.  But no
one knows the resources of that man's intellect, except myself!'

She stopped for a moment to take my hand between hers, and went on:

'It's in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some
influence upon the present.  Perhaps I might have been better
friends with your poor father.  Perhaps I might have been better
friends with that poor child your mother, even after your sister
Betsey Trotwood disappointed me.  When you came to me, a little
runaway boy, all dusty and way-worn, perhaps I thought so.  From
that time until now, Trot, you have ever been a credit to me and a
pride and a pleasure.  I have no other claim upon my means; at
least' - here to my surprise she hesitated, and was confused - 'no,
I have no other claim upon my means - and you are my adopted child. 
Only be a loving child to me in my age, and bear with my whims and
fancies; and you will do more for an old woman whose prime of life
was not so happy or conciliating as it might have been, than ever
that old woman did for you.'

It was the first time I had heard my aunt refer to her past
history.  There was a magnanimity in her quiet way of doing so, and
of dismissing it, which would have exalted her in my respect and
affection, if anything could.

'All is agreed and understood between us, now, Trot,' said my aunt,
'and we need talk of this no more.  Give me a kiss, and we'll go to
the Commons after breakfast tomorrow.'

We had a long chat by the fire before we went to bed.  I slept in
a room on the same floor with my aunt's, and was a little disturbed
in the course of the night by her knocking at my door as often as
she was agitated by a distant sound of hackney-coaches or
market-carts, and inquiring, 'if I heard the engines?'  But towards
morning she slept better, and suffered me to do so too.

At about mid-day, we set out for the office of Messrs Spenlow and
Jorkins, in Doctors' Commons.  My aunt, who had this other general
opinion in reference to London, that every man she saw was a
pickpocket, gave me her purse to carry for her, which had ten
guineas in it and some silver.

We made a pause at the toy shop in Fleet Street, to see the giants
of Saint Dunstan's strike upon the bells - we had timed our going,
so as to catch them at it, at twelve o'clock - and then went on
towards Ludgate Hill, and St. Paul's Churchyard.  We were crossing
to the former place, when I found that my aunt greatly accelerated
her speed, and looked frightened.  I observed, at the same time,
that a lowering ill-dressed man who had stopped and stared at us in
passing, a little before, was coming so close after us as to brush
against her.

'Trot!  My dear Trot!' cried my aunt, in a terrified whisper, and
pressing my arm.  'I don't know what I am to do.'

'Don't be alarmed,' said I.  'There's nothing to be afraid of. 
Step into a shop, and I'll soon get rid of this fellow.'

'No, no, child!' she returned.  'Don't speak to him for the world. 
I entreat, I order you!'

'Good Heaven, aunt!' said I.  'He is nothing but a sturdy
beggar.'

'You don't know what he is!' replied my aunt.  'You don't know who
he is!  You don't know what you say!'

We had stopped in an empty door-way, while this was passing, and he
had stopped too.

'Don't look at him!' said my aunt, as I turned my head indignantly,
'but get me a coach, my dear, and wait for me in St. Paul's
Churchyard.'

'Wait for you?' I replied.

'Yes,' rejoined my aunt.  'I must go alone.  I must go with him.'

'With him, aunt?  This man?'

'I am in my senses,' she replied, 'and I tell you I must.  Get mea
coach!'

However much astonished I might be, I was sensible that I had no
right to refuse compliance with such a peremptory command.  I
hurried away a few paces, and called a hackney-chariot which was
passing empty.  Almost before I could let down the steps, my aunt
sprang in, I don't know how, and the man followed.  She waved her
hand to me to go away, so earnestly, that, all confounded as I was,
I turned from them at once.  In doing so, I heard her say to the
coachman, 'Drive anywhere!  Drive straight on!' and presently the
chariot passed me, going up the hill.

What Mr. Dick had told me, and what I had supposed to be a delusion
of his, now came into my mind.  I could not doubt that this person
was the person of whom he had made such mysterious mention, though
what the nature of his hold upon my aunt could possibly be, I was
quite unable to imagine.  After half an hour's cooling in the
churchyard, I saw the chariot coming back.  The driver stopped
beside me, and my aunt was sitting in it alone.

She had not yet sufficiently recovered from her agitation to be
quite prepared for the visit we had to make.  She desired me to get
into the chariot, and to tell the coachman to drive slowly up and
down a little while.  She said no more, except, 'My dear child,
never ask me what it was, and don't refer to it,' until she had
perfectly regained her composure, when she told me she was quite
herself now, and we might get out.  On her giving me her purse to
pay the driver, I found that all the guineas were gone, and only
the loose silver remained.

Doctors' Commons was approached by a little low archway.  Before we
had taken many paces down the street beyond it, the noise of the
city seemed to melt, as if by magic, into a softened distance.  A
few dull courts and narrow ways brought us to the sky-lighted
offices of Spenlow and Jorkins; in the vestibule of which temple,
accessible to pilgrims without the ceremony of knocking, three or
four clerks were at work as copyists.  One of these, a little dry
man, sitting by himself, who wore a stiff brown wig that looked as
if it were made of gingerbread, rose to receive my aunt, and show
us into Mr. Spenlow's room.

'Mr. Spenlow's in Court, ma'am,' said the dry man; 'it's an Arches
day; but it's close by, and I'll send for him directly.'

As we were left to look about us while Mr. Spenlow was fetched, I
availed myself of the opportunity.  The furniture of the room was
old-fashioned and dusty; and the green baize on the top of the
writing-table had lost all its colour, and was as withered and pale
as an old pauper.  There were a great many bundles of papers on it,
some endorsed as Allegations, and some (to my surprise) as Libels,
and some as being in the Consistory Court, and some in the Arches
Court, and some in the Prerogative Court, and some in the Admiralty
Court, and some in the Delegates' Court; giving me occasion to
wonder much, how many Courts there might be in the gross, and how
long it would take to understand them all.  Besides these, there
were sundry immense manuscript Books of Evidence taken on
affidavit, strongly bound, and tied together in massive sets, a set
to each cause, as if every cause were a history in ten or twenty
volumes.  All this looked tolerably expensive, I thought, and gave
me an agreeable notion of a proctor's business.  I was casting my
eyes with increasing complacency over these and many similar
objects, when hasty footsteps were heard in the room outside, and
Mr. Spenlow, in a black gown trimmed with white fur, came hurrying
in, taking off his hat as he came.

He was a little light-haired gentleman, with undeniable boots, and
the stiffest of white cravats and shirt-collars.  He was buttoned
up, mighty trim and tight, and must have taken a great deal of
pains with his whiskers, which were accurately curled.  His gold
watch-chain was so massive, that a fancy came across me, that he
ought to have a sinewy golden arm, to draw it out with, like those
which are put up over the goldbeaters' shops.  He was got up with
such care, and was so stiff, that he could hardly bend himself;
being obliged, when he glanced at some papers on his desk, after
sitting down in his chair, to move his whole body, from the bottom
of his spine, like Punch.

I had previously been presented by my aunt, and had been
courteously received.  He now said:

'And so, Mr. Copperfield, you think of entering into our
profession?  I casually mentioned to Miss Trotwood, when I had the
pleasure of an interview with her the other day,' - with another
inclination of his body - Punch again - 'that there was a vacancy
here.  Miss Trotwood was good enough to mention that she had a
nephew who was her peculiar care, and for whom she was seeking to
provide genteelly in life.  That nephew, I believe, I have now the
pleasure of' - Punch again.
I bowed my acknowledgements, and said, my aunt had mentioned to me
that there was that opening, and that I believed I should like it
very much.  That I was strongly inclined to like it, and had taken
immediately to the proposal.  That I could not absolutely pledge
myself to like it, until I knew something more about it.  That
although it was little else than a matter of form, I presumed I
should have an opportunity of trying how I liked it, before I bound
myself to it irrevocably.

'Oh surely! surely!' said Mr. Spenlow.  'We always, in this house,
propose a month - an initiatory month.  I should be happy, myself,
to propose two months - three - an indefinite period, in fact - but
I have a partner.  Mr. Jorkins.'

'And the premium, sir,' I returned, 'is a thousand pounds?'

'And the premium, Stamp included, is a thousand pounds,' said Mr.
Spenlow.  'As I have mentioned to Miss Trotwood, I am actuated by
no mercenary considerations; few men are less so, I believe; but
Mr. Jorkins has his opinions on these subjects, and I am bound to
respect Mr. Jorkins's opinions.  Mr. Jorkins thinks a thousand
pounds too little, in short.'

'I suppose, sir,' said I, still desiring to spare my aunt, 'that it
is not the custom here, if an articled clerk were particularly
useful, and made himself a perfect master of his profession' - I
could not help blushing, this looked so like praising myself - 'I
suppose it is not the custom, in the later years of his time, to
allow him any -'

Mr. Spenlow, by a great effort, just lifted his head far enough out
of his cravat to shake it, and answered, anticipating the word
'salary':

'No.  I will not say what consideration I might give to that point
myself, Mr. Copperfield, if I were unfettered.  Mr. Jorkins is
immovable.'

I was quite dismayed by the idea of this terrible Jorkins.  But I
found out afterwards that he was a mild man of a heavy temperament,
whose place in the business was to keep himself in the background,
and be constantly exhibited by name as the most obdurate and
ruthless of men.  If a clerk wanted his salary raised, Mr. Jorkins
wouldn't listen to such a proposition.  If a client were slow to
settle his bill of costs, Mr. Jorkins was resolved to have it paid;
and however painful these things might be (and always were) to the
feelings of Mr. Spenlow, Mr. Jorkins would have his bond.  The
heart and hand of the good angel Spenlow would have been always
open, but for the restraining demon Jorkins.  As I have grown
older, I think I have had experience of some other houses doing
business on the principle of Spenlow and Jorkins!

It was settled that I should begin my month's probation as soon as
I pleased, and that my aunt need neither remain in town nor return
at its expiration, as the articles of agreement, of which I was to
be the subject, could easily be sent to her at home for her
signature.  When we had got so far, Mr. Spenlow offered to take me
into Court then and there, and show me what sort of place it was. 
As I was willing enough to know, we went out with this object,
leaving my aunt behind; who would trust herself, she said, in no
such place, and who, I think, regarded all Courts of Law as a sort
of powder-mills that might blow up at any time.

Mr. Spenlow conducted me through a paved courtyard formed of grave
brick houses, which I inferred, from the Doctors' names upon the
doors, to be the official abiding-places of the learned advocates
of whom Steerforth had told me; and into a large dull room, not
unlike a chapel to my thinking, on the left hand.  The upper part
of this room was fenced off from the rest; and there, on the two
sides of a raised platform of the horse-shoe form, sitting on easy
old-fashioned dining-room chairs, were sundry gentlemen in red
gowns and grey wigs, whom I found to be the Doctors aforesaid. 
Blinking over a little desk like a pulpit-desk, in the curve of the
horse-shoe, was an old gentleman, whom, if I had seen him in an
aviary, I should certainly have taken for an owl, but who, I
learned, was the presiding judge.  In the space within the
horse-shoe, lower than these, that is to say, on about the level of
the floor, were sundry other gentlemen, of Mr. Spenlow's rank, and
dressed like him in black gowns with white fur upon them, sitting
at a long green table.  Their cravats were in general stiff, I
thought, and their looks haughty; but in this last respect I
presently conceived I had done them an injustice, for when two or
three of them had to rise and answer a question of the presiding
dignitary, I never saw anything more sheepish.  The public,
represented by a boy with a comforter, and a shabby-genteel man
secretly eating crumbs out of his coat pockets, was warming itself
at a stove in the centre of the Court.  The languid stillness of
the place was only broken by the chirping of this fire and by the
voice of one of the Doctors, who was wandering slowly through a
perfect library of evidence, and stopping to put up, from time to
time, at little roadside inns of argument on the journey. 
Altogether, I have never, on any occasion, made one at such a
cosey, dosey, old-fashioned, time-forgotten, sleepy-headed little
family-party in all my life; and I felt it would be quite a
soothing opiate to belong to it in any character - except perhaps
as a suitor.

Very well satisfied with the dreamy nature of this retreat, I
informed Mr. Spenlow that I had seen enough for that time, and we
rejoined my aunt; in company with whom I presently departed from
the Commons, feeling very young when I went out of Spenlow and
Jorkins's, on account of the clerks poking one another with their
pens to point me out.

We arrived at Lincoln's Inn Fields without any new adventures,
except encountering an unlucky donkey in a costermonger's cart, who
suggested painful associations to my aunt.  We had another long
talk about my plans, when we were safely housed; and as I knew she
was anxious to get home, and, between fire, food, and pickpockets,
could never be considered at her ease for half-an-hour in London,
I urged her not to be uncomfortable on my account, but to leave me
to take care of myself.

'I have not been here a week tomorrow, without considering that
too, my dear,' she returned.  'There is a furnished little set of
chambers to be let in the Adelphi, Trot, which ought to suit you to
a marvel.'

With this brief introduction, she produced from her pocket an
advertisement, carefully cut out of a newspaper, setting forth that
in Buckingham Street in the Adelphi there was to be let furnished,
with a view of the river, a singularly desirable, and compact set
of chambers, forming a genteel residence for a young gentleman, a
member of one of the Inns of Court, or otherwise, with immediate
possession.  Terms moderate, and could be taken for a month only,
if required.

'Why, this is the very thing, aunt!' said I, flushed with the
possible dignity of living in chambers.

'Then come,' replied my aunt, immediately resuming the bonnet she
had a minute before laid aside.  'We'll go and look at 'em.'

Away we went.  The advertisement directed us to apply to Mrs. Crupp
on the premises, and we rung the area bell, which we supposed to
communicate with Mrs. Crupp.  It was not until we had rung three or
four times that we could prevail on Mrs. Crupp to communicate with
us, but at last she appeared, being a stout lady with a flounce of
flannel petticoat below a nankeen gown.

'Let us see these chambers of yours, if you please, ma'am,' said my
aunt.

'For this gentleman?' said Mrs. Crupp, feeling in her pocket for
her keys.

'Yes, for my nephew,' said my aunt.

'And a sweet set they is for sich!' said Mrs. Crupp.

So we went upstairs.

They were on the top of the house - a great point with my aunt,
being near the fire-escape - and consisted of a little half-blind
entry where you could see hardly anything, a little stone-blind
pantry where you could see nothing at all, a sitting-room, and a
bedroom.  The furniture was rather faded, but quite good enough for
me; and, sure enough, the river was outside the windows.

As I was delighted with the place, my aunt and Mrs. Crupp withdrew
into the pantry to discuss the terms, while I remained on the
sitting-room sofa, hardly daring to think it possible that I could
be destined to live in such a noble residence.  After a single
combat of some duration they returned, and I saw, to my joy, both
in Mrs. Crupp's countenance and in my aunt's, that the deed was
done.

'Is it the last occupant's furniture?' inquired my aunt.

'Yes, it is, ma'am,' said Mrs. Crupp.

'What's become of him?' asked my aunt.

Mrs. Crupp was taken with a troublesome cough, in the midst of
which she articulated with much difficulty.  'He was took ill here,
ma'am, and - ugh! ugh! ugh! dear me! - and he died!'

'Hey!  What did he die of?' asked my aunt.

'Well, ma'am, he died of drink,' said Mrs. Crupp, in confidence. 
'And smoke.'

'Smoke?  You don't mean chimneys?' said my aunt.

'No, ma'am,' returned Mrs. Crupp.  'Cigars and pipes.'

'That's not catching, Trot, at any rate,' remarked my aunt, turning
to me.

'No, indeed,' said I.

In short, my aunt, seeing how enraptured I was with the premises,
took them for a month, with leave to remain for twelve months when
that time was out.  Mrs. Crupp was to find linen, and to cook;
every other necessary was already provided; and Mrs. Crupp
expressly intimated that she should always yearn towards me as a
son.  I was to take possession the day after tomorrow, and Mrs.
Crupp said, thank Heaven she had now found summun she could care
for!

On our way back, my aunt informed me how she confidently trusted
that the life I was now to lead would make me firm and
self-reliant, which was all I wanted.  She repeated this several
times next day, in the intervals of our arranging for the
transmission of my clothes and books from Mr. Wickfield's; relative
to which, and to all my late holiday, I wrote a long letter to
Agnes, of which my aunt took charge, as she was to leave on the
succeeding day.  Not to lengthen these particulars, I need only
add, that she made a handsome provision for all my possible wants
during my month of trial; that Steerforth, to my great
disappointment and hers too, did not make his appearance before she
went away; that I saw her safely seated in the Dover coach,
exulting in the coming discomfiture of the vagrant donkeys, with
Janet at her side; and that when the coach was gone, I turned my
face to the Adelphi, pondering on the old days when I used to roam
about its subterranean arches, and on the happy changes which had
brought me to the surface.

CHAPTER 24
MY FIRST DISSIPATION

It was a wonderfully fine thing to have that lofty castle to
myself, and to feel, when I shut my outer door, like Robinson
Crusoe, when he had got into his fortification, and pulled his
ladder up after him.  It was a wonderfully fine thing to walk about
town with the key of my house in my pocket, and to know that I
could ask any fellow to come home, and make quite sure of its being
inconvenient to nobody, if it were not so to me.  It was a
wonderfully fine thing to let myself in and out, and to come and go
without a word to anyone, and to ring Mrs. Crupp up, gasping, from
the depths of the earth, when I wanted her - and when she was
disposed to come.  All this, I say, was wonderfully fine; but I
must say, too, that there were times when it was very dreary.

It was fine in the morning, particularly in the fine mornings.  It
looked a very fresh, free life, by daylight: still fresher, and
more free, by sunlight.  But as the day declined, the life seemed
to go down too.  I don't know how it was; it seldom looked well by
candle-light.  I wanted somebody to talk to, then.  I missed Agnes. 
I found a tremendous blank, in the place of that smiling repository
of my confidence.  Mrs. Crupp appeared to be a long way off.  I
thought about my predecessor, who had died of drink and smoke; and
I could have wished he had been so good as to live, and not bother
me with his decease.

After two days and nights, I felt as if I had lived there for a
year, and yet I was not an hour older, but was quite as much
tormented by my own youthfulness as ever.

Steerforth not yet appearing, which induced me to apprehend that he
must be ill, I left the Commons early on the third day, and walked
out to Highgate.  Mrs. Steerforth was very glad to see me, and said
that he had gone away with one of his Oxford friends to see another
who lived near St. Albans, but that she expected him to return
tomorrow.  I was so fond of him, that I felt quite jealous of his
Oxford friends.

As she pressed me to stay to dinner, I remained, and I believe we
talked about nothing but him all day.  I told her how much the
people liked him at Yarmouth, and what a delightful companion he
had been.  Miss Dartle was full of hints and mysterious questions,
but took a great interest in all our proceedings there, and said,
'Was it really though?' and so forth, so often, that she got
everything out of me she wanted to know.  Her appearance was
exactly what I have described it, when I first saw her; but the
society of the two ladies was so agreeable, and came so natural to
me, that I felt myself falling a little in love with her.  I could
not help thinking, several times in the course of the evening, and
particularly when I walked home at night, what delightful company
she would be in Buckingham Street.

I was taking my coffee and roll in the morning, before going to the
Commons - and I may observe in this place that it is surprising how
much coffee Mrs. Crupp used, and how weak it was, considering -
when Steerforth himself walked in, to my unbounded joy.

'My dear Steerforth,' cried I, 'I began to think I should never see
you again!'

'I was carried off, by force of arms,' said Steerforth, 'the very
next morning after I got home.  Why, Daisy, what a rare old
bachelor you are here!'

I showed him over the establishment, not omitting the pantry, with
no little pride, and he commended it highly.  'I tell you what, old
boy,' he added, 'I shall make quite a town-house of this place,
unless you give me notice to quit.'

This was a delightful hearing.  I told him if he waited for that,
he would have to wait till doomsday.

'But you shall have some breakfast!' said I, with my hand on the
bell-rope, 'and Mrs. Crupp shall make you some fresh coffee, and
I'll toast you some bacon in a bachelor's Dutch-oven, that I have
got here.'

'No, no!' said Steerforth.  'Don't ring!  I can't!  I am going to
breakfast with one of these fellows who is at the Piazza Hotel, in
Covent Garden.'

'But you'll come back to dinner?' said I.

'I can't, upon my life.  There's nothing I should like better, but
I must remain with these two fellows.  We are all three off
together tomorrow morning.'

'Then bring them here to dinner,' I returned.  'Do you think they
would come?'

'Oh! they would come fast enough,' said Steerforth; 'but we should
inconvenience you.  You had better come and dine with us
somewhere.'

I would not by any means consent to this, for it occurred to me
that I really ought to have a little house-warming, and that there
never could be a better opportunity.  I had a new pride in my rooms
after his approval of them, and burned with a desire to develop
their utmost resources.  I therefore made him promise positively in
the names of his two friends, and we appointed six o'clock as the
dinner-hour.

When he was gone, I rang for Mrs. Crupp, and acquainted her with my
desperate design.  Mrs. Crupp said, in the first place, of course
it was well known she couldn't be expected to wait, but she knew a
handy young man, who she thought could be prevailed upon to do it,
and whose terms would be five shillings, and what I pleased.  I
said, certainly we would have him.  Next Mrs. Crupp said it was
clear she couldn't be in two places at once (which I felt to be
reasonable), and that 'a young gal' stationed in the pantry with a
bedroom candle, there never to desist from washing plates, would be
indispensable.  I said, what would be the expense of this young
female? and Mrs. Crupp said she supposed eighteenpence would
neither make me nor break me.  I said I supposed not; and THAT was
settled.  Then Mrs. Crupp said, Now about the dinner.

It was a remarkable instance of want of forethought on the part of
the ironmonger who had made Mrs. Crupp's kitchen fireplace, that it
was capable of cooking nothing but chops and mashed potatoes.  As
to a fish-kittle, Mrs. Crupp said, well! would I only come and look
at the range?  She couldn't say fairer than that.  Would I come and
look at it?  As I should not have been much the wiser if I HAD
looked at it, I declined, and said, 'Never mind fish.'  But Mrs.
Crupp said, Don't say that; oysters was in, why not them?  So THAT
was settled.  Mrs. Crupp then said what she would recommend would
be this.  A pair of hot roast fowls - from the pastry-cook's; a
dish of stewed beef, with vegetables - from the pastry-cook's; two
little corner things, as a raised pie and a dish of kidneys - from
the pastrycook's; a tart, and (if I liked) a shape of jelly - from
the pastrycook's.  This, Mrs. Crupp said, would leave her at full
liberty to concentrate her mind on the potatoes, and to serve up
the cheese and celery as she could wish to see it done.

I acted on Mrs. Crupp's opinion, and gave the order at the
pastry-cook's myself.  Walking along the Strand, afterwards, and
observing a hard mottled substance in the window of a ham and beef
shop, which resembled marble, but was labelled 'Mock Turtle', I
went in and bought a slab of it, which I have since seen reason to
believe would have sufficed for fifteen people.  This preparation,
Mrs. Crupp, after some difficulty, consented to warm up; and it
shrunk so much in a liquid state, that we found it what Steerforth
called 'rather a tight fit' for four.

These preparations happily completed, I bought a little dessert in
Covent Garden Market, and gave a rather extensive order at a retail
wine-merchant's in that vicinity.  When I came home in the
afternoon, and saw the bottles drawn up in a square on the pantry
floor, they looked so numerous (though there were two missing,
which made Mrs. Crupp very uncomfortable), that I was absolutely
frightened at them.

One of Steerforth's friends was named Grainger, and the other
Markham.  They were both very gay and lively fellows; Grainger,
something older than Steerforth; Markham, youthful-looking, and I
should say not more than twenty.  I observed that the latter always
spoke of himself indefinitely, as 'a man', and seldom or never in
the first person singular.

'A man might get on very well here, Mr. Copperfield,' said Markham
- meaning himself.

'It's not a bad situation,' said I, 'and the rooms are really
commodious.'

'I hope you have both brought appetites with you?' said Steerforth.

'Upon my honour,' returned Markham, 'town seems to sharpen a man's
appetite.  A man is hungry all day long.  A man is perpetually
eating.'

Being a little embarrassed at first, and feeling much too young to
preside, I made Steerforth take the head of the table when dinner
was announced, and seated myself opposite to him.  Everything was
very good; we did not spare the wine; and he exerted himself so
brilliantly to make the thing pass off well, that there was no
pause in our festivity.  I was not quite such good company during
dinner as I could have wished to be, for my chair was opposite the
door, and my attention was distracted by observing that the handy
young man went out of the room very often, and that his shadow
always presented itself, immediately afterwards, on the wall of the
entry, with a bottle at its mouth.  The 'young gal' likewise
occasioned me some uneasiness: not so much by neglecting to wash
the plates, as by breaking them.  For being of an inquisitive
disposition, and unable to confine herself (as her positive
instructions were) to the pantry, she was constantly peering in at
us, and constantly imagining herself detected; in which belief, she
several times retired upon the plates (with which she had carefully
paved the floor), and did a great deal of destruction.

These, however, were small drawbacks, and easily forgotten when the
cloth was cleared, and the dessert put on the table; at which
period of the entertainment the handy young man was discovered to
be speechless.  Giving him private directions to seek the society
of Mrs. Crupp, and to remove the 'young gal' to the basement also,
I abandoned myself to enjoyment.

I began, by being singularly cheerful and light-hearted; all sorts
of half-forgotten things to talk about, came rushing into my mind,
and made me hold forth in a most unwonted manner.  I laughed
heartily at my own jokes, and everybody else's; called Steerforth
to order for not passing the wine; made several engagements to go
to Oxford; announced that I meant to have a dinner-party exactly
like that, once a week, until further notice; and madly took so
much snuff out of Grainger's box, that I was obliged to go into the
pantry, and have a private fit of sneezing ten minutes long.

I went on, by passing the wine faster and faster yet, and
continually starting up with a corkscrew to open more wine, long
before any was needed.  I proposed Steerforth's health.  I said he
was my dearest friend, the protector of my boyhood, and the
companion of my prime.  I said I was delighted to propose his
health.  I said I owed him more obligations than I could ever
repay, and held him in a higher admiration than I could ever
express.  I finished by saying, 'I'll give you Steerforth!  God
bless him!  Hurrah!' We gave him three times three, and another,
and a good one to finish with.  I broke my glass in going round the
table to shake hands with him, and I said (in two words)
'Steerforth - you'retheguidingstarofmyexistence.'

I went on, by finding suddenly that somebody was in the middle of
a song.  Markham was the singer, and he sang 'When the heart of a
man is depressed with care'.  He said, when he had sung it, he
would give us 'Woman!' I took objection to that, and I couldn't
allow it.  I said it was not a respectful way of proposing the
toast, and I would never permit that toast to be drunk in my house
otherwise than as 'The Ladies!' I was very high with him, mainly I
think because I saw Steerforth and Grainger laughing at me - or at
him - or at both of us.  He said a man was not to be dictated to. 
I said a man was.  He said a man was not to be insulted, then.  I
said he was right there - never under my roof, where the Lares were
sacred, and the laws of hospitality paramount.  He said it was no
derogation from a man's dignity to confess that I was a devilish
good fellow.  I instantly proposed his health.

Somebody was smoking.  We were all smoking.  I was smoking, and
trying to suppress a rising tendency to shudder.  Steerforth had
made a speech about me, in the course of which I had been affected
almost to tears.  I returned thanks, and hoped the present company
would dine with me tomorrow, and the day after - each day at five
o'clock, that we might enjoy the pleasures of conversation and
society through a long evening.  I felt called upon to propose an
individual.  I would give them my aunt.  Miss Betsey Trotwood, the
best of her sex!

Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his
forehead against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air
upon his face.  It was myself.  I was addressing myself as
'Copperfield', and saying, 'Why did you try to smoke?  You might
have known you couldn't do it.'  Now, somebody was unsteadily
contemplating his features in the looking-glass.  That was I too. 
I was very pale in the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant
appearance; and my hair - only my hair, nothing else - looked
drunk.

Somebody said to me, 'Let us go to the theatre, Copperfield!' There
was no bedroom before me, but again the jingling table covered with
glasses; the lamp; Grainger on my right hand, Markham on my left,
and Steerforth opposite - all sitting in a mist, and a long way
off.  The theatre?  To be sure.  The very thing.  Come along!  But
they must excuse me if I saw everybody out first, and turned the
lamp off - in case of fire.

Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was gone.  I was
feeling for it in the window-curtains, when Steerforth, laughing,
took me by the arm and led me out.  We went downstairs, one behind
another.  Near the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. 
Somebody else said it was Copperfield.  I was angry at that false
report, until, finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to
think there might be some foundation for it.

A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in the
streets!  There was an indistinct talk of its being wet.  I
considered it frosty.  Steerforth dusted me under a lamp-post, and
put my hat into shape, which somebody produced from somewhere in a
most extraordinary manner, for I hadn't had it on before. 
Steerforth then said, 'You are all right, Copperfield, are you
not?' and I told him, 'Neverberrer.'

A man, sitting in a pigeon-hole-place, looked out of the fog, and
took money from somebody, inquiring if I was one of the gentlemen
paid for, and appearing rather doubtful (as I remember in the
glimpse I had of him) whether to take the money for me or not. 
Shortly afterwards, we were very high up in a very hot theatre,
looking down into a large pit, that seemed to me to smoke; the
people with whom it was crammed were so indistinct.  There was a
great stage, too, looking very clean and smooth after the streets;
and there were people upon it, talking about something or other,
but not at all intelligibly.  There was an abundance of bright
lights, and there was music, and there were ladies down in the
boxes, and I don't know what more.  The whole building looked to me
as if it were learning to swim; it conducted itself in such an
unaccountable manner, when I tried to steady it.

On somebody's motion, we resolved to go downstairs to the
dress-boxes, where the ladies were.  A gentleman lounging, full
dressed, on a sofa, with an opera-glass in his hand, passed before
my view, and also my own figure at full length in a glass.  Then I
was being ushered into one of these boxes, and found myself saying
something as I sat down, and people about me crying 'Silence!' to
somebody, and ladies casting indignant glances at me, and - what!
yes! - Agnes, sitting on the seat before me, in the same box, with
a lady and gentleman beside her, whom I didn't know.  I see her
face now, better than I did then, I dare say, with its indelible
look of regret and wonder turned upon me.

'Agnes!' I said, thickly, 'Lorblessmer!  Agnes!'

'Hush!  Pray!' she answered, I could not conceive why.  'You
disturb the company.  Look at the stage!'

I tried, on her injunction, to fix it, and to hear something of
what was going on there, but quite in vain.  I looked at her again
by and by, and saw her shrink into her corner, and put her gloved
hand to her forehead.

'Agnes!' I said.  'I'mafraidyou'renorwell.'

'Yes, yes.  Do not mind me, Trotwood,' she returned.  'Listen!  Are
you going away soon?'

'Amigoarawaysoo?' I repeated.

'Yes.'

I had a stupid intention of replying that I was going to wait, to
hand her downstairs.  I suppose I expressed it, somehow; for after
she had looked at me attentively for a little while, she appeared
to understand, and replied in a low tone:

'I know you will do as I ask you, if I tell you I am very earnest
in it.  Go away now, Trotwood, for my sake, and ask your friends to
take you home.'

She had so far improved me, for the time, that though I was angry
with her, I felt ashamed, and with a short 'Goori!' (which I
intended for 'Good night!') got up and went away.  They followed,
and I stepped at once out of the box-door into my bedroom, where
only Steerforth was with me, helping me to undress, and where I was
by turns telling him that Agnes was my sister, and adjuring him to
bring the corkscrew, that I might open another bottle of wine.

How somebody, lying in my bed, lay saying and doing all this over
again, at cross purposes, in a feverish dream all night - the bed
a rocking sea that was never still!  How, as that somebody slowly
settled down into myself, did I begin to parch, and feel as if my
outer covering of skin were a hard board; my tongue the bottom of
an empty kettle, furred with long service, and burning up over a
slow fire; the palms of my hands, hot plates of metal which no ice
could cool!

But the agony of mind, the remorse, and shame I felt when I became
conscious next day!  My horror of having committed a thousand
offences I had forgotten, and which nothing could ever expiate - my
recollection of that indelible look which Agnes had given me - the
torturing impossibility of communicating with her, not knowing,
Beast that I was, how she came to be in London, or where she stayed
- my disgust of the very sight of the room where the revel had been
held - my racking head - the smell of smoke, the sight of glasses,
the impossibility of going out, or even getting up!  Oh, what a day
it was!

Oh, what an evening, when I sat down by my fire to a basin of
mutton broth, dimpled all over with fat, and thought I was going
the way of my predecessor, and should succeed to his dismal story
as well as to his chambers, and had half a mind to rush express to
Dover and reveal all!  What an evening, when Mrs. Crupp, coming in
to take away the broth-basin, produced one kidney on a cheese-plate
as the entire remains of yesterday's feast, and I was really
inclined to fall upon her nankeen breast and say, in heartfelt
penitence, 'Oh, Mrs. Crupp, Mrs. Crupp, never mind the broken
meats!  I am very miserable!' - only that I doubted, even at that
pass, if Mrs. Crupp were quite the sort of woman to confide in!

CHAPTER 25
GOOD AND BAD ANGELS

I was going out at my door on the morning after that deplorable day
of headache, sickness, and repentance, with an odd confusion in my
mind relative to the date of my dinner-party, as if a body of
Titans had taken an enormous lever and pushed the day before
yesterday some months back, when I saw a ticket-porter coming
upstairs, with a letter in his hand.  He was taking his time about
his errand, then; but when he saw me on the top of the staircase,
looking at him over the banisters, he swung into a trot, and came
up panting as if he had run himself into a state of exhaustion.

'T. Copperfield, Esquire,' said the ticket-porter, touching his hat
with his little cane.

I could scarcely lay claim to the name: I was so disturbed by the
conviction that the letter came from Agnes.  However, I told him I
was T. Copperfield, Esquire, and he believed it, and gave me the
letter, which he said required an answer.  I shut him out on the
landing to wait for the answer, and went into my chambers again, in
such a nervous state that I was fain to lay the letter down on my
breakfast table, and familiarize myself with the outside of it a
little, before I could resolve to break the seal.

I found, when I did open it, that it was a very kind note,
containing no reference to my condition at the theatre.  All it
said was, 'My dear Trotwood.  I am staying at the house of papa's
agent, Mr. Waterbrook, in Ely Place, Holborn.  Will you come and
see me today, at any time you like to appoint?  Ever yours
affectionately, AGNES.  '

It took me such a long time to write an answer at all to my
satisfaction, that I don't know what the ticket-porter can have
thought, unless he thought I was learning to write.  I must have
written half-a-dozen answers at least.  I began one, 'How can I
ever hope, my dear Agnes, to efface from your remembrance the
disgusting impression' - there I didn't like it, and then I tore it
up.  I began another, 'Shakespeare has observed, my dear Agnes, how
strange it is that a man should put an enemy into his mouth' - that
reminded me of Markham, and it got no farther.  I even tried
poetry.  I began one note, in a six-syllable line, 'Oh, do not
remember' - but that associated itself with the fifth of November,
and became an absurdity.  After many attempts, I wrote, 'My dear
Agnes.  Your letter is like you, and what could I say of it that
would be higher praise than that?  I will come at four o'clock. 
Affectionately and sorrowfully, T.C.'  With this missive (which I
was in twenty minds at once about recalling, as soon as it was out
of my hands), the ticket-porter at last departed.

If the day were half as tremendous to any other professional
gentleman in Doctors' Commons as it was to me, I sincerely believe
he made some expiation for his share in that rotten old
ecclesiastical cheese.  Although I left the office at half past
three, and was prowling about the place of appointment within a few
minutes afterwards, the appointed time was exceeded by a full
quarter of an hour, according to the clock of St. Andrew's,
Holborn, before I could muster up sufficient desperation to pull
the private bell-handle let into the left-hand door-post of Mr.
Waterbrook's house.

The professional business of Mr. Waterbrook's establishment was
done on the ground-floor, and the genteel business (of which there
was a good deal) in the upper part of the building.  I was shown
into a pretty but rather close drawing-room, and there sat Agnes,
netting a purse.

She looked so quiet and good, and reminded me so strongly of my
airy fresh school days at Canterbury, and the sodden, smoky, stupid
wretch I had been the other night, that, nobody being by, I yielded
to my self-reproach and shame, and - in short, made a fool of
myself.  I cannot deny that I shed tears.  To this hour I am
undecided whether it was upon the whole the wisest thing I could
have done, or the most ridiculous.

'If it had been anyone but you, Agnes,' said I, turning away my
head, 'I should not have minded it half so much.  But that it
should have been you who saw me!  I almost wish I had been dead,
first.'

She put her hand - its touch was like no other hand - upon my arm
for a moment; and I felt so befriended and comforted, that I could
not help moving it to my lips, and gratefully kissing it.

'Sit down,' said Agnes, cheerfully.  'Don't be unhappy, Trotwood. 
If you cannot confidently trust me, whom will you trust?'

'Ah, Agnes!' I returned.  'You are my good Angel!'

She smiled rather sadly, I thought, and shook her head.

'Yes, Agnes, my good Angel!  Always my good Angel!'

'If I were, indeed, Trotwood,' she returned, 'there is one thing
that I should set my heart on very much.'

I looked at her inquiringly; but already with a foreknowledge of
her meaning.

'On warning you,' said Agnes, with a steady glance, 'against your
bad Angel.'

'My dear Agnes,' I began, 'if you mean Steerforth -'

'I do, Trotwood,' she returned.
'Then, Agnes, you wrong him very much.  He my bad Angel, or
anyone's!  He, anything but a guide, a support, and a friend to me!
My dear Agnes!  Now, is it not unjust, and unlike you, to judge him
from what you saw of me the other night?'

'I do not judge him from what I saw of you the other night,' she
quietly replied.

'From what, then?'

'From many things - trifles in themselves, but they do not seem to
me to be so, when they are put together.  I judge him, partly from
your account of him, Trotwood, and your character, and the
influence he has over you.'

There was always something in her modest voice that seemed to touch
a chord within me, answering to that sound alone.  It was always
earnest; but when it was very earnest, as it was now, there was a
thrill in it that quite subdued me.  I sat looking at her as she
cast her eyes down on her work; I sat seeming still to listen to
her; and Steerforth, in spite of all my attachment to him, darkened
in that tone.

'It is very bold in me,' said Agnes, looking up again, 'who have
lived in such seclusion, and can know so little of the world, to
give you my advice so confidently, or even to have this strong
opinion.  But I know in what it is engendered, Trotwood, - in how
true a remembrance of our having grown up together, and in how true
an interest in all relating to you.  It is that which makes me
bold.  I am certain that what I say is right.  I am quite sure it
is.  I feel as if it were someone else speaking to you, and not I,
when I caution you that you have made a dangerous friend.'

Again I looked at her, again I listened to her after she was
silent, and again his image, though it was still fixed in my heart,
darkened.

'I am not so unreasonable as to expect,' said Agnes, resuming her
usual tone, after a little while, 'that you will, or that you can,
at once, change any sentiment that has become a conviction to you;
least of all a sentiment that is rooted in your trusting
disposition.  You ought not hastily to do that.  I only ask you,
Trotwood, if you ever think of me - I mean,' with a quiet smile,
for I was going to interrupt her, and she knew why, 'as often as
you think of me - to think of what I have said.  Do you forgive me
for all this?'

'I will forgive you, Agnes,' I replied, 'when you come to do
Steerforth justice, and to like him as well as I do.'

'Not until then?' said Agnes.

I saw a passing shadow on her face when I made this mention of him,
but she returned my smile, and we were again as unreserved in our
mutual confidence as of old.

'And when, Agnes,' said I, 'will you forgive me the other night?'

'When I recall it,' said Agnes.

She would have dismissed the subject so, but I was too full of it
to allow that, and insisted on telling her how it happened that I
had disgraced myself, and what chain of accidental circumstances
had had the theatre for its final link.  It was a great relief to
me to do this, and to enlarge on the obligation that I owed to
Steerforth for his care of me when I was unable to take care of
myself.

'You must not forget,' said Agnes, calmly changing the conversation
as soon as I had concluded, 'that you are always to tell me, not
only when you fall into trouble, but when you fall in love.  Who
has succeeded to Miss Larkins, Trotwood?'

'No one, Agnes.'

'Someone, Trotwood,' said Agnes, laughing, and holding up her
finger.

'No, Agnes, upon my word!  There is a lady, certainly, at Mrs.
Steerforth's house, who is very clever, and whom I like to talk to
- Miss Dartle - but I don't adore her.'

Agnes laughed again at her own penetration, and told me that if I
were faithful to her in my confidence she thought she should keep
a little register of my violent attachments, with the date,
duration, and termination of each, like the table of the reigns of
the kings and queens, in the History of England.  Then she asked me
if I had seen Uriah.

'Uriah Heep?' said I.  'No.  Is he in London?'

'He comes to the office downstairs, every day,' returned Agnes. 
'He was in London a week before me.  I am afraid on disagreeable
business, Trotwood.'

'On some business that makes you uneasy, Agnes, I see,' said I. 
'What can that be?'

Agnes laid aside her work, and replied, folding her hands upon one
another, and looking pensively at me out of those beautiful soft
eyes of hers:

'I believe he is going to enter into partnership with papa.'

'What?  Uriah?  That mean, fawning fellow, worm himself into such
promotion!' I cried, indignantly.  'Have you made no remonstrance
about it, Agnes?  Consider what a connexion it is likely to be. 
You must speak out.  You must not allow your father to take such a
mad step.  You must prevent it, Agnes, while there's time.'

Still looking at me, Agnes shook her head while I was speaking,
with a faint smile at my warmth: and then replied:

'You remember our last conversation about papa?  It was not long
after that - not more than two or three days - when he gave me the
first intimation of what I tell you.  It was sad to see him
struggling between his desire to represent it to me as a matter of
choice on his part, and his inability to conceal that it was forced
upon him.  I felt very sorry.'

'Forced upon him, Agnes!  Who forces it upon him?'

'Uriah,' she replied, after a moment's hesitation, 'has made
himself indispensable to papa.  He is subtle and watchful.  He has
mastered papa's weaknesses, fostered them, and taken advantage of
them, until - to say all that I mean in a word, Trotwood, - until
papa is afraid of him.'

There was more that she might have said; more that she knew, or
that she suspected; I clearly saw.  I could not give her pain by
asking what it was, for I knew that she withheld it from me, to
spare her father.  It had long been going on to this, I was
sensible: yes, I could not but feel, on the least reflection, that
it had been going on to this for a long time.  I remained silent.

'His ascendancy over papa,' said Agnes, 'is very great.  He
professes humility and gratitude - with truth, perhaps: I hope so
- but his position is really one of power, and I fear he makes a
hard use of his power.'

I said he was a hound, which, at the moment, was a great
satisfaction to me.

'At the time I speak of, as the time when papa spoke to me,'
pursued Agnes, 'he had told papa that he was going away; that he
was very sorry, and unwilling to leave, but that he had better
prospects.  Papa was very much depressed then, and more bowed down
by care than ever you or I have seen him; but he seemed relieved by
this expedient of the partnership, though at the same time he
seemed hurt by it and ashamed of it.'

'And how did you receive it, Agnes?'

'I did, Trotwood,' she replied, 'what I hope was right.  Feeling
sure that it was necessary for papa's peace that the sacrifice
should be made, I entreated him to make it.  I said it would
lighten the load of his life - I hope it will! - and that it would
give me increased opportunities of being his companion.  Oh,
Trotwood!' cried Agnes, putting her hands before her face, as her
tears started on it, 'I almost feel as if I had been papa's enemy,
instead of his loving child.  For I know how he has altered, in his
devotion to me.  I know how he has narrowed the circle of his
sympathies and duties, in the concentration of his whole mind upon
me.  I know what a multitude of things he has shut out for my sake,
and how his anxious thoughts of me have shadowed his life, and
weakened his strength and energy, by turning them always upon one
idea.  If I could ever set this right!  If I could ever work out
his restoration, as I have so innocently been the cause of his
decline!'

I had never before seen Agnes cry.  I had seen tears in her eyes
when I had brought new honours home from school, and I had seen
them there when we last spoke about her father, and I had seen her
turn her gentle head aside when we took leave of one another; but
I had never seen her grieve like this.  It made me so sorry that I
could only say, in a foolish, helpless manner, 'Pray, Agnes, don't!
Don't, my dear sister!'

But Agnes was too superior to me in character and purpose, as I
know well now, whatever I might know or not know then, to be long
in need of my entreaties.  The beautiful, calm manner, which makes
her so different in my remembrance from everybody else, came back
again, as if a cloud had passed from a serene sky.

'We are not likely to remain alone much longer,' said Agnes, 'and
while I have an opportunity, let me earnestly entreat you,
Trotwood, to be friendly to Uriah.  Don't repel him.  Don't resent
(as I think you have a general disposition to do) what may be
uncongenial to you in him.  He may not deserve it, for we know no
certain ill of him.  In any case, think first of papa and me!'

Agnes had no time to say more, for the room door opened, and Mrs.
Waterbrook, who was a large lady - or who wore a large dress: I
don't exactly know which, for I don't know which was dress and
which was lady - came sailing in.  I had a dim recollection of
having seen her at the theatre, as if I had seen her in a pale
magic lantern; but she appeared to remember me perfectly, and still
to suspect me of being in a state of intoxication.

Finding by degrees, however, that I was sober, and (I hope) that I
was a modest young gentleman, Mrs. Waterbrook softened towards me
considerably, and inquired, firstly, if I went much into the parks,
and secondly, if I went much into society.  On my replying to both
these questions in the negative, it occurred to me that I fell
again in her good opinion; but she concealed the fact gracefully,
and invited me to dinner next day.  I accepted the invitation, and
took my leave, making a call on Uriah in the office as I went out,
and leaving a card for him in his absence.

When I went to dinner next day, and on the street door being
opened, plunged into a vapour-bath of haunch of mutton, I divined
that I was not the only guest, for I immediately identified the
ticket-porter in disguise, assisting the family servant, and
waiting at the foot of the stairs to carry up my name.  He looked,
to the best of his ability, when he asked me for it confidentially,
as if he had never seen me before; but well did I know him, and
well did he know me.  Conscience made cowards of us both.

I found Mr. Waterbrook to be a middle-aged gentleman, with a short
throat, and a good deal of shirt-collar, who only wanted a black
nose to be the portrait of a pug-dog.  He told me he was happy to
have the honour of making my acquaintance; and when I had paid my
homage to Mrs. Waterbrook, presented me, with much ceremony, to a
very awful lady in a black velvet dress, and a great black velvet
hat, whom I remember as looking like a near relation of Hamlet's -
say his aunt.

Mrs. Henry Spiker was this lady's name; and her husband was there
too: so cold a man, that his head, instead of being grey, seemed to
be sprinkled with hoar-frost.  Immense deference was shown to the
Henry Spikers, male and female; which Agnes told me was on account
of Mr. Henry Spiker being solicitor to something Or to Somebody, I
forget what or which, remotely connected with the Treasury.

I found Uriah Heep among the company, in a suit of black, and in
deep humility.  He told me, when I shook hands with him, that he
was proud to be noticed by me, and that he really felt obliged to
me for my condescension.  I could have wished he had been less
obliged to me, for he hovered about me in his gratitude all the
rest of the evening; and whenever I said a word to Agnes, was sure,
with his shadowless eyes and cadaverous face, to be looking gauntly
down upon us from behind.

There were other guests - all iced for the occasion, as it struck
me, like the wine.  But there was one who attracted my attention
before he came in, on account of my hearing him announced as Mr.
Traddles!  My mind flew back to Salem House; and could it be Tommy,
I thought, who used to draw the skeletons!

I looked for Mr. Traddles with unusual interest.  He was a sober,
steady-looking young man of retiring manners, with a comic head of
hair, and eyes that were rather wide open; and he got into an
obscure corner so soon, that I had some difficulty in making him
out.  At length I had a good view of him, and either my vision
deceived me, or it was the old unfortunate Tommy.

I made my way to Mr. Waterbrook, and said, that I believed I had
the pleasure of seeing an old schoolfellow there.

'Indeed!' said Mr. Waterbrook, surprised.  'You are too young to
have been at school with Mr. Henry Spiker?'

'Oh, I don't mean him!' I returned.  'I mean the gentleman named
Traddles.'

'Oh!  Aye, aye!  Indeed!' said my host, with much diminished
interest.  'Possibly.'

'If it's really the same person,' said I, glancing towards him, 'it
was at a place called Salem House where we were together, and he
was an excellent fellow.'

'Oh yes.  Traddles is a good fellow,' returned my host nodding his
head with an air of toleration.  'Traddles is quite a good fellow.'

'It's a curious coincidence,' said I.

'It is really,' returned my host, 'quite a coincidence, that
Traddles should be here at all: as Traddles was only invited this
morning, when the place at table, intended to be occupied by Mrs.
Henry Spiker's brother, became vacant, in consequence of his
indisposition.  A very gentlemanly man, Mrs. Henry Spiker's
brother, Mr. Copperfield.'

I murmured an assent, which was full of feeling, considering that
I knew nothing at all about him; and I inquired what Mr. Traddles
was by profession.

'Traddles,' returned Mr. Waterbrook, 'is a young man reading for
the bar.  Yes.  He is quite a good fellow - nobody's enemy but his
own.'

'Is he his own enemy?' said I, sorry to hear this.

'Well,' returned Mr. Waterbrook, pursing up his mouth, and playing
with his watch-chain, in a comfortable, prosperous sort of way.  'I
should say he was one of those men who stand in their own light. 
Yes, I should say he would never, for example, be worth five
hundred pound.  Traddles was recommended to me by a professional
friend.  Oh yes.  Yes.  He has a kind of talent for drawing briefs,
and stating a case in writing, plainly.  I am able to throw
something in Traddles's way, in the course of the year; something
- for him - considerable.  Oh yes.  Yes.'

I was much impressed by the extremely comfortable and satisfied
manner in which Mr. Waterbrook delivered himself of this little
word 'Yes', every now and then.  There was wonderful expression in
it.  It completely conveyed the idea of a man who had been born,
not to say with a silver spoon, but with a scaling-ladder, and had
gone on mounting all the heights of life one after another, until
now he looked, from the top of the fortifications, with the eye of
a philosopher and a patron, on the people down in the trenches.

My reflections on this theme were still in progress when dinner was
announced.  Mr. Waterbrook went down with Hamlet's aunt.  Mr. Henry
Spiker took Mrs. Waterbrook.  Agnes, whom I should have liked to
take myself, was given to a simpering fellow with weak legs. 
Uriah, Traddles, and I, as the junior part of the company, went
down last, how we could.  I was not so vexed at losing Agnes as I
might have been, since it gave me an opportunity of making myself
known to Traddles on the stairs, who greeted me with great fervour;
while Uriah writhed with such obtrusive satisfaction and
self-abasement, that I could gladly have pitched him over the
banisters.
Traddles and I were separated at table, being billeted in two
remote corners: he in the glare of a red velvet lady; I, in the
gloom of Hamlet's aunt.  The dinner was very long, and the
conversation was about the Aristocracy - and Blood.  Mrs.
Waterbrook repeatedly told us, that if she had a weakness, it was
Blood.

It occurred to me several times that we should have got on better,
if we had not been quite so genteel.  We were so exceedingly
genteel, that our scope was very limited.  A Mr. and Mrs. Gulpidge
were of the party, who had something to do at second-hand (at
least, Mr. Gulpidge had) with the law business of the Bank; and
what with the Bank, and what with the Treasury, we were as
exclusive as the Court Circular.  To mend the matter, Hamlet's aunt
had the family failing of indulging in soliloquy, and held forth in
a desultory manner, by herself, on every topic that was introduced. 
These were few enough, to be sure; but as we always fell back upon
Blood, she had as wide a field for abstract speculation as her
nephew himself.

We might have been a party of Ogres, the conversation assumed such
a sanguine complexion.

'I confess I am of Mrs. Waterbrook's opinion,' said Mr. Waterbrook,
with his wine-glass at his eye.  'Other things are all very well in
their way, but give me Blood!'

'Oh!  There is nothing,' observed Hamlet's aunt, 'so satisfactory
to one!  There is nothing that is so much one's beau-ideal of - of
all that sort of thing, speaking generally.  There are some low
minds (not many, I am happy to believe, but there are some) that
would prefer to do what I should call bow down before idols. 
Positively Idols!  Before service, intellect, and so on.  But these
are intangible points.  Blood is not so.  We see Blood in a nose,
and we know it.  We meet with it in a chin, and we say, "There it
is!  That's Blood!" It is an actual matter of fact.  We point it
out.  It admits of no doubt.'

The simpering fellow with the weak legs, who had taken Agnes down,
stated the question more decisively yet, I thought.

'Oh, you know, deuce take it,' said this gentleman, looking round
the board with an imbecile smile, 'we can't forego Blood, you know. 
We must have Blood, you know.  Some young fellows, you know, may be
a little behind their station, perhaps, in point of education and
behaviour, and may go a little wrong, you know, and get themselves
and other people into a variety of fixes - and all that - but deuce
take it, it's delightful to reflect that they've got Blood in 'em!
Myself, I'd rather at any time be knocked down by a man who had got
Blood in him, than I'd be picked up by a man who hadn't!'

This sentiment, as compressing the general question into a
nutshell, gave the utmost satisfaction, and brought the gentleman
into great notice until the ladies retired.  After that, I observed
that Mr. Gulpidge and Mr. Henry Spiker, who had hitherto been very
distant, entered into a defensive alliance against us, the common
enemy, and exchanged a mysterious dialogue across the table for our
defeat and overthrow.

'That affair of the first bond for four thousand five hundred
pounds has not taken the course that was expected, Spiker,' said
Mr. Gulpidge.

'Do you mean the D. of A.'s?' said Mr. Spiker.

'The C. of B.'s!' said Mr. Gulpidge.

Mr. Spiker raised his eyebrows, and looked much concerned.

'When the question was referred to Lord - I needn't name him,' said
Mr. Gulpidge, checking himself -

'I understand,' said Mr. Spiker, 'N.'

Mr. Gulpidge darkly nodded - 'was referred to him, his answer was,
"Money, or no release."'

'Lord bless my soul!' cried Mr. Spiker.

"'Money, or no release,"' repeated Mr. Gulpidge, firmly.  'The next
in reversion - you understand me?'

'K.,' said Mr. Spiker, with an ominous look.

'- K. then positively refused to sign.  He was attended at
Newmarket for that purpose, and he point-blank refused to do it.'

Mr. Spiker was so interested, that he became quite stony.

'So the matter rests at this hour,' said Mr. Gulpidge, throwing
himself back in his chair.  'Our friend Waterbrook will excuse me
if I forbear to explain myself generally, on account of the
magnitude of the interests involved.'

Mr. Waterbrook was only too happy, as it appeared to me, to have
such interests, and such names, even hinted at, across his table. 
He assumed an expression of gloomy intelligence (though I am
persuaded he knew no more about the discussion than I did), and
highly approved of the discretion that had been observed.  Mr.
Spiker, after the receipt of such a confidence, naturally desired
to favour his friend with a confidence of his own; therefore the
foregoing dialogue was succeeded by another, in which it was Mr.
Gulpidge's turn to be surprised, and that by another in which the
surprise came round to Mr. Spiker's turn again, and so on, turn and
turn about.  All this time we, the outsiders, remained oppressed by
the tremendous interests involved in the conversation; and our host
regarded us with pride, as the victims of a salutary awe and
astonishment.
I was very glad indeed to get upstairs to Agnes, and to talk with
her in a corner, and to introduce Traddles to her, who was shy, but
agreeable, and the same good-natured creature still.  As he was
obliged to leave early, on account of going away next morning for
a month, I had not nearly so much conversation with him as I could
have wished; but we exchanged addresses, and promised ourselves the
pleasure of another meeting when he should come back to town.  He
was greatly interested to hear that I knew Steerforth, and spoke of
him with such warmth that I made him tell Agnes what he thought of
him.  But Agnes only looked at me the while, and very slightly
shook her head when only I observed her.

As she was not among people with whom I believed she could be very
much at home, I was almost glad to hear that she was going away
within a few days, though I was sorry at the prospect of parting
from her again so soon.  This caused me to remain until all the
company were gone.  Conversing with her, and hearing her sing, was
such a delightful reminder to me of my happy life in the grave old
house she had made so beautiful, that I could have remained there
half the night; but, having no excuse for staying any longer, when
the lights of Mr. Waterbrook's society were all snuffed out, I took
my leave very much against my inclination.  I felt then, more than
ever, that she was my better Angel; and if I thought of her sweet
face and placid smile, as though they had shone on me from some
removed being, like an Angel, I hope I thought no harm.

I have said that the company were all gone; but I ought to have
excepted Uriah, whom I don't include in that denomination, and who
had never ceased to hover near us.  He was close behind me when I
went downstairs.  He was close beside me, when I walked away from
the house, slowly fitting his long skeleton fingers into the still
longer fingers of a great Guy Fawkes pair of gloves.

It was in no disposition for Uriah's company, but in remembrance of
the entreaty Agnes had made to me, that I asked him if he would
come home to my rooms, and have some coffee.

'Oh, really, Master Copperfield,' he rejoined - 'I beg your pardon,
Mister Copperfield, but the other comes so natural, I don't like
that you should put a constraint upon yourself to ask a numble
person like me to your ouse.'

'There is no constraint in the case,' said I.  'Will you come?'

'I should like to, very much,' replied Uriah, with a writhe.

'Well, then, come along!' said I.

I could not help being rather short with him, but he appeared not
to mind it.  We went the nearest way, without conversing much upon
the road; and he was so humble in respect of those scarecrow
gloves, that he was still putting them on, and seemed to have made
no advance in that labour, when we got to my place.

I led him up the dark stairs, to prevent his knocking his head
against anything, and really his damp cold hand felt so like a frog
in mine, that I was tempted to drop it and run away.  Agnes and
hospitality prevailed, however, and I conducted him to my fireside. 
When I lighted my candles, he fell into meek transports with the
room that was revealed to him; and when I heated the coffee in an
unassuming block-tin vessel in which Mrs. Crupp delighted to
prepare it (chiefly, I believe, because it was not intended for the
purpose, being a shaving-pot, and because there was a patent
invention of great price mouldering away in the pantry), he
professed so much emotion, that I could joyfully have scalded him.

'Oh, really, Master Copperfield, - I mean Mister Copperfield,' said
Uriah, 'to see you waiting upon me is what I never could have
expected!  But, one way and another, so many things happen to me
which I never could have expected, I am sure, in my umble station,
that it seems to rain blessings on my ed.  You have heard
something, I des-say, of a change in my expectations, Master
Copperfield, - I should say, Mister Copperfield?'

As he sat on my sofa, with his long knees drawn up under his
coffee-cup, his hat and gloves upon the ground close to him, his
spoon going softly round and round, his shadowless red eyes, which
looked as if they had scorched their lashes off, turned towards me
without looking at me, the disagreeable dints I have formerly
described in his nostrils coming and going with his breath, and a
snaky undulation pervading his frame from his chin to his boots, I
decided in my own mind that I disliked him intensely.  It made me
very uncomfortable to have him for a guest, for I was young then,
and unused to disguise what I so strongly felt.

'You have heard something, I des-say, of a change in my
expectations, Master Copperfield, - I should say, Mister
Copperfield?' observed Uriah.

'Yes,' said I, 'something.'

'Ah! I thought Miss Agnes would know of it!' he quietly returned. 
'I'm glad to find Miss Agnes knows of it.  Oh, thank you, Master -
Mister Copperfield!'

I could have thrown my bootjack at him (it lay ready on the rug),
for having entrapped me into the disclosure of anything concerning
Agnes, however immaterial.  But I only drank my coffee.

'What a prophet you have shown yourself, Mister Copperfield!'
pursued Uriah.  'Dear me, what a prophet you have proved yourself
to be!  Don't you remember saying to me once, that perhaps I should
be a partner in Mr. Wickfield's business, and perhaps it might be
Wickfield and Heep?  You may not recollect it; but when a person is
umble, Master Copperfield, a person treasures such things up!'

'I recollect talking about it,' said I, 'though I certainly did not
think it very likely then.'
'Oh! who would have thought it likely, Mister Copperfield!'
returned Uriah, enthusiastically.  'I am sure I didn't myself.  I
recollect saying with my own lips that I was much too umble.  So I
considered myself really and truly.'

He sat, with that carved grin on his face, looking at the fire, as
I looked at him.

'But the umblest persons, Master Copperfield,' he presently
resumed, 'may be the instruments of good.  I am glad to think I
have been the instrument of good to Mr. Wickfield, and that I may
be more so.  Oh what a worthy man he is, Mister Copperfield, but
how imprudent he has been!'

'I am sorry to hear it,' said I.  I could not help adding, rather
pointedly, 'on all accounts.'

'Decidedly so, Mister Copperfield,' replied Uriah.  'On all
accounts.  Miss Agnes's above all!  You don't remember your own
eloquent expressions, Master Copperfield; but I remember how you
said one day that everybody must admire her, and how I thanked you
for it!  You have forgot that, I have no doubt, Master
Copperfield?'

'No,' said I, drily.

'Oh how glad I am you have not!' exclaimed Uriah.  'To think that
you should be the first to kindle the sparks of ambition in my
umble breast, and that you've not forgot it!  Oh! - Would you
excuse me asking for a cup more coffee?'

Something in the emphasis he laid upon the kindling of those
sparks, and something in the glance he directed at me as he said
it, had made me start as if I had seen him illuminated by a blaze
of light.  Recalled by his request, preferred in quite another tone
of voice, I did the honours of the shaving-pot; but I did them with
an unsteadiness of hand, a sudden sense of being no match for him,
and a perplexed suspicious anxiety as to what he might be going to
say next, which I felt could not escape his observation.

He said nothing at all.  He stirred his coffee round and round, he
sipped it, he felt his chin softly with his grisly hand, he looked
at the fire, he looked about the room, he gasped rather than smiled
at me, he writhed and undulated about, in his deferential
servility, he stirred and sipped again, but he left the renewal of
the conversation to me.

'So, Mr. Wickfield,' said I, at last, 'who is worth five hundred of
you - or me'; for my life, I think, I could not have helped
dividing that part of the sentence with an awkward jerk; 'has been
imprudent, has he, Mr. Heep?'

'Oh, very imprudent indeed, Master Copperfield,' returned Uriah,
sighing modestly.  'Oh, very much so!  But I wish you'd call me
Uriah, if you please.  It's like old times.'

'Well! Uriah,' said I, bolting it out with some difficulty.

'Thank you,' he returned, with fervour.  'Thank you, Master
Copperfield!  It's like the blowing of old breezes or the ringing
of old bellses to hear YOU say Uriah.  I beg your pardon.  Was I
making any observation?'

'About Mr. Wickfield,' I suggested.

'Oh!  Yes, truly,' said Uriah.  'Ah!  Great imprudence, Master
Copperfield.  It's a topic that I wouldn't touch upon, to any soul
but you.  Even to you I can only touch upon it, and no more.  If
anyone else had been in my place during the last few years, by this
time he would have had Mr. Wickfield (oh, what a worthy man he is,
Master Copperfield, too!) under his thumb.  Un--der--his thumb,'
said Uriah, very slowly, as he stretched out his cruel-looking hand
above my table, and pressed his own thumb upon it, until it shook,
and shook the room.

If I had been obliged to look at him with him splay foot on Mr.
Wickfield's head, I think I could scarcely have hated him more.

'Oh, dear, yes, Master Copperfield,' he proceeded, in a soft voice,
most remarkably contrasting with the action of his thumb, which did
not diminish its hard pressure in the least degree, 'there's no
doubt of it.  There would have been loss, disgrace, I don't know
what at all.  Mr. Wickfield knows it.  I am the umble instrument of
umbly serving him, and he puts me on an eminence I hardly could
have hoped to reach.  How thankful should I be!' With his face
turned towards me, as he finished, but without looking at me, he
took his crooked thumb off the spot where he had planted it, and
slowly and thoughtfully scraped his lank jaw with it, as if he were
shaving himself.

I recollect well how indignantly my heart beat, as I saw his crafty
face, with the appropriately red light of the fire upon it,
preparing for something else.

'Master Copperfield,' he began - 'but am I keeping you up?'

'You are not keeping me up.  I generally go to bed late.'

'Thank you, Master Copperfield!  I have risen from my umble station
since first you used to address me, it is true; but I am umble
still.  I hope I never shall be otherwise than umble.  You will not
think the worse of my umbleness, if I make a little confidence to
you, Master Copperfield?  Will you?'

'Oh no,' said I, with an effort.

'Thank you!' He took out his pocket-handkerchief, and began wiping
the palms of his hands.  'Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield -'
'Well, Uriah?'

'Oh, how pleasant to be called Uriah, spontaneously!' he cried; and
gave himself a jerk, like a convulsive fish.  'You thought her
looking very beautiful tonight, Master Copperfield?'

'I thought her looking as she always does: superior, in all
respects, to everyone around her,' I returned.

'Oh, thank you!  It's so true!' he cried.  'Oh, thank you very much
for that!'

'Not at all,' I said, loftily.  'There is no reason why you should
thank me.'

'Why that, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah, 'is, in fact, the
confidence that I am going to take the liberty of reposing.  Umble
as I am,' he wiped his hands harder, and looked at them and at the
fire by turns, 'umble as my mother is, and lowly as our poor but
honest roof has ever been, the image of Miss Agnes (I don't mind
trusting you with my secret, Master Copperfield, for I have always
overflowed towards you since the first moment I had the pleasure of
beholding you in a pony-shay) has been in my breast for years.  Oh,
Master Copperfield, with what a pure affection do I love the ground
my Agnes walks on!'

I believe I had a delirious idea of seizing the red-hot poker out
of the fire, and running him through with it.  It went from me with
a shock, like a ball fired from a rifle: but the image of Agnes,
outraged by so much as a thought of this red-headed animal's,
remained in my mind when I looked at him, sitting all awry as if
his mean soul griped his body, and made me giddy.  He seemed to
swell and grow before my eyes; the room seemed full of the echoes
of his voice; and the strange feeling (to which, perhaps, no one is
quite a stranger) that all this had occurred before, at some
indefinite time, and that I knew what he was going to say next,
took possession of me.

A timely observation of the sense of power that there was in his
face, did more to bring back to my remembrance the entreaty of
Agnes, in its full force, than any effort I could have made.  I
asked him, with a better appearance of composure than I could have
thought possible a minute before, whether he had made his feelings
known to Agnes.

'Oh no, Master Copperfield!' he returned; 'oh dear, no!  Not to
anyone but you.  You see I am only just emerging from my lowly
station.  I rest a good deal of hope on her observing how useful I
am to her father (for I trust to be very useful to him indeed,
Master Copperfield), and how I smooth the way for him, and keep him
straight.  She's so much attached to her father, Master Copperfield
(oh, what a lovely thing it is in a daughter!), that I think she
may come, on his account, to be kind to me.'

I fathomed the depth of the rascal's whole scheme, and understood
why he laid it bare.

'If you'll have the goodness to keep my secret, Master
Copperfield,' he pursued, 'and not, in general, to go against me,
I shall take it as a particular favour.  You wouldn't wish to make
unpleasantness.  I know what a friendly heart you've got; but
having only known me on my umble footing (on my umblest I should
say, for I am very umble still), you might, unbeknown, go against
me rather, with my Agnes.  I call her mine, you see, Master
Copperfield.  There's a song that says, "I'd crowns resign, to call
her mine!" I hope to do it, one of these days.'

Dear Agnes!  So much too loving and too good for anyone that I
could think of, was it possible that she was reserved to be the
wife of such a wretch as this!

'There's no hurry at present, you know, Master Copperfield,' Uriah
proceeded, in his slimy way, as I sat gazing at him, with this
thought in my mind.  'My Agnes is very young still; and mother and
me will have to work our way upwards, and make a good many new
arrangements, before it would be quite convenient.  So I shall have
time gradually to make her familiar with my hopes, as opportunities
offer.  Oh, I'm so much obliged to you for this confidence!  Oh,
it's such a relief, you can't think, to know that you understand
our situation, and are certain (as you wouldn't wish to make
unpleasantness in the family) not to go against me!'

He took the hand which I dared not withhold, and having given it a
damp squeeze, referred to his pale-faced watch.

'Dear me!' he said, 'it's past one.  The moments slip away so, in
the confidence of old times, Master Copperfield, that it's almost
half past one!'

I answered that I had thought it was later.  Not that I had really
thought so, but because my conversational powers were effectually
scattered.

'Dear me!' he said, considering.  'The ouse that I am stopping at
- a sort of a private hotel and boarding ouse, Master Copperfield,
near the New River ed - will have gone to bed these two hours.'

'I am sorry,' I returned, 'that there is only one bed here, and
that I -'

'Oh, don't think of mentioning beds, Master Copperfield!' he
rejoined ecstatically, drawing up one leg.  'But would you have any
objections to my laying down before the fire?'

'If it comes to that,' I said, 'pray take my bed, and I'll lie down
before the fire.'

His repudiation of this offer was almost shrill enough, in the
excess of its surprise and humility, to have penetrated to the ears
of Mrs. Crupp, then sleeping, I suppose, in a distant chamber,
situated at about the level of low-water mark, soothed in her
slumbers by the ticking of an incorrigible clock, to which she
always referred me when we had any little difference on the score
of punctuality, and which was never less than three-quarters of an
hour too slow, and had always been put right in the morning by the
best authorities.  As no arguments I could urge, in my bewildered
condition, had the least effect upon his modesty in inducing him to
accept my bedroom, I was obliged to make the best arrangements I
could, for his repose before the fire.  The mattress of the sofa
(which was a great deal too short for his lank figure), the sofa
pillows, a blanket, the table-cover, a clean breakfast-cloth, and
a great-coat, made him a bed and covering, for which he was more
than thankful.  Having lent him a night-cap, which he put on at
once, and in which he made such an awful figure, that I have never
worn one since, I left him to his rest.

I never shall forget that night.  I never shall forget how I turned
and tumbled; how I wearied myself with thinking about Agnes and
this creature; how I considered what could I do, and what ought I
to do; how I could come to no other conclusion than that the best
course for her peace was to do nothing, and to keep to myself what
I had heard.  If I went to sleep for a few moments, the image of
Agnes with her tender eyes, and of her father looking fondly on
her, as I had so often seen him look, arose before me with
appealing faces, and filled me with vague terrors.  When I awoke,
the recollection that Uriah was lying in the next room, sat heavy
on me like a waking nightmare; and oppressed me with a leaden
dread, as if I had had some meaner quality of devil for a lodger.

The poker got into my dozing thoughts besides, and wouldn't come
out.  I thought, between sleeping and waking, that it was still red
hot, and I had snatched it out of the fire, and run him through the
body.  I was so haunted at last by the idea, though I knew there
was nothing in it, that I stole into the next room to look at him. 
There I saw him, lying on his back, with his legs extending to I
don't know where, gurglings taking place in his throat, stoppages
in his nose, and his mouth open like a post-office.  He was so much
worse in reality than in my distempered fancy, that afterwards I
was attracted to him in very repulsion, and could not help
wandering in and out every half-hour or so, and taking another look
at him.  Still, the long, long night seemed heavy and hopeless as
ever, and no promise of day was in the murky sky.

When I saw him going downstairs early in the morning (for, thank
Heaven! he would not stay to breakfast), it appeared to me as if
the night was going away in his person.  When I went out to the
Commons, I charged Mrs. Crupp with particular directions to leave
the windows open, that my sitting-room might be aired, and purged
of his presence.

CHAPTER 26
I FALL INTO CAPTIVITY

I saw no more of Uriah Heep, until the day when Agnes left town. 
I was at the coach office to take leave of her and see her go; and
there was he, returning to Canterbury by the same conveyance.  It
was some small satisfaction to me to observe his spare,
short-waisted, high-shouldered, mulberry-coloured great-coat
perched up, in company with an umbrella like a small tent, on the
edge of the back seat on the roof, while Agnes was, of course,
inside; but what I underwent in my efforts to be friendly with him,
while Agnes looked on, perhaps deserved that little recompense.  At
the coach window, as at the dinner-party, he hovered about us
without a moment's intermission, like a great vulture: gorging
himself on every syllable that I said to Agnes, or Agnes said to
me.

In the state of trouble into which his disclosure by my fire had
thrown me, I had thought very much of the words Agnes had used in
reference to the partnership.  'I did what I hope was right. 
Feeling sure that it was necessary for papa's peace that the
sacrifice should be made, I entreated him to make it.'  A miserable
foreboding that she would yield to, and sustain herself by, the
same feeling in reference to any sacrifice for his sake, had
oppressed me ever since.  I knew how she loved him.  I knew what
the devotion of her nature was.  I knew from her own lips that she
regarded herself as the innocent cause of his errors, and as owing
him a great debt she ardently desired to pay.  I had no consolation
in seeing how different she was from this detestable Rufus with the
mulberry-coloured great-coat, for I felt that in the very
difference between them, in the self-denial of her pure soul and
the sordid baseness of his, the greatest danger lay.  All this,
doubtless, he knew thoroughly, and had, in his cunning, considered
well.

Yet I was so certain that the prospect of such a sacrifice afar
off, must destroy the happiness of Agnes; and I was so sure, from
her manner, of its being unseen by her then, and having cast no
shadow on her yet; that I could as soon have injured her, as given
her any warning of what impended.  Thus it was that we parted
without explanation: she waving her hand and smiling farewell from
the coach window; her evil genius writhing on the roof, as if he
had her in his clutches and triumphed.

I could not get over this farewell glimpse of them for a long time. 
When Agnes wrote to tell me of her safe arrival, I was as miserable
as when I saw her going away.  Whenever I fell into a thoughtful
state, this subject was sure to present itself, and all my
uneasiness was sure to be redoubled.  Hardly a night passed without
my dreaming of it.  It became a part of my life, and as inseparable
from my life as my own head.

I had ample leisure to refine upon my uneasiness: for Steerforth
was at Oxford, as he wrote to me, and when I was not at the
Commons, I was very much alone.  I believe I had at this time some
lurking distrust of Steerforth.  I wrote to him most affectionately
in reply to his, but I think I was glad, upon the whole, that he
could not come to London just then.  I suspect the truth to be,
that the influence of Agnes was upon me, undisturbed by the sight
of him; and that it was the more powerful with me, because she had
so large a share in my thoughts and interest.

In the meantime, days and weeks slipped away.  I was articled to
Spenlow and Jorkins.  I had ninety pounds a year (exclusive of my
house-rent and sundry collateral matters) from my aunt.  My rooms
were engaged for twelve months certain: and though I still found
them dreary of an evening, and the evenings long, I could settle
down into a state of equable low spirits, and resign myself to
coffee; which I seem, on looking back, to have taken by the gallon
at about this period of my existence.  At about this time, too, I
made three discoveries: first, that Mrs. Crupp was a martyr to a
curious disorder called 'the spazzums', which was generally
accompanied with inflammation of the nose, and required to be
constantly treated with peppermint; secondly, that something
peculiar in the temperature of my pantry, made the brandy-bottles
burst; thirdly, that I was alone in the world, and much given to
record that circumstance in fragments of English versification.

On the day when I was articled, no festivity took place, beyond my
having sandwiches and sherry into the office for the clerks, and
going alone to the theatre at night.  I went to see The Stranger,
as a Doctors' Commons sort of play, and was so dreadfully cut up,
that I hardly knew myself in my own glass when I got home.  Mr.
Spenlow remarked, on this occasion, when we concluded our business,
that he should have been happy to have seen me at his house at
Norwood to celebrate our becoming connected, but for his domestic
arrangements being in some disorder, on account of the expected
return of his daughter from finishing her education at Paris.  But,
he intimated that when she came home he should hope to have the
pleasure of entertaining me.  I knew that he was a widower with one
daughter, and expressed my acknowledgements.

Mr. Spenlow was as good as his word.  In a week or two, he referred
to this engagement, and said, that if I would do him the favour to
come down next Saturday, and stay till Monday, he would be
extremely happy.  Of course I said I would do him the favour; and
he was to drive me down in his phaeton, and to bring me back.

When the day arrived, my very carpet-bag was an object of
veneration to the stipendiary clerks, to whom the house at Norwood
was a sacred mystery.  One of them informed me that he had heard
that Mr. Spenlow ate entirely off plate and china; and another
hinted at champagne being constantly on draught, after the usual
custom of table-beer.  The old clerk with the wig, whose name was
Mr. Tiffey, had been down on business several times in the course
of his career, and had on each occasion penetrated to the
breakfast-parlour.  He described it as an apartment of the most
sumptuous nature, and said that he had drunk brown East India
sherry there, of a quality so precious as to make a man wink.  We
had an adjourned cause in the Consistory that day - about
excommunicating a baker who had been objecting in a vestry to a
paving-rate - and as the evidence was just twice the length of
Robinson Crusoe, according to a calculation I made, it was rather
late in the day before we finished.  However, we got him
excommunicated for six weeks, and sentenced in no end of costs; and
then the baker's proctor, and the judge, and the advocates on both
sides (who were all nearly related), went out of town together, and
Mr. Spenlow and I drove away in the phaeton.

The phaeton was a very handsome affair; the horses arched their
necks and lifted up their legs as if they knew they belonged to
Doctors' Commons.  There was a good deal of competition in the
Commons on all points of display, and it turned out some very
choice equipages then; though I always have considered, and always
shall consider, that in my time the great article of competition
there was starch: which I think was worn among the proctors to as
great an extent as it is in the nature of man to bear.

We were very pleasant, going down, and Mr. Spenlow gave me some
hints in reference to my profession.  He said it was the genteelest
profession in the world, and must on no account be confounded with
the profession of a solicitor: being quite another sort of thing,
infinitely more exclusive, less mechanical, and more profitable. 
We took things much more easily in the Commons than they could be
taken anywhere else, he observed, and that set us, as a privileged
class, apart.  He said it was impossible to conceal the
disagreeable fact, that we were chiefly employed by solicitors; but
he gave me to understand that they were an inferior race of men,
universally looked down upon by all proctors of any pretensions.

I asked Mr. Spenlow what he considered the best sort of
professional business?  He replied, that a good case of a disputed
will, where there was a neat little estate of thirty or forty
thousand pounds, was, perhaps, the best of all.  In such a case, he
said, not only were there very pretty pickings, in the way of
arguments at every stage of the proceedings, and mountains upon
mountains of evidence on interrogatory and counter-interrogatory
(to say nothing of an appeal lying, first to the Delegates, and
then to the Lords), but, the costs being pretty sure to come out of
the estate at last, both sides went at it in a lively and spirited
manner, and expense was no consideration.  Then, he launched into
a general eulogium on the Commons.  What was to be particularly
admired (he said) in the Commons, was its compactness.  It was the
most conveniently organized place in the world.  It was the
complete idea of snugness.  It lay in a nutshell.  For example: You
brought a divorce case, or a restitution case, into the Consistory. 
Very good.  You tried it in the Consistory.  You made a quiet
little round game of it, among a family group, and you played it
out at leisure.  Suppose you were not satisfied with the
Consistory, what did you do then?  Why, you went into the Arches. 
What was the Arches?  The same court, in the same room, with the
same bar, and the same practitioners, but another judge, for there
the Consistory judge could plead any court-day as an advocate. 
Well, you played your round game out again.  Still you were not
satisfied.  Very good.  What did you do then?  Why, you went to the
Delegates.  Who were the Delegates?  Why, the Ecclesiastical
Delegates were the advocates without any business, who had looked
on at the round game when it was playing in both courts, and had
seen the cards shuffled, and cut, and played, and had talked to all
the players about it, and now came fresh, as judges, to settle the
matter to the satisfaction of everybody!  Discontented people might
talk of corruption in the Commons, closeness in the Commons, and
the necessity of reforming the Commons, said Mr. Spenlow solemnly,
in conclusion; but when the price of wheat per bushel had been
highest, the Commons had been busiest; and a man might lay his hand
upon his heart, and say this to the whole world, - 'Touch the
Commons, and down comes the country!'

I listened to all this with attention; and though, I must say, I
had my doubts whether the country was quite as much obliged to the
Commons as Mr. Spenlow made out, I respectfully deferred to his
opinion.  That about the price of wheat per bushel, I modestly felt
was too much for my strength, and quite settled the question.  I
have never, to this hour, got the better of that bushel of wheat. 
It has reappeared to annihilate me, all through my life, in
connexion with all kinds of subjects.  I don't know now, exactly,
what it has to do with me, or what right it has to crush me, on an
infinite variety of occasions; but whenever I see my old friend the
bushel brought in by the head and shoulders (as he always is, I
observe), I give up a subject for lost.

This is a digression.  I was not the man to touch the Commons, and
bring down the country.  I submissively expressed, by my silence,
my acquiescence in all I had heard from my superior in years and
knowledge; and we talked about The Stranger and the Drama, and the
pairs of horses, until we came to Mr. Spenlow's gate.

There was a lovely garden to Mr. Spenlow's house; and though that
was not the best time of the year for seeing a garden, it was so
beautifully kept, that I was quite enchanted.  There was a charming
lawn, there were clusters of trees, and there were perspective
walks that I could just distinguish in the dark, arched over with
trellis-work, on which shrubs and flowers grew in the growing
season.  'Here Miss Spenlow walks by herself,' I thought.  'Dear
me!'

We went into the house, which was cheerfully lighted up, and into
a hall where there were all sorts of hats, caps, great-coats,
plaids, gloves, whips, and walking-sticks.  'Where is Miss Dora?'
said Mr. Spenlow to the servant.  'Dora!' I thought.  'What a
beautiful name!'

We turned into a room near at hand (I think it was the identical
breakfast-room, made memorable by the brown East Indian sherry),
and I heard a voice say, 'Mr. Copperfield, my daughter Dora, and my
daughter Dora's confidential friend!' It was, no doubt, Mr.
Spenlow's voice, but I didn't know it, and I didn't care whose it
was.  All was over in a moment.  I had fulfilled my destiny.  I was
a captive and a slave.  I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction!

She was more than human to me.  She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don't
know what she was - anything that no one ever saw, and everything
that everybody ever wanted.  I was swallowed up in an abyss of love
in an instant.  There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down,
or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a
word to her.

'I,' observed a well-remembered voice, when I had bowed and
murmured something, 'have seen Mr. Copperfield before.'

The speaker was not Dora.  No; the confidential friend, Miss
Murdstone!

I don't think I was much astonished.  To the best of my judgement,
no capacity of astonishment was left in me.  There was nothing
worth mentioning in the material world, but Dora Spenlow, to be
astonished about.  I said, 'How do you do, Miss Murdstone?  I hope
you are well.'  She answered, 'Very well.'  I said, 'How is Mr.
Murdstone?' She replied, 'My brother is robust, I am obliged to
you.'

Mr. Spenlow, who, I suppose, had been surprised to see us recognize
each other, then put in his word.

'I am glad to find,' he said, 'Copperfield, that you and Miss
Murdstone are already acquainted.'

'Mr. Copperfield and myself,' said Miss Murdstone, with severe
composure, 'are connexions.  We were once slightly acquainted.  It
was in his childish days.  Circumstances have separated us since. 
I should not have known him.'

I replied that I should have known her, anywhere.  Which was true
enough.

'Miss Murdstone has had the goodness,' said Mr. Spenlow to me, 'to
accept the office - if I may so describe it - of my daughter Dora's
confidential friend.  My daughter Dora having, unhappily, no
mother, Miss Murdstone is obliging enough to become her companion
and protector.'

A passing thought occurred to me that Miss Murdstone, like the
pocket instrument called a life-preserver, was not so much designed
for purposes of protection as of assault.  But as I had none but
passing thoughts for any subject save Dora, I glanced at her,
directly afterwards, and was thinking that I saw, in her prettily
pettish manner, that she was not very much inclined to be
particularly confidential to her companion and protector, when a
bell rang, which Mr. Spenlow said was the first dinner-bell, and so
carried me off to dress.

The idea of dressing one's self, or doing anything in the way of
action, in that state of love, was a little too ridiculous.  I
could only sit down before my fire, biting the key of my
carpet-bag, and think of the captivating, girlish, bright-eyed
lovely Dora.  What a form she had, what a face she had, what a
graceful, variable, enchanting manner!

The bell rang again so soon that I made a mere scramble of my
dressing, instead of the careful operation I could have wished
under the circumstances, and went downstairs.  There was some
company.  Dora was talking to an old gentleman with a grey head. 
Grey as he was - and a great-grandfather into the bargain, for he
said so - I was madly jealous of him.

What a state of mind I was in!  I was jealous of everybody.  I
couldn't bear the idea of anybody knowing Mr. Spenlow better than
I did.  It was torturing to me to hear them talk of occurrences in
which I had had no share.  When a most amiable person, with a
highly polished bald head, asked me across the dinner table, if
that were the first occasion of my seeing the grounds, I could have
done anything to him that was savage and revengeful.

I don't remember who was there, except Dora.  I have not the least
idea what we had for dinner, besides Dora.  My impression is, that
I dined off Dora, entirely, and sent away half-a-dozen plates
untouched.  I sat next to her.  I talked to her.  She had the most
delightful little voice, the gayest little laugh, the pleasantest
and most fascinating little ways, that ever led a lost youth into
hopeless slavery.  She was rather diminutive altogether.  So much
the more precious, I thought.

When she went out of the room with Miss Murdstone (no other ladies
were of the party), I fell into a reverie, only disturbed by the
cruel apprehension that Miss Murdstone would disparage me to her. 
The amiable creature with the polished head told me a long story,
which I think was about gardening.  I think I heard him say, 'my
gardener', several times.  I seemed to pay the deepest attention to
him, but I was wandering in a garden of Eden all the while, with
Dora.

My apprehensions of being disparaged to the object of my engrossing
affection were revived when we went into the drawing-room, by the
grim and distant aspect of Miss Murdstone.  But I was relieved of
them in an unexpected manner.

'David Copperfield,' said Miss Murdstone, beckoning me aside into
a window.  'A word.'

I confronted Miss Murdstone alone.

'David Copperfield,' said Miss Murdstone, 'I need not enlarge upon
family circumstances.  They are not a tempting subject.'
'Far from it, ma'am,' I returned.

'Far from it,' assented Miss Murdstone.  'I do not wish to revive
the memory of past differences, or of past outrages.  I have
received outrages from a person - a female I am sorry to say, for
the credit of my sex - who is not to be mentioned without scorn and
disgust; and therefore I would rather not mention her.'

I felt very fiery on my aunt's account; but I said it would
certainly be better, if Miss Murdstone pleased, not to mention her. 
I could not hear her disrespectfully mentioned, I added, without
expressing my opinion in a decided tone.

Miss Murdstone shut her eyes, and disdainfully inclined her head;
then, slowly opening her eyes, resumed:

'David Copperfield, I shall not attempt to disguise the fact, that
I formed an unfavourable opinion of you in your childhood.  It may
have been a mistaken one, or you may have ceased to justify it. 
That is not in question between us now.  I belong to a family
remarkable, I believe, for some firmness; and I am not the creature
of circumstance or change.  I may have my opinion of you.  You may
have your opinion of me.'

I inclined my head, in my turn.

'But it is not necessary,' said Miss Murdstone, 'that these
opinions should come into collision here.  Under existing
circumstances, it is as well on all accounts that they should not. 
As the chances of life have brought us together again, and may
bring us together on other occasions, I would say, let us meet here
as distant acquaintances.  Family circumstances are a sufficient
reason for our only meeting on that footing, and it is quite
unnecessary that either of us should make the other the subject of
remark.  Do you approve of this?'

'Miss Murdstone,' I returned, 'I think you and Mr. Murdstone used
me very cruelly, and treated my mother with great unkindness.  I
shall always think so, as long as I live.  But I quite agree in
what you propose.'

Miss Murdstone shut her eyes again, and bent her head.  Then, just
touching the back of my hand with the tips of her cold, stiff
fingers, she walked away, arranging the little fetters on her
wrists and round her neck; which seemed to be the same set, in
exactly the same state, as when I had seen her last.  These
reminded me, in reference to Miss Murdstone's nature, of the
fetters over a jail door; suggesting on the outside, to all
beholders, what was to be expected within.

All I know of the rest of the evening is, that I heard the empress
of my heart sing enchanted ballads in the French language,
generally to the effect that, whatever was the matter, we ought
always to dance, Ta ra la, Ta ra la! accompanying herself on a
glorified instrument, resembling a guitar.  That I was lost in
blissful delirium.  That I refused refreshment.  That my soul
recoiled from punch particularly.  That when Miss Murdstone took
her into custody and led her away, she smiled and gave me her
delicious hand.  That I caught a view of myself in a mirror,
looking perfectly imbecile and idiotic.  That I retired to bed in
a most maudlin state of mind, and got up in a crisis of feeble
infatuation.

It was a fine morning, and early, and I thought I would go and take
a stroll down one of those wire-arched walks, and indulge my
passion by dwelling on her image.  On my way through the hall, I
encountered her little dog, who was called Jip - short for Gipsy. 
I approached him tenderly, for I loved even him; but he showed his
whole set of teeth, got under a chair expressly to snarl, and
wouldn't hear of the least familiarity.

The garden was cool and solitary.  I walked about, wondering what
my feelings of happiness would be, if I could ever become engaged
to this dear wonder.  As to marriage, and fortune, and all that, I
believe I was almost as innocently undesigning then, as when I
loved little Em'ly.  To be allowed to call her 'Dora', to write to
her, to dote upon and worship her, to have reason to think that
when she was with other people she was yet mindful of me, seemed to
me the summit of human ambition - I am sure it was the summit of
mine.  There is no doubt whatever that I was a lackadaisical young
spooney; but there was a purity of heart in all this, that prevents
my having quite a contemptuous recollection of it, let me laugh as
I may.

I had not been walking long, when I turned a corner, and met her. 
I tingle again from head to foot as my recollection turns that
corner, and my pen shakes in my hand.

'You - are - out early, Miss Spenlow,' said I.

'It's so stupid at home,' she replied, 'and Miss Murdstone is so
absurd!  She talks such nonsense about its being necessary for the
day to be aired, before I come out.  Aired!' (She laughed, here, in
the most melodious manner.) 'On a Sunday morning, when I don't
practise, I must do something.  So I told papa last night I must
come out.  Besides, it's the brightest time of the whole day. 
Don't you think so?'

I hazarded a bold flight, and said (not without stammering) that it
was very bright to me then, though it had been very dark to me a
minute before.

'Do you mean a compliment?' said Dora, 'or that the weather has
really changed?'

I stammered worse than before, in replying that I meant no
compliment, but the plain truth; though I was not aware of any
change having taken place in the weather.  It was in the state of
my own feelings, I added bashfully: to clench the explanation.

I never saw such curls - how could I, for there never were such
curls! - as those she shook out to hide her blushes.  As to the
straw hat and blue ribbons which was on the top of the curls, if I
could only have hung it up in my room in Buckingham Street, what a
priceless possession it would have been!

'You have just come home from Paris,' said I.

'Yes,' said she.  'Have you ever been there?'

'No.'

'Oh! I hope you'll go soon!  You would like it so much!'

Traces of deep-seated anguish appeared in my countenance.  That she
should hope I would go, that she should think it possible I could
go, was insupportable.  I depreciated Paris; I depreciated France. 
I said I wouldn't leave England, under existing circumstances, for
any earthly consideration.  Nothing should induce me.  In short,
she was shaking the curls again, when the little dog came running
along the walk to our relief.

He was mortally jealous of me, and persisted in barking at me.  She
took him up in her arms - oh my goodness! - and caressed him, but
he persisted upon barking still.  He wouldn't let me touch him,
when I tried; and then she beat him.  It increased my sufferings
greatly to see the pats she gave him for punishment on the bridge
of his blunt nose, while he winked his eyes, and licked her hand,
and still growled within himself like a little double-bass.  At
length he was quiet - well he might be with her dimpled chin upon
his head! - and we walked away to look at a greenhouse.

'You are not very intimate with Miss Murdstone, are you?' said
Dora.  -'My pet.'

(The two last words were to the dog.  Oh, if they had only been to
me!)

'No,' I replied.  'Not at all so.'

'She is a tiresome creature,' said Dora, pouting.  'I can't think
what papa can have been about, when he chose such a vexatious thing
to be my companion.  Who wants a protector?  I am sure I don't want
a protector.  Jip can protect me a great deal better than Miss
Murdstone, - can't you, Jip, dear?'

He only winked lazily, when she kissed his ball of a head.

'Papa calls her my confidential friend, but I am sure she is no
such thing - is she, Jip?  We are not going to confide in any such
cross people, Jip and I.  We mean to bestow our confidence where we
like, and to find out our own friends, instead of having them found
out for us - don't we, Jip?'

jip made a comfortable noise, in answer, a little like a tea-kettle
when it sings.  As for me, every word was a new heap of fetters,
riveted above the last.

'It is very hard, because we have not a kind Mama, that we are to
have, instead, a sulky, gloomy old thing like Miss Murdstone,
always following us about - isn't it, Jip?  Never mind, Jip.  We
won't be confidential, and we'll make ourselves as happy as we can
in spite of her, and we'll tease her, and not please her - won't
we, Jip?'

If it had lasted any longer, I think I must have gone down on my
knees on the gravel, with the probability before me of grazing
them, and of being presently ejected from the premises besides. 
But, by good fortune the greenhouse was not far off, and these
words brought us to it.

It contained quite a show of beautiful geraniums.  We loitered
along in front of them, and Dora often stopped to admire this one
or that one, and I stopped to admire the same one, and Dora,
laughing, held the dog up childishly, to smell the flowers; and if
we were not all three in Fairyland, certainly I was.  The scent of
a geranium leaf, at this day, strikes me with a half comical half
serious wonder as to what change has come over me in a moment; and
then I see a straw hat and blue ribbons, and a quantity of curls,
and a little black dog being held up, in two slender arms, against
a bank of blossoms and bright leaves.

Miss Murdstone had been looking for us.  She found us here; and
presented her uncongenial cheek, the little wrinkles in it filled
with hair powder, to Dora to be kissed.  Then she took Dora's arm
in hers, and marched us into breakfast as if it were a soldier's
funeral.

How many cups of tea I drank, because Dora made it, I don't know. 
But, I perfectly remember that I sat swilling tea until my whole
nervous system, if I had had any in those days, must have gone by
the board.  By and by we went to church.  Miss Murdstone was
between Dora and me in the pew; but I heard her sing, and the
congregation vanished.  A sermon was delivered - about Dora, of
course - and I am afraid that is all I know of the service.

We had a quiet day.  No company, a walk, a family dinner of four,
and an evening of looking over books and pictures; Miss Murdstone
with a homily before her, and her eye upon us, keeping guard
vigilantly.  Ah! little did Mr. Spenlow imagine, when he sat
opposite to me after dinner that day, with his pocket-handkerchief
over his head, how fervently I was embracing him, in my fancy, as
his son-in-law!  Little did he think, when I took leave of him at
night, that he had just given his full consent to my being engaged
to Dora, and that I was invoking blessings on his head!

We departed early in the morning, for we had a Salvage case coming
on in the Admiralty Court, requiring a rather accurate knowledge of
the whole science of navigation, in which (as we couldn't be
expected to know much about those matters in the Commons) the judge
had entreated two old Trinity Masters, for charity's sake, to come
and help him out.  Dora was at the breakfast-table to make the tea
again, however; and I had the melancholy pleasure of taking off my
hat to her in the phaeton, as she stood on the door-step with Jip
in her arms.

What the Admiralty was to me that day; what nonsense I made of our
case in my mind, as I listened to it; how I saw 'DORA' engraved
upon the blade of the silver oar which they lay upon the table, as
the emblem of that high jurisdiction; and how I felt when Mr.
Spenlow went home without me (I had had an insane hope that he
might take me back again), as if I were a mariner myself, and the
ship to which I belonged had sailed away and left me on a desert
island; I shall make no fruitless effort to describe.  If that
sleepy old court could rouse itself, and present in any visible
form the daydreams I have had in it about Dora, it would reveal my
truth.

I don't mean the dreams that I dreamed on that day alone, but day
after day, from week to week, and term to term.  I went there, not
to attend to what was going on, but to think about Dora.  If ever
I bestowed a thought upon the cases, as they dragged their slow
length before me, it was only to wonder, in the matrimonial cases
(remembering Dora), how it was that married people could ever be
otherwise than happy; and, in the Prerogative cases, to consider,
if the money in question had been left to me, what were the
foremost steps I should immediately have taken in regard to Dora. 
Within the first week of my passion, I bought four sumptuous
waistcoats - not for myself; I had no pride in them; for Dora - and
took to wearing straw-coloured kid gloves in the streets, and laid
the foundations of all the corns I have ever had.  If the boots I
wore at that period could only be produced and compared with the
natural size of my feet, they would show what the state of my heart
was, in a most affecting manner.

And yet, wretched cripple as I made myself by this act of homage to
Dora, I walked miles upon miles daily in the hope of seeing her. 
Not only was I soon as well known on the Norwood Road as the
postmen on that beat, but I pervaded London likewise.  I walked
about the streets where the best shops for ladies were, I haunted
the Bazaar like an unquiet spirit, I fagged through the Park again
and again, long after I was quite knocked up.  Sometimes, at long
intervals and on rare occasions, I saw her.  Perhaps I saw her
glove waved in a carriage window; perhaps I met her, walked with
her and Miss Murdstone a little way, and spoke to her.  In the
latter case I was always very miserable afterwards, to think that
I had said nothing to the purpose; or that she had no idea of the
extent of my devotion, or that she cared nothing about me.  I was
always looking out, as may be supposed, for another invitation to
Mr. Spenlow's house.  I was always being disappointed, for I got
none.

Mrs. Crupp must have been a woman of penetration; for when this
attachment was but a few weeks old, and I had not had the courage
to write more explicitly even to Agnes, than that I had been to Mr.
Spenlow's house, 'whose family,' I added, 'consists of one
daughter'; - I say Mrs. Crupp must have been a woman of
penetration, for, even in that early stage, she found it out.  She
came up to me one evening, when I was very low, to ask (she being
then afflicted with the disorder I have mentioned) if I could
oblige her with a little tincture of cardamums mixed with rhubarb,
and flavoured with seven drops of the essence of cloves, which was
the best remedy for her complaint; - or, if I had not such a thing
by me, with a little brandy, which was the next best.  It was not,
she remarked, so palatable to her, but it was the next best.  As I
had never even heard of the first remedy, and always had the second
in the closet, I gave Mrs. Crupp a glass of the second, which (that
I might have no suspicion of its being devoted to any improper use)
she began to take in my presence.

'Cheer up, sir,' said Mrs. Crupp.  'I can't abear to see you so,
sir: I'm a mother myself.'

I did not quite perceive the application of this fact to myself,
but I smiled on Mrs. Crupp, as benignly as was in my power.

'Come, sir,' said Mrs. Crupp.  'Excuse me.  I know what it is, sir. 
There's a lady in the case.'

'Mrs. Crupp?' I returned, reddening.

'Oh, bless you!  Keep a good heart, sir!' said Mrs. Crupp, nodding
encouragement.  'Never say die, sir!  If She don't smile upon you,
there's a many as will.  You are a young gentleman to be smiled on,
Mr. Copperfull, and you must learn your walue, sir.'

Mrs. Crupp always called me Mr. Copperfull: firstly, no doubt,
because it was not my name; and secondly, I am inclined to think,
in some indistinct association with a washing-day.

'What makes you suppose there is any young lady in the case, Mrs.
Crupp?' said I.

'Mr. Copperfull,' said Mrs. Crupp, with a great deal of feeling,
'I'm a mother myself.'

For some time Mrs. Crupp could only lay her hand upon her nankeen
bosom, and fortify herself against returning pain with sips of her
medicine.  At length she spoke again.

'When the present set were took for you by your dear aunt, Mr.
Copperfull,' said Mrs. Crupp, 'my remark were, I had now found
summun I could care for.  "Thank Ev'in!" were the expression, "I
have now found summun I can care for!" - You don't eat enough, sir,
nor yet drink.'

'Is that what you found your supposition on, Mrs. Crupp?' said I.

'Sir,' said Mrs. Crupp, in a tone approaching to severity, 'I've
laundressed other young gentlemen besides yourself.  A young
gentleman may be over-careful of himself, or he may be
under-careful of himself.  He may brush his hair too regular, or
too un-regular.  He may wear his boots much too large for him, or
much too small.  That is according as the young gentleman has his
original character formed.  But let him go to which extreme he may,
sir, there's a young lady in both of 'em.'

Mrs. Crupp shook her head in such a determined manner, that I had
not an inch of vantage-ground left.

'It was but the gentleman which died here before yourself,' said
Mrs. Crupp, 'that fell in love - with a barmaid - and had his
waistcoats took in directly, though much swelled by drinking.'

'Mrs. Crupp,' said I, 'I must beg you not to connect the young lady
in my case with a barmaid, or anything of that sort, if you
please.'

'Mr. Copperfull,' returned Mrs. Crupp, 'I'm a mother myself, and
not likely.  I ask your pardon, sir, if I intrude.  I should never
wish to intrude where I were not welcome.  But you are a young
gentleman, Mr. Copperfull, and my adwice to you is, to cheer up,
sir, to keep a good heart, and to know your own walue.  If you was
to take to something, sir,' said Mrs. Crupp, 'if you was to take to
skittles, now, which is healthy, you might find it divert your
mind, and do you good.'

With these words, Mrs. Crupp, affecting to be very careful of the
brandy - which was all gone - thanked me with a majestic curtsey,
and retired.  As her figure disappeared into the gloom of the
entry, this counsel certainly presented itself to my mind in the
light of a slight liberty on Mrs. Crupp's part; but, at the same
time, I was content to receive it, in another point of view, as a
word to the wise, and a warning in future to keep my secret better.

CHAPTER 27
TOMMY TRADDLES

It may have been in consequence of Mrs. Crupp's advice, and,
perhaps, for no better reason than because there was a certain
similarity in the sound of the word skittles and Traddles, that it
came into my head, next day, to go and look after Traddles.  The
time he had mentioned was more than out, and he lived in a little
street near the Veterinary College at Camden Town, which was
principally tenanted, as one of our clerks who lived in that
direction informed me, by gentlemen students, who bought live
donkeys, and made experiments on those quadrupeds in their private
apartments.  Having obtained from this clerk a direction to the
academic grove in question, I set out, the same afternoon, to visit
my old schoolfellow.

I found that the street was not as desirable a one as I could have
wished it to be, for the sake of Traddles.  The inhabitants
appeared to have a propensity to throw any little trifles they were
not in want of, into the road: which not only made it rank and
sloppy, but untidy too, on account of the cabbage-leaves.  The
refuse was not wholly vegetable either, for I myself saw a shoe, a
doubled-up saucepan, a black bonnet, and an umbrella, in various
stages of decomposition, as I was looking out for the number I
wanted.

The general air of the place reminded me forcibly of the days when
I lived with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber.  An indescribable character of
faded gentility that attached to the house I sought, and made it
unlike all the other houses in the street - though they were all
built on one monotonous pattern, and looked like the early copies
of a blundering boy who was learning to make houses, and had not
yet got out of his cramped brick-and-mortar pothooks - reminded me
still more of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber.  Happening to arrive at the
door as it was opened to the afternoon milkman, I was reminded of
Mr. and Mrs. Micawber more forcibly yet.

'Now,' said the milkman to a very youthful servant girl.  'Has that
there little bill of mine been heerd on?'

'Oh, master says he'll attend to it immediate,' was the reply.

'Because,' said the milkman, going on as if he had received no
answer, and speaking, as I judged from his tone, rather for the
edification of somebody within the house, than of the youthful
servant - an impression which was strengthened by his manner of
glaring down the passage - 'because that there little bill has been
running so long, that I begin to believe it's run away altogether,
and never won't be heerd of.  Now, I'm not a going to stand it, you
know!' said the milkman, still throwing his voice into the house,
and glaring down the passage.

As to his dealing in the mild article of milk, by the by, there
never was a greater anomaly.  His deportment would have been fierce
in a butcher or a brandy-merchant.

The voice of the youthful servant became faint, but she seemed to
me, from the action of her lips, again to murmur that it would be
attended to immediate.

'I tell you what,' said the milkman, looking hard at her for the
first time, and taking her by the chin, 'are you fond of milk?'

'Yes, I likes it,' she replied.
'Good,' said the milkman.  'Then you won't have none tomorrow. 
D'ye hear?  Not a fragment of milk you won't have tomorrow.'

I thought she seemed, upon the whole, relieved by the prospect of
having any today.  The milkman, after shaking his head at her
darkly, released her chin, and with anything rather than good-will
opened his can, and deposited the usual quantity in the family jug. 
This done, he went away, muttering, and uttered the cry of his
trade next door, in a vindictive shriek.

'Does Mr. Traddles live here?' I then inquired.

A mysterious voice from the end of the passage replied 'Yes.'  Upon
which the youthful servant replied 'Yes.'

'Is he at home?' said I.

Again the mysterious voice replied in the affirmative, and again
the servant echoed it.  Upon this, I walked in, and in pursuance of
the servant's directions walked upstairs; conscious, as I passed
the back parlour-door, that I was surveyed by a mysterious eye,
probably belonging to the mysterious voice.

When I got to the top of the stairs - the house was only a story
high above the ground floor - Traddles was on the landing to meet
me.  He was delighted to see me, and gave me welcome, with great
heartiness, to his little room.  It was in the front of the house,
and extremely neat, though sparely furnished.  It was his only
room, I saw; for there was a sofa-bedstead in it, and his
blacking-brushes and blacking were among his books - on the top
shelf, behind a dictionary.  His table was covered with papers, and
he was hard at work in an old coat.  I looked at nothing, that I
know of, but I saw everything, even to the prospect of a church
upon his china inkstand, as I sat down - and this, too, was a
faculty confirmed in me in the old Micawber times.  Various
ingenious arrangements he had made, for the disguise of his chest
of drawers, and the accommodation of his boots, his shaving-glass,
and so forth, particularly impressed themselves upon me, as
evidences of the same Traddles who used to make models of
elephants' dens in writing-paper to put flies in; and to comfort
himself under ill usage, with the memorable works of art I have so
often mentioned.

In a corner of the room was something neatly covered up with a
large white cloth.  I could not make out what that was.

'Traddles,' said I, shaking hands with him again, after I had sat
down, 'I am delighted to see you.'

'I am delighted to see YOU, Copperfield,' he returned.  'I am very
glad indeed to see you.  It was because I was thoroughly glad to
see you when we met in Ely Place, and was sure you were thoroughly
glad to see me, that I gave you this address instead of my address
at chambers.'
'Oh!  You have chambers?' said I.

'Why, I have the fourth of a room and a passage, and the fourth of
a clerk,' returned Traddles.  'Three others and myself unite to
have a set of chambers - to look business-like - and we quarter the
clerk too.  Half-a-crown a week he costs me.'

His old simple character and good temper, and something of his old
unlucky fortune also, I thought, smiled at me in the smile with
which he made this explanation.

'It's not because I have the least pride, Copperfield, you
understand,' said Traddles, 'that I don't usually give my address
here.  It's only on account of those who come to me, who might not
like to come here.  For myself, I am fighting my way on in the
world against difficulties, and it would be ridiculous if I made a
pretence of doing anything else.'

'You are reading for the bar, Mr. Waterbrook informed me?' said I.

'Why, yes,' said Traddles, rubbing his hands slowly over one
another.  'I am reading for the bar.  The fact is, I have just
begun to keep my terms, after rather a long delay.  It's some time
since I was articled, but the payment of that hundred pounds was a
great pull.  A great pull!' said Traddles, with a wince, as if he
had had a tooth out.

'Do you know what I can't help thinking of, Traddles, as I sit here
looking at you?' I asked him.

'No,' said he.

'That sky-blue suit you used to wear.'

'Lord, to be sure!' cried Traddles, laughing.  'Tight in the arms
and legs, you know?  Dear me!  Well!  Those were happy times,
weren't they?'

'I think our schoolmaster might have made them happier, without
doing any harm to any of us, I acknowledge,' I returned.

'Perhaps he might,' said Traddles.  'But dear me, there was a good
deal of fun going on.  Do you remember the nights in the bedroom? 
When we used to have the suppers?  And when you used to tell the
stories?  Ha, ha, ha!  And do you remember when I got caned for
crying about Mr. Mell?  Old Creakle!  I should like to see him
again, too!'

'He was a brute to you, Traddles,' said I, indignantly; for his
good humour made me feel as if I had seen him beaten but yesterday.

'Do you think so?' returned Traddles.  'Really?  Perhaps he was
rather.  But it's all over, a long while.  Old Creakle!'

'You were brought up by an uncle, then?' said I.

'Of course I was!' said Traddles.  'The one I was always going to
write to.  And always didn't, eh!  Ha, ha, ha!  Yes, I had an uncle
then.  He died soon after I left school.'

'Indeed!'

'Yes.  He was a retired - what do you call it! - draper -
cloth-merchant - and had made me his heir.  But he didn't like me
when I grew up.'

'Do you really mean that?' said I.  He was so composed, that I
fancied he must have some other meaning.

'Oh dear, yes, Copperfield!  I mean it,' replied Traddles.  'It was
an unfortunate thing, but he didn't like me at all.  He said I
wasn't at all what he expected, and so he married his housekeeper.'

'And what did you do?' I asked.

'I didn't do anything in particular,' said Traddles.  'I lived with
them, waiting to be put out in the world, until his gout
unfortunately flew to his stomach - and so he died, and so she
married a young man, and so I wasn't provided for.'

'Did you get nothing, Traddles, after all?'

'Oh dear, yes!' said Traddles.  'I got fifty pounds.  I had never
been brought up to any profession, and at first I was at a loss
what to do for myself.  However, I began, with the assistance of
the son of a professional man, who had been to Salem House -
Yawler, with his nose on one side.  Do you recollect him?'

No.  He had not been there with me; all the noses were straight in
my day.

'It don't matter,' said Traddles.  'I began, by means of his
assistance, to copy law writings.  That didn't answer very well;
and then I began to state cases for them, and make abstracts, and
that sort of work.  For I am a plodding kind of fellow,
Copperfield, and had learnt the way of doing such things pithily. 
Well!  That put it in my head to enter myself as a law student; and
that ran away with all that was left of the fifty pounds.  Yawler
recommended me to one or two other offices, however - Mr.
Waterbrook's for one - and I got a good many jobs.  I was fortunate
enough, too, to become acquainted with a person in the publishing
way, who was getting up an Encyclopaedia, and he set me to work;
and, indeed' (glancing at his table), 'I am at work for him at this
minute.  I am not a bad compiler, Copperfield,' said Traddles,
preserving the same air of cheerful confidence in all he said, 'but
I have no invention at all; not a particle.  I suppose there never
was a young man with less originality than I have.'

As Traddles seemed to expect that I should assent to this as a
matter of course, I nodded; and he went on, with the same sprightly
patience - I can find no better expression - as before.

'So, by little and little, and not living high, I managed to scrape
up the hundred pounds at last,' said Traddles; 'and thank Heaven
that's paid - though it was - though it certainly was,' said
Traddles, wincing again as if he had had another tooth out, 'a
pull.  I am living by the sort of work I have mentioned, still, and
I hope, one of these days, to get connected with some newspaper:
which would almost be the making of my fortune.  Now, Copperfield,
you are so exactly what you used to be, with that agreeable face,
and it's so pleasant to see you, that I sha'n't conceal anything. 
Therefore you must know that I am engaged.'

Engaged!  Oh, Dora!

'She is a curate's daughter,' said Traddles; 'one of ten, down in
Devonshire.  Yes!' For he saw me glance, involuntarily, at the
prospect on the inkstand.  'That's the church!  You come round here
to the left, out of this gate,' tracing his finger along the
inkstand, 'and exactly where I hold this pen, there stands the
house - facing, you understand, towards the church.'

The delight with which he entered into these particulars, did not
fully present itself to me until afterwards; for my selfish
thoughts were making a ground-plan of Mr. Spenlow's house and
garden at the same moment.

'She is such a dear girl!' said Traddles; 'a little older than me,
but the dearest girl!  I told you I was going out of town?  I have
been down there.  I walked there, and I walked back, and I had the
most delightful time!  I dare say ours is likely to be a rather
long engagement, but our motto is "Wait and hope!" We always say
that.  "Wait and hope," we always say.  And she would wait,
Copperfield, till she was sixty - any age you can mention - for
me!'

Traddles rose from his chair, and, with a triumphant smile, put his
hand upon the white cloth I had observed.

'However,' he said, 'it's not that we haven't made a beginning
towards housekeeping.  No, no; we have begun.  We must get on by
degrees, but we have begun.  Here,' drawing the cloth off with
great pride and care, 'are two pieces of furniture to commence
with.  This flower-pot and stand, she bought herself.  You put that
in a parlour window,' said Traddles, falling a little back from it
to survey it with the greater admiration, 'with a plant in it, and
- and there you are!  This little round table with the marble top
(it's two feet ten in circumference), I bought.  You want to lay a
book down, you know, or somebody comes to see you or your wife, and
wants a place to stand a cup of tea upon, and - and there you are
again!' said Traddles.  'It's an admirable piece of workmanship -
firm as a rock!'
I praised them both, highly, and Traddles replaced the covering as
carefully as he had removed it.

'It's not a great deal towards the furnishing,' said Traddles, 'but
it's something.  The table-cloths, and pillow-cases, and articles
of that kind, are what discourage me most, Copperfield.  So does
the ironmongery - candle-boxes, and gridirons, and that sort of
necessaries - because those things tell, and mount up.  However,
"wait

and hope!" And I assure you she's the dearest girl!'

'I am quite certain of it,' said I.

'In the meantime,' said Traddles, coming back to his chair; 'and
this is the end of my prosing about myself, I get on as well as I
can.  I don't make much, but I don't spend much.  In general, I
board with the people downstairs, who are very agreeable people
indeed.  Both Mr. and Mrs. Micawber have seen a good deal of life,
and are excellent company.'

'My dear Traddles!' I quickly exclaimed.  'What are you talking
about?'

Traddles looked at me, as if he wondered what I was talking about.

'Mr. and Mrs. Micawber!' I repeated.  'Why, I am intimately
acquainted with them!'

An opportune double knock at the door, which I knew well from old
experience in Windsor Terrace, and which nobody but Mr. Micawber
could ever have knocked at that door, resolved any doubt in my mind
as to their being my old friends.  I begged Traddles to ask his
landlord to walk up.  Traddles accordingly did so, over the
banister; and Mr. Micawber, not a bit changed - his tights, his
stick, his shirt-collar, and his eye-glass, all the same as ever -
came into the room with a genteel and youthful air.

'I beg your pardon, Mr. Traddles,' said Mr. Micawber, with the old
roll in his voice, as he checked himself in humming a soft tune. 
'I was not aware that there was any individual, alien to this
tenement, in your sanctum.'

Mr. Micawber slightly bowed to me, and pulled up his shirt-collar.

'How do you do, Mr. Micawber?' said I.

'Sir,' said Mr. Micawber, 'you are exceedingly obliging.  I am in
statu quo.'

'And Mrs. Micawber?' I pursued.

'Sir,' said Mr. Micawber, 'she is also, thank God, in statu quo.'

'And the children, Mr. Micawber?'

'Sir,' said Mr. Micawber, 'I rejoice to reply that they are,
likewise, in the enjoyment of salubrity.'

All this time, Mr. Micawber had not known me in the least, though
he had stood face to face with me.  But now, seeing me smile, he
examined my features with more attention, fell back, cried, 'Is it
possible!  Have I the pleasure of again beholding Copperfield!' and
shook me by both hands with the utmost fervour.

'Good Heaven, Mr. Traddles!' said Mr. Micawber, 'to think that I
should find you acquainted with the friend of my youth, the
companion of earlier days!  My dear!' calling over the banisters to
Mrs. Micawber, while Traddles looked (with reason) not a little
amazed at this description of me.  'Here is a gentleman in Mr.
Traddles's apartment, whom he wishes to have the pleasure of
presenting to you, my love!'

Mr. Micawber immediately reappeared, and shook hands with me again.

'And how is our good friend the Doctor, Copperfield?' said Mr.
Micawber, 'and all the circle at Canterbury?'

'I have none but good accounts of them,' said I.

'I am most delighted to hear it,' said Mr. Micawber.  'It was at
Canterbury where we last met.  Within the shadow, I may
figuratively say, of that religious edifice immortalized by
Chaucer, which was anciently the resort of Pilgrims from the
remotest corners of - in short,' said Mr. Micawber, 'in the
immediate neighbourhood of the Cathedral.'

I replied that it was.  Mr. Micawber continued talking as volubly
as he could; but not, I thought, without showing, by some marks of
concern in his countenance, that he was sensible of sounds in the
next room, as of Mrs. Micawber washing her hands, and hurriedly
opening and shutting drawers that were uneasy in their action.

'You find us, Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, with one eye on
Traddles, 'at present established, on what may be designated as a
small and unassuming scale; but, you are aware that I have, in the
course of my career, surmounted difficulties, and conquered
obstacles.  You are no stranger to the fact, that there have been
periods of my life, when it has been requisite that I should pause,
until certain expected events should turn up; when it has been
necessary that I should fall back, before making what I trust I
shall not be accused of presumption in terming - a spring.  The
present is one of those momentous stages in the life of man.  You
find me, fallen back, FOR a spring; and I have every reason to
believe that a vigorous leap will shortly be the result.'

I was expressing my satisfaction, when Mrs. Micawber came in; a
little more slatternly than she used to be, or so she seemed now,
to my unaccustomed eyes, but still with some preparation of herself
for company, and with a pair of brown gloves on.

'My dear,' said Mr. Micawber, leading her towards me, 'here is a
gentleman of the name of Copperfield, who wishes to renew his
acquaintance with you.'

It would have been better, as it turned out, to have led gently up
to this announcement, for Mrs. Micawber, being in a delicate state
of health, was overcome by it, and was taken so unwell, that Mr.
Micawber was obliged, in great trepidation, to run down to the
water-butt in the backyard, and draw a basinful to lave her brow
with.  She presently revived, however, and was really pleased to
see me.  We had half-an-hour's talk, all together; and I asked her
about the twins, who, she said, were 'grown great creatures'; and
after Master and Miss Micawber, whom she described as 'absolute
giants', but they were not produced on that occasion.

Mr. Micawber was very anxious that I should stay to dinner.  I
should not have been averse to do so, but that I imagined I
detected trouble, and calculation relative to the extent of the
cold meat, in Mrs. Micawber's eye.  I therefore pleaded another
engagement; and observing that Mrs. Micawber's spirits were
immediately lightened, I resisted all persuasion to forego it.

But I told Traddles, and Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, that before I could
think of leaving, they must appoint a day when they would come and
dine with me.  The occupations to which Traddles stood pledged,
rendered it necessary to fix a somewhat distant one; but an
appointment was made for the purpose, that suited us all, and then
I took my leave.

Mr. Micawber, under pretence of showing me a nearer way than that
by which I had come, accompanied me to the corner of the street;
being anxious (he explained to me) to say a few words to an old
friend, in confidence.

'My dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'I need hardly tell you
that to have beneath our roof, under existing circumstances, a mind
like that which gleams - if I may be allowed the expression - which
gleams - in your friend Traddles, is an unspeakable comfort.  With
a washerwoman, who exposes hard-bake for sale in her
parlour-window, dwelling next door, and a Bow-street officer
residing over the way, you may imagine that his society is a source
of consolation to myself and to Mrs. Micawber.  I am at present, my
dear Copperfield, engaged in the sale of corn upon commission.  It
is not an avocation of a remunerative description - in other words,
it does not pay - and some temporary embarrassments of a pecuniary
nature have been the consequence.  I am, however, delighted to add
that I have now an immediate prospect of something turning up (I am
not at liberty to say in what direction), which I trust will enable
me to provide, permanently, both for myself and for your friend
Traddles, in whom I have an unaffected interest.  You may, perhaps,
be prepared to hear that Mrs. Micawber is in a state of health
which renders it not wholly improbable that an addition may be
ultimately made to those pledges of affection which - in short, to
the infantine group.  Mrs. Micawber's family have been so good as
to express their dissatisfaction at this state of things.  I have
merely to observe, that I am not aware that it is any business of
theirs, and that I repel that exhibition of feeling with scorn, and
with defiance!'

Mr. Micawber then shook hands with me again, and left me.

CHAPTER 28
Mr. MICAWBER'S GAUNTLET

Until the day arrived on which I was to entertain my newly-found
old friends, I lived principally on Dora and coffee.  In my
love-lorn condition, my appetite languished; and I was glad of it,
for I felt as though it would have been an act of perfidy towards
Dora to have a natural relish for my dinner.  The quantity of
walking exercise I took, was not in this respect attended with its
usual consequence, as the disappointment counteracted the fresh
air.  I have my doubts, too, founded on the acute experience
acquired at this period of my life, whether a sound enjoyment of
animal food can develop itself freely in any human subject who is
always in torment from tight boots.  I think the extremities
require to be at peace before the stomach will conduct itself with
vigour.

On the occasion of this domestic little party, I did not repeat my
former extensive preparations.  I merely provided a pair of soles,
a small leg of mutton, and a pigeon-pie.  Mrs. Crupp broke out into
rebellion on my first bashful hint in reference to the cooking of
the fish and joint, and said, with a dignified sense of injury,
'No!  No, sir!  You will not ask me sich a thing, for you are
better acquainted with me than to suppose me capable of doing what
I cannot do with ampial satisfaction to my own feelings!' But, in
the end, a compromise was effected; and Mrs. Crupp consented to
achieve this feat, on condition that I dined from home for a
fortnight afterwards.

And here I may remark, that what I underwent from Mrs. Crupp, in
consequence of the tyranny she established over me, was dreadful. 
I never was so much afraid of anyone.  We made a compromise of
everything.  If I hesitated, she was taken with that wonderful
disorder which was always lying in ambush in her system, ready, at
the shortest notice, to prey upon her vitals.  If I rang the bell
impatiently, after half-a-dozen unavailing modest pulls, and she
appeared at last - which was not by any means to be relied upon -
she would appear with a reproachful aspect, sink breathless on a
chair near the door, lay her hand upon her nankeen bosom, and
become so ill, that I was glad, at any sacrifice of brandy or
anything else, to get rid of her.  If I objected to having my bed
made at five o'clock in the afternoon - which I do still think an
uncomfortable arrangement - one motion of her hand towards the same
nankeen region of wounded sensibility was enough to make me falter
an apology.  In short, I would have done anything in an honourable
way rather than give Mrs. Crupp offence; and she was the terror of
my life.

I bought a second-hand dumb-waiter for this dinner-party, in
preference to re-engaging the handy young man; against whom I had
conceived a prejudice, in consequence of meeting him in the Strand,
one Sunday morning, in a waistcoat remarkably like one of mine,
which had been missing since the former occasion.  The 'young gal'
was re-engaged; but on the stipulation that she should only bring
in the dishes, and then withdraw to the landing-place, beyond the
outer door; where a habit of sniffing she had contracted would be
lost upon the guests, and where her retiring on the plates would be
a physical impossibility.

Having laid in the materials for a bowl of punch, to be compounded
by Mr. Micawber; having provided a bottle of lavender-water, two
wax-candles, a paper of mixed pins, and a pincushion, to assist
Mrs. Micawber in her toilette at my dressing-table; having also
caused the fire in my bedroom to be lighted for Mrs. Micawber's
convenience; and having laid the cloth with my own hands, I awaited
the result with composure.

At the appointed time, my three visitors arrived together.  Mr.
Micawber with more shirt-collar than usual, and a new ribbon to his
eye-glass; Mrs. Micawber with her cap in a whitey-brown paper
parcel; Traddles carrying the parcel, and supporting Mrs. Micawber
on his arm.  They were all delighted with my residence.  When I
conducted Mrs. Micawber to my dressing-table, and she saw the scale
on which it was prepared for her, she was in such raptures, that
she called Mr. Micawber to come in and look.

'My dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'this is luxurious.  This
is a way of life which reminds me of the period when I was myself
in a state of celibacy, and Mrs. Micawber had not yet been
solicited to plight her faith at the Hymeneal altar.'

'He means, solicited by him, Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber,
archly.  'He cannot answer for others.'

'My dear,' returned Mr. Micawber with sudden seriousness, 'I have
no desire to answer for others.  I am too well aware that when, in
the inscrutable decrees of Fate, you were reserved for me, it is
possible you may have been reserved for one, destined, after a
protracted struggle, at length to fall a victim to pecuniary
involvements of a complicated nature.  I understand your allusion,
my love.  I regret it, but I can bear it.'

'Micawber!' exclaimed Mrs. Micawber, in tears.  'Have I deserved
this!  I, who never have deserted you; who never WILL desert you,
Micawber!'
'My love,' said Mr. Micawber, much affected, 'you will forgive, and
our old and tried friend Copperfield will, I am sure, forgive, the
momentary laceration of a wounded spirit, made sensitive by a
recent collision with the Minion of Power - in other words, with a
ribald Turncock attached to the water-works - and will pity, not
condemn, its excesses.'

Mr. Micawber then embraced Mrs. Micawber, and pressed my hand;
leaving me to infer from this broken allusion that his domestic
supply of water had been cut off that afternoon, in consequence of
default in the payment of the company's rates.

To divert his thoughts from this melancholy subject, I informed Mr.
Micawber that I relied upon him for a bowl of punch, and led him to
the lemons.  His recent despondency, not to say despair, was gone
in a moment.  I never saw a man so thoroughly enjoy himself amid
the fragrance of lemon-peel and sugar, the odour of burning rum,
and the steam of boiling water, as Mr. Micawber did that afternoon. 
It was wonderful to see his face shining at us out of a thin cloud
of these delicate fumes, as he stirred, and mixed, and tasted, and
looked as if he were making, instead of punch, a fortune for his
family down to the latest posterity.  As to Mrs. Micawber, I don't
know whether it was the effect of the cap, or the lavender-water,
or the pins, or the fire, or the wax-candles, but she came out of
my room, comparatively speaking, lovely.  And the lark was never
gayer than that excellent woman.

I suppose - I never ventured to inquire, but I suppose - that Mrs.
Crupp, after frying the soles, was taken ill.  Because we broke
down at that point.  The leg of mutton came up very red within, and
very pale without: besides having a foreign substance of a gritty
nature sprinkled over it, as if if had had a fall into the ashes of
that remarkable kitchen fireplace.  But we were not in condition to
judge of this fact from the appearance of the gravy, forasmuch as
the 'young gal' had dropped it all upon the stairs - where it
remained, by the by, in a long train, until it was worn out.  The
pigeon-pie was not bad, but it was a delusive pie: the crust being
like a disappointing head, phrenologically speaking: full of lumps
and bumps, with nothing particular underneath.  In short, the
banquet was such a failure that I should have been quite unhappy -
about the failure, I mean, for I was always unhappy about Dora - if
I had not been relieved by the great good humour of my company, and
by a bright suggestion from Mr. Micawber.

'My dear friend Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'accidents will
occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated
by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances the
- a - I would say, in short, by the influence of Woman, in the
lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and
must be borne with philosophy.  If you will allow me to take the
liberty of remarking that there are few comestibles better, in
their way, than a Devil, and that I believe, with a little division
of labour, we could accomplish a good one if the young person in
attendance could produce a gridiron, I would put it to you, that
this little misfortune may be easily repaired.'

There was a gridiron in the pantry, on which my morning rasher of
bacon was cooked.  We had it in, in a twinkling, and immediately
applied ourselves to carrying Mr. Micawber's idea into effect.  The
division of labour to which he had referred was this: - Traddles
cut the mutton into slices; Mr. Micawber (who could do anything of
this sort to perfection) covered them with pepper, mustard, salt,
and cayenne; I put them on the gridiron, turned them with a fork,
and took them off, under Mr. Micawber's direction; and Mrs.
Micawber heated, and continually stirred, some mushroom ketchup in
a little saucepan.  When we had slices enough done to begin upon,
we fell-to, with our sleeves still tucked up at the wrist, more
slices sputtering and blazing on the fire, and our attention
divided between the mutton on our plates, and the mutton then
preparing.

What with the novelty of this cookery, the excellence of it, the
bustle of it, the frequent starting up to look after it, the
frequent sitting down to dispose of it as the crisp slices came off
the gridiron hot and hot, the being so busy, so flushed with the
fire, so amused, and in the midst of such a tempting noise and
savour, we reduced the leg of mutton to the bone.  My own appetite
came back miraculously.  I am ashamed to record it, but I really
believe I forgot Dora for a little while.  I am satisfied that Mr.
and Mrs. Micawber could not have enjoyed the feast more, if they
had sold a bed to provide it.  Traddles laughed as heartily, almost
the whole time, as he ate and worked.  Indeed we all did, all at
once; and I dare say there was never a greater success.

We were at the height of our enjoyment, and were all busily
engaged, in our several departments, endeavouring to bring the last
batch of slices to a state of perfection that should crown the
feast, when I was aware of a strange presence in the room, and my
eyes encountered those of the staid Littimer, standing hat in hand
before me.

'What's the matter?' I involuntarily asked.

'I beg your pardon, sir, I was directed to come in.  Is my master
not here, sir?'

'No.'

'Have you not seen him, sir?'

'No; don't you come from him?'

'Not immediately so, sir.'

'Did he tell you you would find him here?'

'Not exactly so, sir.  But I should think he might be here
tomorrow, as he has not been here today.'
'Is he coming up from Oxford?'

'I beg, sir,' he returned respectfully, 'that you will be seated,
and allow me to do this.'  With which he took the fork from my
unresisting hand, and bent over the gridiron, as if his whole
attention were concentrated on it.

We should not have been much discomposed, I dare say, by the
appearance of Steerforth himself, but we became in a moment the
meekest of the meek before his respectable serving-man.  Mr.
Micawber, humming a tune, to show that he was quite at ease,
subsided into his chair, with the handle of a hastily concealed
fork sticking out of the bosom of his coat, as if he had stabbed
himself.  Mrs. Micawber put on her brown gloves, and assumed a
genteel languor.  Traddles ran his greasy hands through his hair,
and stood it bolt upright, and stared in confusion on the
table-cloth.  As for me, I was a mere infant at the head of my own
table; and hardly ventured to glance at the respectable phenomenon,
who had come from Heaven knows where, to put my establishment to
rights.

Meanwhile he took the mutton off the gridiron, and gravely handed
it round.  We all took some, but our appreciation of it was gone,
and we merely made a show of eating it.  As we severally pushed
away our plates, he noiselessly removed them, and set on the
cheese.  He took that off, too, when it was done with; cleared the
table; piled everything on the dumb-waiter; gave us our
wine-glasses; and, of his own accord, wheeled the dumb-waiter into
the pantry.  All this was done in a perfect manner, and he never
raised his eyes from what he was about.  Yet his very elbows, when
he had his back towards me, seemed to teem with the expression of
his fixed opinion that I was extremely young.

'Can I do anything more, sir?'

I thanked him and said, No; but would he take no dinner himself?

'None, I am obliged to you, sir.'

'Is Mr. Steerforth coming from Oxford?'

'I beg your pardon, sir?'

'Is Mr. Steerforth coming from Oxford?'

'I should imagine that he might be here tomorrow, sir.  I rather
thought he might have been here today, sir.  The mistake is mine,
no doubt, sir.'

'If you should see him first -' said I.

'If you'll excuse me, sir, I don't think I shall see him first.'

'In case you do,' said I, 'pray say that I am sorry he was not here
today, as an old schoolfellow of his was here.'

'Indeed, sir!' and he divided a bow between me and Traddles, with
a glance at the latter.

He was moving softly to the door, when, in a forlorn hope of saying
something naturally - which I never could, to this man - I said:

'Oh! Littimer!'

'Sir!'

'Did you remain long at Yarmouth, that time?'

'Not particularly so, sir.'

'You saw the boat completed?'

'Yes, sir.  I remained behind on purpose to see the boat
completed.'

'I know!' He raised his eyes to mine respectfully.

'Mr. Steerforth has not seen it yet, I suppose?'

'I really can't say, sir.  I think - but I really can't say, sir. 
I wish you good night, sir.'

He comprehended everybody present, in the respectful bow with which
he followed these words, and disappeared.  My visitors seemed to
breathe more freely when he was gone; but my own relief was very
great, for besides the constraint, arising from that extraordinary
sense of being at a disadvantage which I always had in this man's
presence, my conscience had embarrassed me with whispers that I had
mistrusted his master, and I could not repress a vague uneasy dread
that he might find it out.  How was it, having so little in reality
to conceal, that I always DID feel as if this man were finding me
out?

Mr. Micawber roused me from this reflection, which was blended with
a certain remorseful apprehension of seeing Steerforth himself, by
bestowing many encomiums on the absent Littimer as a most
respectable fellow, and a thoroughly admirable servant.  Mr.
Micawber, I may remark, had taken his full share of the general
bow, and had received it with infinite condescension.

'But punch, my dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, tasting it,
'like time and tide, waits for no man.  Ah! it is at the present
moment in high flavour.  My love, will you give me your opinion?'

Mrs. Micawber pronounced it excellent.

'Then I will drink,' said Mr. Micawber, 'if my friend Copperfield
will permit me to take that social liberty, to the days when my
friend Copperfield and myself were younger, and fought our way in
the world side by side.  I may say, of myself and Copperfield, in
words we have sung together before now, that

We twa hae run about the braes
And pu'd the gowans' fine

- in a figurative point of view - on several occasions.  I am not
exactly aware,' said Mr. Micawber, with the old roll in his voice,
and the old indescribable air of saying something genteel, 'what
gowans may be, but I have no doubt that Copperfield and myself
would frequently have taken a pull at them, if it had been
feasible.'

Mr. Micawber, at the then present moment, took a pull at his punch. 
So we all did: Traddles evidently lost in wondering at what distant
time Mr. Micawber and I could have been comrades in the battle of
the world.

'Ahem!' said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat, and warming with
the punch and with the fire.  'My dear, another glass?'

Mrs. Micawber said it must be very little; but we couldn't allow
that, so it was a glassful.

'As we are quite confidential here, Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs.
Micawber, sipping her punch, 'Mr. Traddles being a part of our
domesticity, I should much like to have your opinion on Mr.
Micawber's prospects.  For corn,' said Mrs. Micawber
argumentatively, 'as I have repeatedly said to Mr. Micawber, may be
gentlemanly, but it is not remunerative.  Commission to the extent
of two and ninepence in a fortnight cannot, however limited our
ideas, be considered remunerative.'

We were all agreed upon that.

'Then,' said Mrs. Micawber, who prided herself on taking a clear
view of things, and keeping Mr. Micawber straight by her woman's
wisdom, when he might otherwise go a little crooked, 'then I ask
myself this question.  If corn is not to be relied upon, what is? 
Are coals to be relied upon?  Not at all.  We have turned our
attention to that experiment, on the suggestion of my family, and
we find it fallacious.'

Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair with his hands in his
pockets, eyed us aside, and nodded his head, as much as to say that
the case was very clearly put.

'The articles of corn and coals,' said Mrs. Micawber, still more
argumentatively, 'being equally out of the question, Mr.
Copperfield, I naturally look round the world, and say, "What is
there in which a person of Mr. Micawber's talent is likely to
succeed?" And I exclude the doing anything on commission, because
commission is not a certainty.  What is best suited to a person of
Mr. Micawber's peculiar temperament is, I am convinced, a
certainty.'

Traddles and I both expressed, by a feeling murmur, that this great
discovery was no doubt true of Mr. Micawber, and that it did him
much credit.

'I will not conceal from you, my dear Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs.
Micawber, 'that I have long felt the Brewing business to be
particularly adapted to Mr. Micawber.  Look at Barclay and Perkins!
Look at Truman, Hanbury, and Buxton!  It is on that extensive
footing that Mr. Micawber, I know from my own knowledge of him, is
calculated to shine; and the profits, I am told, are e-NOR-MOUS!
But if Mr. Micawber cannot get into those firms - which decline to
answer his letters, when he offers his services even in an inferior
capacity - what is the use of dwelling upon that idea?  None.  I
may have a conviction that Mr. Micawber's manners -'

'Hem!  Really, my dear,' interposed Mr. Micawber.

'My love, be silent,' said Mrs. Micawber, laying her brown glove on
his hand.  'I may have a conviction, Mr. Copperfield, that Mr.
Micawber's manners peculiarly qualify him for the Banking business. 
I may argue within myself, that if I had a deposit at a
banking-house, the manners of Mr. Micawber, as representing that
banking-house, would inspire confidence, and must extend the
connexion.  But if the various banking-houses refuse to avail
themselves of Mr. Micawber's abilities, or receive the offer of
them with contumely, what is the use of dwelling upon THAT idea? 
None.  As to originating a banking-business, I may know that there
are members of my family who, if they chose to place their money in
Mr. Micawber's hands, might found an establishment of that
description.  But if they do NOT choose to place their money in Mr.
Micawber's hands - which they don't - what is the use of that? 
Again I contend that we are no farther advanced than we were
before.'

I shook my head, and said, 'Not a bit.'  Traddles also shook his
head, and said, 'Not a bit.'

'What do I deduce from this?' Mrs. Micawber went on to say, still
with the same air of putting a case lucidly.  'What is the
conclusion, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to which I am irresistibly
brought?  Am I wrong in saying, it is clear that we must live?'

I answered 'Not at all!' and Traddles answered 'Not at all!' and I
found myself afterwards sagely adding, alone, that a person must
either live or die.

'Just so,' returned Mrs. Micawber, 'It is precisely that.  And the
fact is, my dear Mr. Copperfield, that we can not live without
something widely different from existing circumstances shortly
turning up.  Now I am convinced, myself, and this I have pointed
out to Mr. Micawber several times of late, that things cannot be
expected to turn up of themselves.  We must, in a measure, assist
to turn them up.  I may be wrong, but I have formed that opinion.'

Both Traddles and I applauded it highly.

'Very well,' said Mrs. Micawber.  'Then what do I recommend?  Here
is Mr. Micawber with a variety of qualifications - with great
talent -'

'Really, my love,' said Mr. Micawber.

'Pray, my dear, allow me to conclude.  Here is Mr. Micawber, with
a variety of qualifications, with great talent - I should say, with
genius, but that may be the partiality of a wife -'

Traddles and I both murmured 'No.'

'And here is Mr. Micawber without any suitable position or
employment.  Where does that responsibility rest?  Clearly on
society.  Then I would make a fact so disgraceful known, and boldly
challenge society to set it right.  It appears to me, my dear Mr.
Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, forcibly, 'that what Mr. Micawber
has to do, is to throw down the gauntlet to society, and say, in
effect, "Show me who will take that up.  Let the party immediately
step forward."'

I ventured to ask Mrs. Micawber how this was to be done.

'By advertising,' said Mrs. Micawber - 'in all the papers.  It
appears to me, that what Mr. Micawber has to do, in justice to
himself, in justice to his family, and I will even go so far as to
say in justice to society, by which he has been hitherto
overlooked, is to advertise in all the papers; to describe himself
plainly as so-and-so, with such and such qualifications and to put
it thus: "Now employ me, on remunerative terms, and address,
post-paid, to W. M., Post Office, Camden Town."'

'This idea of Mrs. Micawber's, my dear Copperfield,' said Mr.
Micawber, making his shirt-collar meet in front of his chin, and
glancing at me sideways, 'is, in fact, the Leap to which I alluded,
when I last had the pleasure of seeing you.'

'Advertising is rather expensive,' I remarked, dubiously.

'Exactly so!' said Mrs. Micawber, preserving the same logical air. 
'Quite true, my dear Mr. Copperfield!  I have made the identical
observation to Mr. Micawber.  It is for that reason especially,
that I think Mr. Micawber ought (as I have already said, in justice
to himself, in justice to his family, and in justice to society) to
raise a certain sum of money - on a bill.'

Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair, trifled with his eye-glass
and cast his eyes up at the ceiling; but I thought him observant of
Traddles, too, who was looking at the fire.

'If no member of my family,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'is possessed of
sufficient natural feeling to negotiate that bill - I believe there
is a better business-term to express what I mean -'

Mr. Micawber, with his eyes still cast up at the ceiling, suggested
'Discount.'

'To discount that bill,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'then my opinion is,
that Mr. Micawber should go into the City, should take that bill
into the Money Market, and should dispose of it for what he can
get.  If the individuals in the Money Market oblige Mr. Micawber to
sustain a great sacrifice, that is between themselves and their
consciences.  I view it, steadily, as an investment.  I recommend
Mr. Micawber, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to do the same; to regard it
as an investment which is sure of return, and to make up his mind
to any sacrifice.'

I felt, but I am sure I don't know why, that this was self-denying
and devoted in Mrs. Micawber, and I uttered a murmur to that
effect.  Traddles, who took his tone from me, did likewise, still
looking at the fire.

'I will not,' said Mrs. Micawber, finishing her punch, and
gathering her scarf about her shoulders, preparatory to her
withdrawal to my bedroom: 'I will not protract these remarks on the
subject of Mr. Micawber's pecuniary affairs.  At your fireside, my
dear Mr. Copperfield, and in the presence of Mr. Traddles, who,
though not so old a friend, is quite one of ourselves, I could not
refrain from making you acquainted with the course I advise Mr.
Micawber to take.  I feel that the time is arrived when Mr.
Micawber should exert himself and - I will add - assert himself,
and it appears to me that these are the means.  I am aware that I
am merely a female, and that a masculine judgement is usually
considered more competent to the discussion of such questions;
still I must not forget that, when I lived at home with my papa and
mama, my papa was in the habit of saying, "Emma's form is fragile,
but her grasp of a subject is inferior to none." That my papa was
too partial, I well know; but that he was an observer of character
in some degree, my duty and my reason equally forbid me to doubt.'

With these words, and resisting our entreaties that she would grace
the remaining circulation of the punch with her presence, Mrs.
Micawber retired to my bedroom.  And really I felt that she was a
noble woman - the sort of woman who might have been a Roman matron,
and done all manner of heroic things, in times of public trouble.

In the fervour of this impression, I congratulated Mr. Micawber on
the treasure he possessed.  So did Traddles.  Mr. Micawber extended
his hand to each of us in succession, and then covered his face
with his pocket-handkerchief, which I think had more snuff upon it
than he was aware of.  He then returned to the punch, in the
highest state of exhilaration.

He was full of eloquence.  He gave us to understand that in our
children we lived again, and that, under the pressure of pecuniary
difficulties, any accession to their number was doubly welcome.  He
said that Mrs. Micawber had latterly had her doubts on this point,
but that he had dispelled them, and reassured her.  As to her
family, they were totally unworthy of her, and their sentiments
were utterly indifferent to him, and they might - I quote his own
expression - go to the Devil.

Mr. Micawber then delivered a warm eulogy on Traddles.  He said
Traddles's was a character, to the steady virtues of which he (Mr.
Micawber) could lay no claim, but which, he thanked Heaven, he
could admire.  He feelingly alluded to the young lady, unknown,
whom Traddles had honoured with his affection, and who had
reciprocated that affection by honouring and blessing Traddles with
her affection.  Mr. Micawber pledged her.  So did I.  Traddles
thanked us both, by saying, with a simplicity and honesty I had
sense enough to be quite charmed with, 'I am very much obliged to
you indeed.  And I do assure you, she's the dearest girl! -'

Mr. Micawber took an early opportunity, after that, of hinting,
with the utmost delicacy and ceremony, at the state of MY
affections.  Nothing but the serious assurance of his friend
Copperfield to the contrary, he observed, could deprive him of the
impression that his friend Copperfield loved and was beloved. 
After feeling very hot and uncomfortable for some time, and after
a good deal of blushing, stammering, and denying, I said, having my
glass in my hand, 'Well! I would give them D.!' which so excited
and gratified Mr. Micawber, that he ran with a glass of punch into
my bedroom, in order that Mrs. Micawber might drink D., who drank
it with enthusiasm, crying from within, in a shrill voice, 'Hear,
hear!  My dear Mr. Copperfield, I am delighted.  Hear!' and tapping
at the wall, by way of applause.

Our conversation, afterwards, took a more worldly turn; Mr.
Micawber telling us that he found Camden Town inconvenient, and
that the first thing he contemplated doing, when the advertisement
should have been the cause of something satisfactory turning up,
was to move.  He mentioned a terrace at the western end of Oxford
Street, fronting Hyde Park, on which he had always had his eye, but
which he did not expect to attain immediately, as it would require
a large establishment.  There would probably be an interval, he
explained, in which he should content himself with the upper part
of a house, over some respectable place of business - say in
Piccadilly, - which would be a cheerful situation for Mrs.
Micawber; and where, by throwing out a bow-window, or carrying up
the roof another story, or making some little alteration of that
sort, they might live, comfortably and reputably, for a few years. 
Whatever was reserved for him, he expressly said, or wherever his
abode might be, we might rely on this - there would always be a
room for Traddles, and a knife and fork for me.  We acknowledged
his kindness; and he begged us to forgive his having launched into
these practical and business-like details, and to excuse it as
natural in one who was making entirely new arrangements in life.

Mrs. Micawber, tapping at the wall again to know if tea were ready,
broke up this particular phase of our friendly conversation.  She
made tea for us in a most agreeable manner; and, whenever I went
near her, in handing about the tea-cups and bread-and-butter, asked
me, in a whisper, whether D. was fair, or dark, or whether she was
short, or tall: or something of that kind; which I think I liked. 
After tea, we discussed a variety of topics before the fire; and
Mrs. Micawber was good enough to sing us (in a small, thin, flat
voice, which I remembered to have considered, when I first knew
her, the very table-beer of acoustics) the favourite ballads of
'The Dashing White Sergeant', and 'Little Tafflin'.  For both of
these songs Mrs. Micawber had been famous when she lived at home
with her papa and mama.  Mr. Micawber told us, that when he heard
her sing the first one, on the first occasion of his seeing her
beneath the parental roof, she had attracted his attention in an
extraordinary degree; but that when it came to Little Tafflin, he
had resolved to win that woman or perish in the attempt.

It was between ten and eleven o'clock when Mrs. Micawber rose to
replace her cap in the whitey-brown paper parcel, and to put on her
bonnet.  Mr. Micawber took the opportunity of Traddles putting on
his great-coat, to slip a letter into my hand, with a whispered
request that I would read it at my leisure.  I also took the
opportunity of my holding a candle over the banisters to light them
down, when Mr. Micawber was going first, leading Mrs. Micawber, and
Traddles was following with the cap, to detain Traddles for a
moment on the top of the stairs.

'Traddles,' said I, 'Mr. Micawber don't mean any harm, poor fellow:
but, if I were you, I wouldn't lend him anything.'

'My dear Copperfield,' returned Traddles, smiling, 'I haven't got
anything to lend.'

'You have got a name, you know,' said I.

'Oh!  You call THAT something to lend?' returned Traddles, with a
thoughtful look.

'Certainly.'

'Oh!' said Traddles.  'Yes, to be sure!  I am very much obliged to
you, Copperfield; but - I am afraid I have lent him that already.'

'For the bill that is to be a certain investment?' I inquired.

'No,' said Traddles.  'Not for that one.  This is the first I have
heard of that one.  I have been thinking that he will most likely
propose that one, on the way home.  Mine's another.'

'I hope there will be nothing wrong about it,' said I.
'I hope not,' said Traddles.  'I should think not, though, because
he told me, only the other day, that it was provided for.  That was
Mr. Micawber's expression, "Provided for."'

Mr. Micawber looking up at this juncture to where we were standing,
I had only time to repeat my caution.  Traddles thanked me, and
descended.  But I was much afraid, when I observed the good-natured
manner in which he went down with the cap in his hand, and gave
Mrs. Micawber his arm, that he would be carried into the Money
Market neck and heels.

I returned to my fireside, and was musing, half gravely and half
laughing, on the character of Mr. Micawber and the old relations
between us, when I heard a quick step ascending the stairs.  At
first, I thought it was Traddles coming back for something Mrs.
Micawber had left behind; but as the step approached, I knew it,
and felt my heart beat high, and the blood rush to my face, for it
was Steerforth's.

I was never unmindful of Agnes, and she never left that sanctuary
in my thoughts - if I may call it so - where I had placed her from
the first.  But when he entered, and stood before me with his hand
out, the darkness that had fallen on him changed to light, and I
felt confounded and ashamed of having doubted one I loved so
heartily.  I loved her none the less; I thought of her as the same
benignant, gentle angel in my life; I reproached myself, not her,
with having done him an injury; and I would have made him any
atonement if I had known what to make, and how to make it.

'Why, Daisy, old boy, dumb-foundered!' laughed Steerforth, shaking
my hand heartily, and throwing it gaily away.  'Have I detected you
in another feast, you Sybarite!  These Doctors' Commons fellows are
the gayest men in town, I believe, and beat us sober Oxford people
all to nothing!' His bright glance went merrily round the room, as
he took the seat on the sofa opposite to me, which Mrs. Micawber
had recently vacated, and stirred the fire into a blaze.

'I was so surprised at first,' said I, giving him welcome with all
the cordiality I felt, 'that I had hardly breath to greet you with,
Steerforth.'

'Well, the sight of me is good for sore eyes, as the Scotch say,'
replied Steerforth, 'and so is the sight of you, Daisy, in full
bloom.  How are you, my Bacchanal?'

'I am very well,' said I; 'and not at all Bacchanalian tonight,
though I confess to another party of three.'

'All of whom I met in the street, talking loud in your praise,'
returned Steerforth.  'Who's our friend in the tights?'

I gave him the best idea I could, in a few words, of Mr. Micawber. 
He laughed heartily at my feeble portrait of that gentleman, and
said he was a man to know, and he must know him.
'But who do you suppose our other friend is?' said I, in my turn.

'Heaven knows,' said Steerforth.  'Not a bore, I hope?  I thought
he looked a little like one.'

'Traddles!' I replied, triumphantly.

'Who's he?' asked Steerforth, in his careless way.

'Don't you remember Traddles?  Traddles in our room at Salem
House?'

'Oh!  That fellow!' said Steerforth, beating a lump of coal on the
top of the fire, with the poker.  'Is he as soft as ever?  And
where the deuce did you pick him up?'

I extolled Traddles in reply, as highly as I could; for I felt that
Steerforth rather slighted him.  Steerforth, dismissing the subject
with a light nod, and a smile, and the remark that he would be glad
to see the old fellow too, for he had always been an odd fish,
inquired if I could give him anything to eat?  During most of this
short dialogue, when he had not been speaking in a wild vivacious
manner, he had sat idly beating on the lump of coal with the poker. 
I observed that he did the same thing while I was getting out the
remains of the pigeon-pie, and so forth.

'Why, Daisy, here's a supper for a king!' he exclaimed, starting
out of his silence with a burst, and taking his seat at the table. 
'I shall do it justice, for I have come from Yarmouth.'

'I thought you came from Oxford?' I returned.

'Not I,' said Steerforth.  'I have been seafaring - better
employed.'

'Littimer was here today, to inquire for you,' I remarked, 'and I
understood him that you were at Oxford; though, now I think of it,
he certainly did not say so.'

'Littimer is a greater fool than I thought him, to have been
inquiring for me at all,' said Steerforth, jovially pouring out a
glass of wine, and drinking to me.  'As to understanding him, you
are a cleverer fellow than most of us, Daisy, if you can do that.'

'That's true, indeed,' said I, moving my chair to the table.  'So
you have been at Yarmouth, Steerforth!' interested to know all
about it.  'Have you been there long?'

'No,' he returned.  'An escapade of a week or so.'

'And how are they all?  Of course, little Emily is not married
yet?'

'Not yet.  Going to be, I believe - in so many weeks, or months, or
something or other.  I have not seen much of 'em.  By the by'; he
laid down his knife and fork, which he had been using with great
diligence, and began feeling in his pockets; 'I have a letter for
you.'

'From whom?'

'Why, from your old nurse,' he returned, taking some papers out of
his breast pocket.  "'J. Steerforth, Esquire, debtor, to The
Willing Mind"; that's not it.  Patience, and we'll find it
presently.  Old what's-his-name's in a bad way, and it's about
that, I believe.'

'Barkis, do you mean?'

'Yes!' still feeling in his pockets, and looking over their
contents: 'it's all over with poor Barkis, I am afraid.  I saw a
little apothecary there - surgeon, or whatever he is - who brought
your worship into the world.  He was mighty learned about the case,
to me; but the upshot of his opinion was, that the carrier was
making his last journey rather fast.  - Put your hand into the
breast pocket of my great-coat on the chair yonder, and I think
you'll find the letter.  Is it there?'

'Here it is!' said I.

'That's right!'

It was from Peggotty; something less legible than usual, and brief. 
It informed me of her husband's hopeless state, and hinted at his
being 'a little nearer' than heretofore, and consequently more
difficult to manage for his own comfort.  It said nothing of her
weariness and watching, and praised him highly.  It was written
with a plain, unaffected, homely piety that I knew to be genuine,
and ended with 'my duty to my ever darling' - meaning myself.

While I deciphered it, Steerforth continued to eat and drink.

'It's a bad job,' he said, when I had done; 'but the sun sets every
day, and people die every minute, and we mustn't be scared by the
common lot.  If we failed to hold our own, because that equal foot
at all men's doors was heard knocking somewhere, every object in
this world would slip from us.  No!  Ride on!  Rough-shod if need
be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on!  Ride on over all
obstacles, and win the race!'

'And win what race?' said I.

'The race that one has started in,' said he.  'Ride on!'

I noticed, I remember, as he paused, looking at me with his
handsome head a little thrown back, and his glass raised in his
hand, that, though the freshness of the sea-wind was on his face,
and it was ruddy, there were traces in it, made since I last saw
it, as if he had applied himself to some habitual strain of the
fervent energy which, when roused, was so passionately roused
within him.  I had it in my thoughts to remonstrate with him upon
his desperate way of pursuing any fancy that he took - such as this
buffeting of rough seas, and braving of hard weather, for example
- when my mind glanced off to the immediate subject of our
conversation again, and pursued that instead.

'I tell you what, Steerforth,' said I, 'if your high spirits will
listen to me -'

'They are potent spirits, and will do whatever you like,' he
answered, moving from the table to the fireside again.

'Then I tell you what, Steerforth.  I think I will go down and see
my old nurse.  It is not that I can do her any good, or render her
any real service; but she is so attached to me that my visit will
have as much effect on her, as if I could do both.  She will take
it so kindly that it will be a comfort and support to her.  It is
no great effort to make, I am sure, for such a friend as she has
been to me.  Wouldn't you go a day's journey, if you were in my
place?'

His face was thoughtful, and he sat considering a little before he
answered, in a low voice, 'Well!  Go.  You can do no harm.'

'You have just come back,' said I, 'and it would be in vain to ask
you to go with me?'

'Quite,' he returned.  'I am for Highgate tonight.  I have not seen
my mother this long time, and it lies upon my conscience, for it's
something to be loved as she loves her prodigal son.  - Bah!
Nonsense! - You mean to go tomorrow, I suppose?' he said, holding
me out at arm's length, with a hand on each of my shoulders.

'Yes, I think so.'

'Well, then, don't go till next day.  I wanted you to come and stay
a few days with us.  Here I am, on purpose to bid you, and you fly
off to Yarmouth!'

'You are a nice fellow to talk of flying off, Steerforth, who are
always running wild on some unknown expedition or other!'

He looked at me for a moment without speaking, and then rejoined,
still holding me as before, and giving me a shake:

'Come!  Say the next day, and pass as much of tomorrow as you can
with us! Who knows when we may meet again, else?  Come!  Say the
next day!  I want you to stand between Rosa Dartle and me, and keep
us asunder.'

'Would you love each other too much, without me?'

'Yes; or hate,' laughed Steerforth; 'no matter which.  Come!  Say
the next day!'

I said the next day; and he put on his great-coat and lighted his
cigar, and set off to walk home.  Finding him in this intention, I
put on my own great-coat (but did not light my own cigar, having
had enough of that for one while) and walked with him as far as the
open road: a dull road, then, at night.  He was in great spirits
all the way; and when we parted, and I looked after him going so
gallantly and airily homeward, I thought of his saying, 'Ride on
over all obstacles, and win the race!' and wished, for the first
time, that he had some worthy race to run.

I was undressing in my own room, when Mr. Micawber's letter tumbled
on the floor.  Thus reminded of it, I broke the seal and read as
follows.  It was dated an hour and a half before dinner.  I am not
sure whether I have mentioned that, when Mr. Micawber was at any
particularly desperate crisis, he used a sort of legal phraseology,
which he seemed to think equivalent to winding up his affairs.

'SIR - for I dare not say my dear Copperfield,

'It is expedient that I should inform you that the undersigned is
Crushed.  Some flickering efforts to spare you the premature
knowledge of his calamitous position, you may observe in him this
day; but hope has sunk beneath the horizon, and the undersigned is
Crushed.

'The present communication is penned within the personal range (I
cannot call it the society) of an individual, in a state closely
bordering on intoxication, employed by a broker.  That individual
is in legal possession of the premises, under a distress for rent. 
His inventory includes, not only the chattels and effects of every
description belonging to the undersigned, as yearly tenant of this
habitation, but also those appertaining to Mr. Thomas Traddles,
lodger, a member of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.

'If any drop of gloom were wanting in the overflowing cup, which is
now "commended" (in the language of an immortal Writer) to the lips
of the undersigned, it would be found in the fact, that a friendly
acceptance granted to the undersigned, by the before-mentioned Mr.
Thomas Traddles, for the sum Of 23l 4s 9 1/2d is over due, and is
NOT provided for.  Also, in the fact that the living
responsibilities clinging to the undersigned will, in the course of
nature, be increased by the sum of one more helpless victim; whose
miserable appearance may be looked for - in round numbers - at the
expiration of a period not exceeding six lunar months from the
present date.

'After premising thus much, it would be a work of supererogation to
add, that dust and ashes are for ever scattered

               'On
                    'The
                         'Head
                              'Of
                                   'WILKINS MICAWBER.'

Poor Traddles!  I knew enough of Mr. Micawber by this time, to
foresee that he might be expected to recover the blow; but my
night's rest was sorely distressed by thoughts of Traddles, and of
the curate's daughter, who was one of ten, down in Devonshire, and
who was such a dear girl, and who would wait for Traddles (ominous
praise!) until she was sixty, or any age that could be mentioned.

CHAPTER 29
I VISIT STEERFORTH AT HIS HOME, AGAIN

I mentioned to Mr. Spenlow in the morning, that I wanted leave of
absence for a short time; and as I was not in the receipt of any
salary, and consequently was not obnoxious to the implacable
Jorkins, there was no difficulty about it.  I took that
opportunity, with my voice sticking in my throat, and my sight
failing as I uttered the words, to express my hope that Miss
Spenlow was quite well; to which Mr. Spenlow replied, with no more
emotion than if he had been speaking of an ordinary human being,
that he was much obliged to me, and she was very well.

We articled clerks, as germs of the patrician order of proctors,
were treated with so much consideration, that I was almost my own
master at all times.  As I did not care, however, to get to
Highgate before one or two o'clock in the day, and as we had
another little excommunication case in court that morning, which
was called The office of the judge promoted by Tipkins against
Bullock for his soul's correction, I passed an hour or two in
attendance on it with Mr. Spenlow very agreeably.  It arose out of
a scuffle between two churchwardens, one of whom was alleged to
have pushed the other against a pump; the handle of which pump
projecting into a school-house, which school-house was under a
gable of the church-roof, made the push an ecclesiastical offence. 
It was an amusing case; and sent me up to Highgate, on the box of
the stage-coach, thinking about the Commons, and what Mr. Spenlow
had said about touching the Commons and bringing down the country.

Mrs. Steerforth was pleased to see me, and so was Rosa Dartle.  I
was agreeably surprised to find that Littimer was not there, and
that we were attended by a modest little parlour-maid, with blue
ribbons in her cap, whose eye it was much more pleasant, and much
less disconcerting, to catch by accident, than the eye of that
respectable man.  But what I particularly observed, before I had
been half-an-hour in the house, was the close and attentive watch
Miss Dartle kept upon me; and the lurking manner in which she
seemed to compare my face with Steerforth's, and Steerforth's with
mine, and to lie in wait for something to come out between the two. 
So surely as I looked towards her, did I see that eager visage,
with its gaunt black eyes and searching brow, intent on mine; or
passing suddenly from mine to Steerforth's; or comprehending both
of us at once.  In this lynx-like scrutiny she was so far from
faltering when she saw I observed it, that at such a time she only
fixed her piercing look upon me with a more intent expression
still.  Blameless as I was, and knew that I was, in reference to
any wrong she could possibly suspect me of, I shrunk before her
strange eyes, quite unable to endure their hungry lustre.

All day, she seemed to pervade the whole house.  If I talked to
Steerforth in his room, I heard her dress rustle in the little
gallery outside.  When he and I engaged in some of our old
exercises on the lawn behind the house, I saw her face pass from
window to window, like a wandering light, until it fixed itself in
one, and watched us.  When we all four went out walking in the
afternoon, she closed her thin hand on my arm like a spring, to
keep me back, while Steerforth and his mother went on out of
hearing: and then spoke to me.

'You have been a long time,' she said, 'without coming here.  Is
your profession really so engaging and interesting as to absorb
your whole attention?  I ask because I always want to be informed,
when I am ignorant.  Is it really, though?'

I replied that I liked it well enough, but that I certainly could
not claim so much for it.

'Oh! I am glad to know that, because I always like to be put right
when I am wrong,' said Rosa Dartle.  'You mean it is a little dry,
perhaps?'

'Well,' I replied; 'perhaps it was a little dry.'

'Oh! and that's a reason why you want relief and change -
excitement and all that?' said she.  'Ah! very true!  But isn't it
a little - Eh? - for him; I don't mean you?'

A quick glance of her eye towards the spot where Steerforth was
walking, with his mother leaning on his arm, showed me whom she
meant; but beyond that, I was quite lost.  And I looked so, I have
no doubt.

'Don't it - I don't say that it does, mind I want to know - don't
it rather engross him?  Don't it make him, perhaps, a little more
remiss than usual in his visits to his blindly-doting - eh?'  With
another quick glance at them, and such a glance at me as seemed to
look into my innermost thoughts.

'Miss Dartle,' I returned, 'pray do not think -'

'I don't!' she said.  'Oh dear me, don't suppose that I think
anything!  I am not suspicious.  I only ask a question.  I don't
state any opinion.  I want to found an opinion on what you tell me. 
Then, it's not so?  Well! I am very glad to know it.'

'It certainly is not the fact,' said I, perplexed, 'that I am
accountable for Steerforth's having been away from home longer than
usual - if he has been: which I really don't know at this moment,
unless I understand it from you.  I have not seen him this long
while, until last night.'

'No?'

'Indeed, Miss Dartle, no!'

As she looked full at me, I saw her face grow sharper and paler,
and the marks of the old wound lengthen out until it cut through
the disfigured lip, and deep into the nether lip, and slanted down
the face.  There was something positively awful to me in this, and
in the brightness of her eyes, as she said, looking fixedly at me:

'What is he doing?'

I repeated the words, more to myself than her, being so amazed.

'What is he doing?' she said, with an eagerness that seemed enough
to consume her like a fire.  'In what is that man assisting him,
who never looks at me without an inscrutable falsehood in his eyes? 
If you are honourable and faithful, I don't ask you to betray your
friend.  I ask you only to tell me, is it anger, is it hatred, is
it pride, is it restlessness, is it some wild fancy, is it love,
what is it, that is leading him?'

'Miss Dartle,' I returned, 'how shall I tell you, so that you will
believe me, that I know of nothing in Steerforth different from
what there was when I first came here?  I can think of nothing.  I
firmly believe there is nothing.  I hardly understand even what you
mean.'

As she still stood looking fixedly at me, a twitching or throbbing,
from which I could not dissociate the idea of pain, came into that
cruel mark; and lifted up the corner of her lip as if with scorn,
or with a pity that despised its object.  She put her hand upon it
hurriedly - a hand so thin and delicate, that when I had seen her
hold it up before the fire to shade her face, I had compared it in
my thoughts to fine porcelain - and saying, in a quick, fierce,
passionate way, 'I swear you to secrecy about this!' said not a
word more.

Mrs. Steerforth was particularly happy in her son's society, and
Steerforth was, on this occasion, particularly attentive and
respectful to her.  It was very interesting to me to see them
together, not only on account of their mutual affection, but
because of the strong personal resemblance between them, and the
manner in which what was haughty or impetuous in him was softened
by age and sex, in her, to a gracious dignity.  I thought, more
than once, that it was well no serious cause of division had ever
come between them; or two such natures - I ought rather to express
it, two such shades of the same nature - might have been harder to
reconcile than the two extremest opposites in creation.  The idea
did not originate in my own discernment, I am bound to confess, but
in a speech of Rosa Dartle's.

She said at dinner:

'Oh, but do tell me, though, somebody, because I have been thinking
about it all day, and I want to know.'

'You want to know what, Rosa?' returned Mrs. Steerforth.  'Pray,
pray, Rosa, do not be mysterious.'

'Mysterious!' she cried.  'Oh! really?  Do you consider me so?'

'Do I constantly entreat you,' said Mrs. Steerforth, 'to speak
plainly, in your own natural manner?'

'Oh! then this is not my natural manner?' she rejoined.  'Now you
must really bear with me, because I ask for information.  We never
know ourselves.'

'It has become a second nature,' said Mrs. Steerforth, without any
displeasure; 'but I remember, - and so must you, I think, - when
your manner was different, Rosa; when it was not so guarded, and
was more trustful.'

'I am sure you are right,' she returned; 'and so it is that bad
habits grow upon one!  Really?  Less guarded and more trustful? 
How can I, imperceptibly, have changed, I wonder!  Well, that's
very odd!  I must study to regain my former self.'

'I wish you would,' said Mrs. Steerforth, with a smile.

'Oh!  I really will, you know!' she answered.  'I will learn
frankness from - let me see - from James.'

'You cannot learn frankness, Rosa,' said Mrs. Steerforth quickly -
for there was always some effect of sarcasm in what Rosa Dartle
said, though it was said, as this was, in the most unconscious
manner in the world - 'in a better school.'

'That I am sure of,' she answered, with uncommon fervour.  'If I am
sure of anything, of course, you know, I am sure of that.'

Mrs. Steerforth appeared to me to regret having been a little
nettled; for she presently said, in a kind tone:

'Well, my dear Rosa, we have not heard what it is that you want to
be satisfied about?'

'That I want to be satisfied about?' she replied, with provoking
coldness.  'Oh!  It was only whether people, who are like each
other in their moral constitution - is that the phrase?'

'It's as good a phrase as another,' said Steerforth.

'Thank you: - whether people, who are like each other in their
moral constitution, are in greater danger than people not so
circumstanced, supposing any serious cause of variance to arise
between them, of being divided angrily and deeply?'

'I should say yes,' said Steerforth.

'Should you?' she retorted.  'Dear me!  Supposing then, for
instance - any unlikely thing will do for a supposition - that you
and your mother were to have a serious quarrel.'

'My dear Rosa,' interposed Mrs. Steerforth, laughing
good-naturedly, 'suggest some other supposition!  James and I know
our duty to each other better, I pray Heaven!'

'Oh!' said Miss Dartle, nodding her head thoughtfully.  'To be
sure.  That would prevent it?  Why, of course it would.  Exactly. 
Now, I am glad I have been so foolish as to put the case, for it is
so very good to know that your duty to each other would prevent it!
Thank you very much.'

One other little circumstance connected with Miss Dartle I must not
omit; for I had reason to remember it thereafter, when all the
irremediable past was rendered plain.  During the whole of this
day, but especially from this period of it, Steerforth exerted
himself with his utmost skill, and that was with his utmost ease,
to charm this singular creature into a pleasant and pleased
companion.  That he should succeed, was no matter of surprise to
me.  That she should struggle against the fascinating influence of
his delightful art - delightful nature I thought it then - did not
surprise me either; for I knew that she was sometimes jaundiced and
perverse.  I saw her features and her manner slowly change; I saw
her look at him with growing admiration; I saw her try, more and
more faintly, but always angrily, as if she condemned a weakness in
herself, to resist the captivating power that he possessed; and
finally, I saw her sharp glance soften, and her smile become quite
gentle, and I ceased to be afraid of her as I had really been all
day, and we all sat about the fire, talking and laughing together,
with as little reserve as if we had been children.

Whether it was because we had sat there so long, or because
Steerforth was resolved not to lose the advantage he had gained, I
do not know; but we did not remain in the dining-room more than
five minutes after her departure.  'She is playing her harp,' said
Steerforth, softly, at the drawing-room door, 'and nobody but my
mother has heard her do that, I believe, these three years.'  He
said it with a curious smile, which was gone directly; and we went
into the room and found her alone.

'Don't get up,' said Steerforth (which she had already done)' my
dear Rosa, don't!  Be kind for once, and sing us an Irish song.'

'What do you care for an Irish song?' she returned.

'Much!' said Steerforth.  'Much more than for any other.  Here is
Daisy, too, loves music from his soul.  Sing us an Irish song,
Rosa! and let me sit and listen as I used to do.'

He did not touch her, or the chair from which she had risen, but
sat himself near the harp.  She stood beside it for some little
while, in a curious way, going through the motion of playing it
with her right hand, but not sounding it.  At length she sat down,
and drew it to her with one sudden action, and played and sang.

I don't know what it was, in her touch or voice, that made that
song the most unearthly I have ever heard in my life, or can
imagine.  There was something fearful in the reality of it.  It was
as if it had never been written, or set to music, but sprung out of
passion within her; which found imperfect utterance in the low
sounds of her voice, and crouched again when all was still.  I was
dumb when she leaned beside the harp again, playing it, but not
sounding it, with her right hand.

A minute more, and this had roused me from my trance: - Steerforth
had left his seat, and gone to her, and had put his arm laughingly
about her, and had said, 'Come, Rosa, for the future we will love
each other very much!' And she had struck him, and had thrown him
off with the fury of a wild cat, and had burst out of the room.

'What is the matter with Rosa?' said Mrs. Steerforth, coming in.

'She has been an angel, mother,' returned Steerforth, 'for a little
while; and has run into the opposite extreme, since, by way of
compensation.'

'You should be careful not to irritate her, James.  Her temper has
been soured, remember, and ought not to be tried.'

Rosa did not come back; and no other mention was made of her, until
I went with Steerforth into his room to say Good night.  Then he
laughed about her, and asked me if I had ever seen such a fierce
little piece of incomprehensibility.

I expressed as much of my astonishment as was then capable of
expression, and asked if he could guess what it was that she had
taken so much amiss, so suddenly.

'Oh, Heaven knows,' said Steerforth.  'Anything you like - or
nothing!  I told you she took everything, herself included, to a
grindstone, and sharpened it.  She is an edge-tool, and requires
great care in dealing with.  She is always dangerous.  Good night!'

'Good night!' said I, 'my dear Steerforth!  I shall be gone before
you wake in the morning.  Good night!'

He was unwilling to let me go; and stood, holding me out, with a
hand on each of my shoulders, as he had done in my own room.

'Daisy,' he said, with a smile - 'for though that's not the name
your godfathers and godmothers gave you, it's the name I like best
to call you by - and I wish, I wish, I wish, you could give it to
me!'

'Why so I can, if I choose,' said I.

'Daisy, if anything should ever separate us, you must think of me
at my best, old boy.  Come!  Let us make that bargain.  Think of me
at my best, if circumstances should ever part us!'

'You have no best to me, Steerforth,' said I, 'and no worst.  You
are always equally loved, and cherished in my heart.'

So much compunction for having ever wronged him, even by a
shapeless thought, did I feel within me, that the confession of
having done so was rising to my lips.  But for the reluctance I had
to betray the confidence of Agnes, but for my uncertainty how to
approach the subject with no risk of doing so, it would have
reached them before he said, 'God bless you, Daisy, and good
night!' In my doubt, it did NOT reach them; and we shook hands, and
we parted.

I was up with the dull dawn, and, having dressed as quietly as I
could, looked into his room.  He was fast asleep; lying, easily,
with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school.

The time came in its season, and that was very soon, when I almost
wondered that nothing troubled his repose, as I looked at him.  But
he slept - let me think of him so again - as I had often seen him
sleep at school; and thus, in this silent hour, I left him.

- Never more, oh God forgive you, Steerforth! to touch that passive
hand in love and friendship.  Never, never more!

CHAPTER 30
A LOSS

I got down to Yarmouth in the evening, and went to the inn.  I knew
that Peggotty's spare room - my room - was likely to have
occupation enough in a little while, if that great Visitor, before
whose presence all the living must give place, were not already in
the house; so I betook myself to the inn, and dined there, and
engaged my bed.

It was ten o'clock when I went out.  Many of the shops were shut,
and the town was dull.  When I came to Omer and Joram's, I found
the shutters up, but the shop door standing open.  As I could
obtain a perspective view of Mr. Omer inside, smoking his pipe by
the parlour door, I entered, and asked him how he was.

'Why, bless my life and soul!' said Mr. Omer, 'how do you find
yourself?  Take a seat.  - Smoke not disagreeable, I hope?'

'By no means,' said I.  'I like it - in somebody else's pipe.'

'What, not in your own, eh?' Mr. Omer returned, laughing.  'All the
better, sir.  Bad habit for a young man.  Take a seat.  I smoke,
myself, for the asthma.'

Mr. Omer had made room for me, and placed a chair.  He now sat down
again very much out of breath, gasping at his pipe as if it
contained a supply of that necessary, without which he must perish.

'I am sorry to have heard bad news of Mr. Barkis,' said I.

Mr. Omer looked at me, with a steady countenance, and shook his
head.

'Do you know how he is tonight?' I asked.

'The very question I should have put to you, sir,' returned Mr.
Omer, 'but on account of delicacy.  It's one of the drawbacks of
our line of business.  When a party's ill, we can't ask how the
party is.'

The difficulty had not occurred to me; though I had had my
apprehensions too, when I went in, of hearing the old tune.  On its
being mentioned, I recognized it, however, and said as much.

'Yes, yes, you understand,' said Mr. Omer, nodding his head.  'We
dursn't do it.  Bless you, it would be a shock that the generality
of parties mightn't recover, to say "Omer and Joram's compliments,
and how do you find yourself this morning?" - or this afternoon -
as it may be.'

Mr. Omer and I nodded at each other, and Mr. Omer recruited his
wind by the aid of his pipe.

'It's one of the things that cut the trade off from attentions they
could often wish to show,' said Mr. Omer.  'Take myself.  If I have
known Barkis a year, to move to as he went by, I have known him
forty years.  But I can't go and say, "how is he?"'

I felt it was rather hard on Mr. Omer, and I told him so.

'I'm not more self-interested, I hope, than another man,' said Mr.
Omer.  'Look at me!  My wind may fail me at any moment, and it
ain't likely that, to my own knowledge, I'd be self-interested
under such circumstances.  I say it ain't likely, in a man who
knows his wind will go, when it DOES go, as if a pair of bellows
was cut open; and that man a grandfather,' said Mr. Omer.

I said, 'Not at all.'

'It ain't that I complain of my line of business,' said Mr. Omer. 
'It ain't that.  Some good and some bad goes, no doubt, to all
callings.  What I wish is, that parties was brought up
stronger-minded.'

Mr. Omer, with a very complacent and amiable face, took several
puffs in silence; and then said, resuming his first point:

'Accordingly we're obleeged, in ascertaining how Barkis goes on, to
limit ourselves to Em'ly.  She knows what our real objects are, and
she don't have any more alarms or suspicions about us, than if we
was so many lambs.  Minnie and Joram have just stepped down to the
house, in fact (she's there, after hours, helping her aunt a bit),
to ask her how he is tonight; and if you was to please to wait till
they come back, they'd give you full partic'lers.  Will you take
something?  A glass of srub and water, now?  I smoke on srub and
water, myself,' said Mr. Omer, taking up his glass, 'because it's
considered softening to the passages, by which this troublesome
breath of mine gets into action.  But, Lord bless you,' said Mr.
Omer, huskily, 'it ain't the passages that's out of order!  "Give
me breath enough," said I to my daughter Minnie, "and I'll find
passages, my dear."'

He really had no breath to spare, and it was very alarming to see
him laugh.  When he was again in a condition to be talked to, I
thanked him for the proffered refreshment, which I declined, as I
had just had dinner; and, observing that I would wait, since he was
so good as to invite me, until his daughter and his son-in-law came
back, I inquired how little Emily was?

'Well, sir,' said Mr. Omer, removing his pipe, that he might rub
his chin: 'I tell you truly, I shall be glad when her marriage has
taken place.'

'Why so?' I inquired.

'Well, she's unsettled at present,' said Mr. Omer.  'It ain't that
she's not as pretty as ever, for she's prettier - I do assure you,
she is prettier.  It ain't that she don't work as well as ever, for
she does.  She WAS worth any six, and she IS worth any six.  But
somehow she wants heart.  If you understand,' said Mr. Omer, after
rubbing his chin again, and smoking a little, 'what I mean in a
general way by the expression, "A long pull, and a strong pull, and
a pull altogether, my hearties, hurrah!" I should say to you, that
that was - in a general way - what I miss in Em'ly.'

Mr. Omer's face and manner went for so much, that I could
conscientiously nod my head, as divining his meaning.  My quickness
of apprehension seemed to please him, and he went on:
'Now I consider this is principally on account of her being in an
unsettled state, you see.  We have talked it over a good deal, her
uncle and myself, and her sweetheart and myself, after business;
and I consider it is principally on account of her being unsettled. 
You must always recollect of Em'ly,' said Mr. Omer, shaking his
head gently, 'that she's a most extraordinary affectionate little
thing.  The proverb says, "You can't make a silk purse out of a
sow's ear." Well, I don't know about that.  I rather think you may,
if you begin early in life.  She has made a home out of that old
boat, sir, that stone and marble couldn't beat.'

'I am sure she has!' said I.

'To see the clinging of that pretty little thing to her uncle,'
said Mr. Omer; 'to see the way she holds on to him, tighter and
tighter, and closer and closer, every day, is to see a sight.  Now,
you know, there's a struggle going on when that's the case.  Why
should it be made a longer one than is needful?'

I listened attentively to the good old fellow, and acquiesced, with
all my heart, in what he said.

'Therefore, I mentioned to them,' said Mr. Omer, in a comfortable,
easy-going tone, 'this.  I said, "Now, don't consider Em'ly nailed
down in point of time, at all.  Make it your own time.  Her
services have been more valuable than was supposed; her learning
has been quicker than was supposed; Omer and Joram can run their
pen through what remains; and she's free when you wish.  If she
likes to make any little arrangement, afterwards, in the way of
doing any little thing for us at home, very well.  If she don't,
very well still.  We're no losers, anyhow." For - don't you see,'
said Mr. Omer, touching me with his pipe, 'it ain't likely that a
man so short of breath as myself, and a grandfather too, would go
and strain points with a little bit of a blue-eyed blossom, like
her?'

'Not at all, I am certain,' said I.

'Not at all!  You're right!' said Mr. Omer.  'Well, sir, her cousin
- you know it's a cousin she's going to be married to?'

'Oh yes,' I replied.  'I know him well.'

'Of course you do,' said Mr. Omer.  'Well, sir!  Her cousin being,
as it appears, in good work, and well to do, thanked me in a very
manly sort of manner for this (conducting himself altogether, I
must say, in a way that gives me a high opinion of him), and went
and took as comfortable a little house as you or I could wish to
clap eyes on.  That little house is now furnished right through, as
neat and complete as a doll's parlour; and but for Barkis's illness
having taken this bad turn, poor fellow, they would have been man
and wife - I dare say, by this time.  As it is, there's a
postponement.'

'And Emily, Mr. Omer?' I inquired.  'Has she become more settled?'

'Why that, you know,' he returned, rubbing his double chin again,
'can't naturally be expected.  The prospect of the change and
separation, and all that, is, as one may say, close to her and far
away from her, both at once.  Barkis's death needn't put it off
much, but his lingering might.  Anyway, it's an uncertain state of
matters, you see.'

'I see,' said I.

'Consequently,' pursued Mr. Omer, 'Em'ly's still a little down, and
a little fluttered; perhaps, upon the whole, she's more so than she
was.  Every day she seems to get fonder and fonder of her uncle,
and more loth to part from all of us.  A kind word from me brings
the tears into her eyes; and if you was to see her with my daughter
Minnie's little girl, you'd never forget it.  Bless my heart
alive!' said Mr. Omer, pondering, 'how she loves that child!'

Having so favourable an opportunity, it occurred to me to ask Mr.
Omer, before our conversation should be interrupted by the return
of his daughter and her husband, whether he knew anything of
Martha.

'Ah!' he rejoined, shaking his head, and looking very much
dejected.  'No good.  A sad story, sir, however you come to know
it.  I never thought there was harm in the girl.  I wouldn't wish
to mention it before my daughter Minnie - for she'd take me up
directly - but I never did.  None of us ever did.'

Mr. Omer, hearing his daughter's footstep before I heard it,
touched me with his pipe, and shut up one eye, as a caution.  She
and her husband came in immediately afterwards.

Their report was, that Mr. Barkis was 'as bad as bad could be';
that he was quite unconscious; and that Mr. Chillip had mournfully
said in the kitchen, on going away just now, that the College of
Physicians, the College of Surgeons, and Apothecaries' Hall, if
they were all called in together, couldn't help him.  He was past
both Colleges, Mr. Chillip said, and the Hall could only poison
him.

Hearing this, and learning that Mr. Peggotty was there, I
determined to go to the house at once.  I bade good night to Mr.
Omer, and to Mr. and Mrs. Joram; and directed my steps thither,
with a solemn feeling, which made Mr. Barkis quite a new and
different creature.

My low tap at the door was answered by Mr. Peggotty.  He was not so
much surprised to see me as I had expected.  I remarked this in
Peggotty, too, when she came down; and I have seen it since; and I
think, in the expectation of that dread surprise, all other changes
and surprises dwindle into nothing.

I shook hands with Mr. Peggotty, and passed into the kitchen, while
he softly closed the door.  Little Emily was sitting by the fire,
with her hands before her face.  Ham was standing near her.

We spoke in whispers; listening, between whiles, for any sound in
the room above.  I had not thought of it on the occasion of my last
visit, but how strange it was to me, now, to miss Mr. Barkis out of
the kitchen!

'This is very kind of you, Mas'r Davy,' said Mr. Peggotty.

'It's oncommon kind,' said Ham.

'Em'ly, my dear,' cried Mr. Peggotty.  'See here!  Here's Mas'r
Davy come!  What, cheer up, pretty!  Not a wured to Mas'r Davy?'

There was a trembling upon her, that I can see now.  The coldness
of her hand when I touched it, I can feel yet.  Its only sign of
animation was to shrink from mine; and then she glided from the
chair, and creeping to the other side of her uncle, bowed herself,
silently and trembling still, upon his breast.

'It's such a loving art,' said Mr. Peggotty, smoothing her rich
hair with his great hard hand, 'that it can't abear the sorrer of
this.  It's nat'ral in young folk, Mas'r Davy, when they're new to
these here trials, and timid, like my little bird, - it's nat'ral.'

She clung the closer to him, but neither lifted up her face, nor
spoke a word.

'It's getting late, my dear,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'and here's Ham
come fur to take you home.  Theer!  Go along with t'other loving
art!  What' Em'ly?  Eh, my pretty?'

The sound of her voice had not reached me, but he bent his head as
if he listened to her, and then said:

'Let you stay with your uncle?  Why, you doen't mean to ask me
that!  Stay with your uncle, Moppet?  When your husband that'll be
so soon, is here fur to take you home?  Now a person wouldn't think
it, fur to see this little thing alongside a rough-weather chap
like me,' said Mr. Peggotty, looking round at both of us, with
infinite pride; 'but the sea ain't more salt in it than she has
fondness in her for her uncle - a foolish little Em'ly!'

'Em'ly's in the right in that, Mas'r Davy!' said Ham.  'Lookee
here!  As Em'ly wishes of it, and as she's hurried and frightened,
like, besides, I'll leave her till morning.  Let me stay too!'

'No, no,' said Mr. Peggotty.  'You doen't ought - a married man
like you - or what's as good - to take and hull away a day's work. 
And you doen't ought to watch and work both.  That won't do.  You
go home and turn in.  You ain't afeerd of Em'ly not being took good
care on, I know.'
Ham yielded to this persuasion, and took his hat to go.  Even when
he kissed her.  - and I never saw him approach her, but I felt that
nature had given him the soul of a gentleman - she seemed to cling
closer to her uncle, even to the avoidance of her chosen husband. 
I shut the door after him, that it might cause no disturbance of
the quiet that prevailed; and when I turned back, I found Mr.
Peggotty still talking to her.

'Now, I'm a going upstairs to tell your aunt as Mas'r Davy's here,
and that'll cheer her up a bit,' he said.  'Sit ye down by the
fire, the while, my dear, and warm those mortal cold hands.  You
doen't need to be so fearsome, and take on so much.  What?  You'll
go along with me? - Well! come along with me - come!  If her uncle
was turned out of house and home, and forced to lay down in a dyke,
Mas'r Davy,' said Mr. Peggotty, with no less pride than before,
'it's my belief she'd go along with him, now!  But there'll be
someone else, soon, - someone else, soon, Em'ly!'

Afterwards, when I went upstairs, as I passed the door of my little
chamber, which was dark, I had an indistinct impression of her
being within it, cast down upon the floor.  But, whether it was
really she, or whether it was a confusion of the shadows in the
room, I don't know now.

I had leisure to think, before the kitchen fire, of pretty little
Emily's dread of death - which, added to what Mr. Omer had told me,
I took to be the cause of her being so unlike herself - and I had
leisure, before Peggotty came down, even to think more leniently of
the weakness of it: as I sat counting the ticking of the clock, and
deepening my sense of the solemn hush around me.  Peggotty took me
in her arms, and blessed and thanked me over and over again for
being such a comfort to her (that was what she said) in her
distress.  She then entreated me to come upstairs, sobbing that Mr.
Barkis had always liked me and admired me; that he had often talked
of me, before he fell into a stupor; and that she believed, in case
of his coming to himself again, he would brighten up at sight of
me, if he could brighten up at any earthly thing.

The probability of his ever doing so, appeared to me, when I saw
him, to be very small.  He was lying with his head and shoulders
out of bed, in an uncomfortable attitude, half resting on the box
which had cost him so much pain and trouble.  I learned, that, when
he was past creeping out of bed to open it, and past assuring
himself of its safety by means of the divining rod I had seen him
use, he had required to have it placed on the chair at the
bed-side, where he had ever since embraced it, night and day.  His
arm lay on it now.  Time and the world were slipping from beneath
him, but the box was there; and the last words he had uttered were
(in an explanatory tone) 'Old clothes!'

'Barkis, my dear!' said Peggotty, almost cheerfully: bending over
him, while her brother and I stood at the bed's foot.  'Here's my
dear boy - my dear boy, Master Davy, who brought us together,
Barkis!  That you sent messages by, you know!  Won't you speak to
Master Davy?'

He was as mute and senseless as the box, from which his form
derived the only expression it had.

'He's a going out with the tide,' said Mr. Peggotty to me, behind
his hand.

My eyes were dim and so were Mr. Peggotty's; but I repeated in a
whisper, 'With the tide?'

'People can't die, along the coast,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'except
when the tide's pretty nigh out.  They can't be born, unless it's
pretty nigh in - not properly born, till flood.  He's a going out
with the tide.  It's ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an
hour.  If he lives till it turns, he'll hold his own till past the
flood, and go out with the next tide.'

We remained there, watching him, a long time - hours.  What
mysterious influence my presence had upon him in that state of his
senses, I shall not pretend to say; but when he at last began to
wander feebly, it is certain he was muttering about driving me to
school.

'He's coming to himself,' said Peggotty.

Mr. Peggotty touched me, and whispered with much awe and reverence. 
'They are both a-going out fast.'

'Barkis, my dear!' said Peggotty.

'C. P. Barkis,' he cried faintly.  'No better woman anywhere!'

'Look!  Here's Master Davy!' said Peggotty.  For he now opened his
eyes.

I was on the point of asking him if he knew me, when he tried to
stretch out his arm, and said to me, distinctly, with a pleasant
smile:

'Barkis is willin'!'

And, it being low water, he went out with the tide.

CHAPTER 31
A GREATER LOSS

It was not difficult for me, on Peggotty's solicitation, to resolve
to stay where I was, until after the remains of the poor carrier
should have made their last journey to Blunderstone.  She had long
ago bought, out of her own savings, a little piece of ground in our
old churchyard near the grave of 'her sweet girl', as she always
called my mother; and there they were to rest.

In keeping Peggotty company, and doing all I could for her (little
enough at the utmost), I was as grateful, I rejoice to think, as
even now I could wish myself to have been.  But I am afraid I had
a supreme satisfaction, of a personal and professional nature, in
taking charge of Mr. Barkis's will, and expounding its contents.

I may claim the merit of having originated the suggestion that the
will should be looked for in the box.  After some search, it was
found in the box, at the bottom of a horse's nose-bag; wherein
(besides hay) there was discovered an old gold watch, with chain
and seals, which Mr. Barkis had worn on his wedding-day, and which
had never been seen before or since; a silver tobacco-stopper, in
the form of a leg; an imitation lemon, full of minute cups and
saucers, which I have some idea Mr. Barkis must have purchased to
present to me when I was a child, and afterwards found himself
unable to part with; eighty-seven guineas and a half, in guineas
and half-guineas; two hundred and ten pounds, in perfectly clean
Bank notes; certain receipts for Bank of England stock; an old
horseshoe, a bad shilling, a piece of camphor, and an oyster-shell. 
From the circumstance of the latter article having been much
polished, and displaying prismatic colours on the inside, I
conclude that Mr. Barkis had some general ideas about pearls, which
never resolved themselves into anything definite.

For years and years, Mr. Barkis had carried this box, on all his
journeys, every day.  That it might the better escape notice, he
had invented a fiction that it belonged to 'Mr. Blackboy', and was
'to be left with Barkis till called for'; a fable he had
elaborately written on the lid, in characters now scarcely legible.

He had hoarded, all these years, I found, to good purpose.  His
property in money amounted to nearly three thousand pounds.  Of
this he bequeathed the interest of one thousand to Mr. Peggotty for
his life; on his decease, the principal to be equally divided
between Peggotty, little Emily, and me, or the survivor or
survivors of us, share and share alike.  All the rest he died
possessed of, he bequeathed to Peggotty; whom he left residuary
legatee, and sole executrix of that his last will and testament.

I felt myself quite a proctor when I read this document aloud with
all possible ceremony, and set forth its provisions, any number of
times, to those whom they concerned.  I began to think there was
more in the Commons than I had supposed.  I examined the will with
the deepest attention, pronounced it perfectly formal in all
respects, made a pencil-mark or so in the margin, and thought it
rather extraordinary that I knew so much.

In this abstruse pursuit; in making an account for Peggotty, of all
the property into which she had come; in arranging all the affairs
in an orderly manner; and in being her referee and adviser on every
point, to our joint delight; I passed the week before the funeral. 
I did not see little Emily in that interval, but they told me she
was to be quietly married in a fortnight.

I did not attend the funeral in character, if I may venture to say
so.  I mean I was not dressed up in a black coat and a streamer, to
frighten the birds; but I walked over to Blunderstone early in the
morning, and was in the churchyard when it came, attended only by
Peggotty and her brother.  The mad gentleman looked on, out of my
little window; Mr. Chillip's baby wagged its heavy head, and rolled
its goggle eyes, at the clergyman, over its nurse's shoulder; Mr.
Omer breathed short in the background; no one else was there; and
it was very quiet.  We walked about the churchyard for an hour,
after all was over; and pulled some young leaves from the tree
above my mother's grave.

A dread falls on me here.  A cloud is lowering on the distant town,
towards which I retraced my solitary steps.  I fear to approach it. 
I cannot bear to think of what did come, upon that memorable night;
of what must come again, if I go on.

It is no worse, because I write of it.  It would be no better, if
I stopped my most unwilling hand.  It is done.  Nothing can undo
it; nothing can make it otherwise than as it was.

My old nurse was to go to London with me next day, on the business
of the will.  Little Emily was passing that day at Mr. Omer's.  We
were all to meet in the old boathouse that night.  Ham would bring
Emily at the usual hour.  I would walk back at my leisure.  The
brother and sister would return as they had come, and be expecting
us, when the day closed in, at the fireside.

I parted from them at the wicket-gate, where visionary Strap had
rested with Roderick Random's knapsack in the days of yore; and,
instead of going straight back, walked a little distance on the
road to Lowestoft.  Then I turned, and walked back towards
Yarmouth.  I stayed to dine at a decent alehouse, some mile or two
from the Ferry I have mentioned before; and thus the day wore away,
and it was evening when I reached it.  Rain was falling heavily by
that time, and it was a wild night; but there was a moon behind the
clouds, and it was not dark.

I was soon within sight of Mr. Peggotty's house, and of the light
within it shining through the window.  A little floundering across
the sand, which was heavy, brought me to the door, and I went in.

It looked very comfortable indeed.  Mr. Peggotty had smoked his
evening pipe and there were preparations for some supper by and by. 
The fire was bright, the ashes were thrown up, the locker was ready
for little Emily in her old place.  In her own old place sat
Peggotty, once more, looking (but for her dress) as if she had
never left it.  She had fallen back, already, on the society of the
work-box with St. Paul's upon the lid, the yard-measure in the
cottage, and the bit of wax-candle; and there they all were, just
as if they had never been disturbed.  Mrs. Gummidge appeared to be
fretting a little, in her old corner; and consequently looked quite
natural, too.

'You're first of the lot, Mas'r Davy!' said Mr. Peggotty with a
happy face.  'Doen't keep in that coat, sir, if it's wet.'

'Thank you, Mr. Peggotty,' said I, giving him my outer coat to hang
up.  'It's quite dry.'

'So 'tis!' said Mr. Peggotty, feeling my shoulders.  'As a chip!
Sit ye down, sir.  It ain't o' no use saying welcome to you, but
you're welcome, kind and hearty.'

'Thank you, Mr. Peggotty, I am sure of that.  Well, Peggotty!' said
I, giving her a kiss.  'And how are you, old woman?'

'Ha, ha!' laughed Mr. Peggotty, sitting down beside us, and rubbing
his hands in his sense of relief from recent trouble, and in the
genuine heartiness of his nature; 'there's not a woman in the
wureld, sir - as I tell her - that need to feel more easy in her
mind than her!  She done her dooty by the departed, and the
departed know'd it; and the departed done what was right by her, as
she done what was right by the departed; - and - and - and it's all
right!'

Mrs. Gummidge groaned.

'Cheer up, my pritty mawther!' said Mr. Peggotty.  (But he shook
his head aside at us, evidently sensible of the tendency of the
late occurrences to recall the memory of the old one.) 'Doen't be
down!  Cheer up, for your own self, on'y a little bit, and see if
a good deal more doen't come nat'ral!'

'Not to me, Dan'l,' returned Mrs. Gummidge.  'Nothink's nat'ral to
me but to be lone and lorn.'

'No, no,' said Mr. Peggotty, soothing her sorrows.

'Yes, yes, Dan'l!' said Mrs. Gummidge.  'I ain't a person to live
with them as has had money left.  Thinks go too contrary with me. 
I had better be a riddance.'

'Why, how should I ever spend it without you?' said Mr. Peggotty,
with an air of serious remonstrance.  'What are you a talking on? 
Doen't I want you more now, than ever I did?'

'I know'd I was never wanted before!' cried Mrs. Gummidge, with a
pitiable whimper, 'and now I'm told so!  How could I expect to be
wanted, being so lone and lorn, and so contrary!'

Mr. Peggotty seemed very much shocked at himself for having made a
speech capable of this unfeeling construction, but was prevented
from replying, by Peggotty's pulling his sleeve, and shaking her
head.  After looking at Mrs. Gummidge for some moments, in sore
distress of mind, he glanced at the Dutch clock, rose, snuffed the
candle, and put it in the window.

'Theer!'said Mr. Peggotty, cheerily.'Theer we are, Missis
Gummidge!' Mrs. Gummidge slightly groaned.  'Lighted up, accordin'
to custom!  You're a wonderin' what that's fur, sir!  Well, it's
fur our little Em'ly.  You see, the path ain't over light or
cheerful arter dark; and when I'm here at the hour as she's a
comin' home, I puts the light in the winder.  That, you see,' said
Mr. Peggotty, bending over me with great glee, 'meets two objects. 
She says, says Em'ly, "Theer's home!" she says.  And likewise, says
Em'ly, "My uncle's theer!" Fur if I ain't theer, I never have no
light showed.'

'You're a baby!' said Peggotty; very fond of him for it, if she
thought so.

'Well,' returned Mr. Peggotty, standing with his legs pretty wide
apart, and rubbing his hands up and down them in his comfortable
satisfaction, as he looked alternately at us and at the fire.  'I
doen't know but I am.  Not, you see, to look at.'

'Not azackly,' observed Peggotty.

'No,' laughed Mr. Peggotty, 'not to look at, but to - to consider
on, you know.  I doen't care, bless you!  Now I tell you.  When I
go a looking and looking about that theer pritty house of our
Em'ly's, I'm - I'm Gormed,' said Mr. Peggotty, with sudden emphasis
- 'theer!  I can't say more - if I doen't feel as if the littlest
things was her, a'most.  I takes 'em up and I put 'em down, and I
touches of 'em as delicate as if they was our Em'ly.  So 'tis with
her little bonnets and that.  I couldn't see one on 'em rough used
a purpose - not fur the whole wureld.  There's a babby fur you, in
the form of a great Sea Porkypine!' said Mr. Peggotty, relieving
his earnestness with a roar of laughter.

Peggotty and I both laughed, but not so loud.

'It's my opinion, you see,' said Mr. Peggotty, with a delighted
face, after some further rubbing of his legs, 'as this is along of
my havin' played with her so much, and made believe as we was
Turks, and French, and sharks, and every wariety of forinners -
bless you, yes; and lions and whales, and I doen't know what all!
- when she warn't no higher than my knee.  I've got into the way on
it, you know.  Why, this here candle, now!' said Mr. Peggotty,
gleefully holding out his hand towards it, 'I know wery well that
arter she's married and gone, I shall put that candle theer, just
the same as now.  I know wery well that when I'm here o' nights
(and where else should I live, bless your arts, whatever fortun' I
come into!) and she ain't here or I ain't theer, I shall put the
candle in the winder, and sit afore the fire, pretending I'm
expecting of her, like I'm a doing now.  THERE'S a babby for you,'
said Mr. Peggotty, with another roar, 'in the form of a Sea
Porkypine!  Why, at the present minute, when I see the candle
sparkle up, I says to myself, "She's a looking at it!  Em'ly's a
coming!" THERE'S a babby for you, in the form of a Sea Porkypine!
Right for all that,' said Mr. Peggotty, stopping in his roar, and
smiting his hands together; 'fur here she is!'

It was only Ham.  The night should have turned more wet since I
came in, for he had a large sou'wester hat on, slouched over his
face.

'Wheer's Em'ly?' said Mr. Peggotty.

Ham made a motion with his head, as if she were outside.  Mr.
Peggotty took the light from the window, trimmed it, put it on the
table, and was busily stirring the fire, when Ham, who had not
moved, said:

'Mas'r Davy, will you come out a minute, and see what Em'ly and me
has got to show you?'

We went out.  As I passed him at the door, I saw, to my
astonishment and fright, that he was deadly pale.  He pushed me
hastily into the open air, and closed the door upon us.  Only upon
us two.

'Ham! what's the matter?'

'Mas'r Davy! -' Oh, for his broken heart, how dreadfully he wept!

I was paralysed by the sight of such grief.  I don't know what I
thought, or what I dreaded.  I could only look at him.

'Ham!  Poor good fellow!  For Heaven's sake, tell me what's the
matter!'

'My love, Mas'r Davy - the pride and hope of my art - her that I'd
have died for, and would die for now - she's gone!'

'Gone!'

'Em'ly's run away!  Oh, Mas'r Davy, think HOW she's run away, when
I pray my good and gracious God to kill her (her that is so dear
above all things) sooner than let her come to ruin and disgrace!'

The face he turned up to the troubled sky, the quivering of his
clasped hands, the agony of his figure, remain associated with the
lonely waste, in my remembrance, to this hour.  It is always night
there, and he is the only object in the scene.

'You're a scholar,' he said, hurriedly, 'and know what's right and
best.  What am I to say, indoors?  How am I ever to break it to
him, Mas'r Davy?'

I saw the door move, and instinctively tried to hold the latch on
the outside, to gain a moment's time.  It was too late.  Mr.
Peggotty thrust forth his face; and never could I forget the change
that came upon it when he saw us, if I were to live five hundred
years.

I remember a great wail and cry, and the women hanging about him,
and we all standing in the room; I with a paper in my hand, which
Ham had given me; Mr. Peggotty, with his vest torn open, his hair
wild, his face and lips quite white, and blood trickling down his
bosom (it had sprung from his mouth, I think), looking fixedly at
me.

'Read it, sir,' he said, in a low shivering voice.  'Slow, please. 
I doen't know as I can understand.'

In the midst of the silence of death, I read thus, from a blotted
letter:

'"When you, who love me so much better than I ever have deserved,
even when my mind was innocent, see this, I shall be far away."'

'I shall be fur away,' he repeated slowly.  'Stop!  Em'ly fur away. 
Well!'

'"When I leave my dear home - my dear home - oh, my dear home! - in
the morning,"'

the letter bore date on the previous night:

'"- it will be never to come back, unless he brings me back a lady. 
This will be found at night, many hours after, instead of me.  Oh,
if you knew how my heart is torn.  If even you, that I have wronged
so much, that never can forgive me, could only know what I suffer!
I am too wicked to write about myself!  Oh, take comfort in
thinking that I am so bad.  Oh, for mercy's sake, tell uncle that
I never loved him half so dear as now.  Oh, don't remember how
affectionate and kind you have all been to me - don't remember we
were ever to be married - but try to think as if I died when I was
little, and was buried somewhere.  Pray Heaven that I am going away
from, have compassion on my uncle!  Tell him that I never loved him
half so dear.  Be his comfort.  Love some good girl that will be
what I was once to uncle, and be true to you, and worthy of you,
and know no shame but me.  God bless all!  I'll pray for all,
often, on my knees.  If he don't bring me back a lady, and I don't
pray for my own self, I'll pray for all.  My parting love to uncle. 
My last tears, and my last thanks, for uncle!"'

That was all.

He stood, long after I had ceased to read, still looking at me.  At
length I ventured to take his hand, and to entreat him, as well as
I could, to endeavour to get some command of himself.  He replied,
'I thankee, sir, I thankee!' without moving.

Ham spoke to him.  Mr. Peggotty was so far sensible of HIS
affliction, that he wrung his hand; but, otherwise, he remained in
the same state, and no one dared to disturb him.

Slowly, at last, he moved his eyes from my face, as if he were
waking from a vision, and cast them round the room.  Then he said,
in a low voice:

'Who's the man?  I want to know his name.'

Ham glanced at me, and suddenly I felt a shock that struck me back.

'There's a man suspected,' said Mr. Peggotty.  'Who is it?'

'Mas'r Davy!' implored Ham.  'Go out a bit, and let me tell him
what I must.  You doen't ought to hear it, sir.'

I felt the shock again.  I sank down in a chair, and tried to utter
some reply; but my tongue was fettered, and my sight was weak.

'I want to know his name!' I heard said once more.

'For some time past,' Ham faltered, 'there's been a servant about
here, at odd times.  There's been a gen'lm'n too.  Both of 'em
belonged to one another.'

Mr. Peggotty stood fixed as before, but now looking at him.

'The servant,' pursued Ham, 'was seen along with - our poor girl -
last night.  He's been in hiding about here, this week or over.  He
was thought to have gone, but he was hiding.  Doen't stay, Mas'r
Davy, doen't!'

I felt Peggotty's arm round my neck, but I could not have moved if
the house had been about to fall upon me.

'A strange chay and hosses was outside town, this morning, on the
Norwich road, a'most afore the day broke,' Ham went on.  'The
servant went to it, and come from it, and went to it again.  When
he went to it again, Em'ly was nigh him.  The t'other was inside. 
He's the man.'

'For the Lord's love,' said Mr. Peggotty, falling back, and putting
out his hand, as if to keep off what he dreaded.  'Doen't tell me
his name's Steerforth!'

'Mas'r Davy,' exclaimed Ham, in a broken voice, 'it ain't no fault
of yourn - and I am far from laying of it to you - but his name is
Steerforth, and he's a damned villain!'

Mr. Peggotty uttered no cry, and shed no tear, and moved no more,
until he seemed to wake again, all at once, and pulled down his
rough coat from its peg in a corner.

'Bear a hand with this!  I'm struck of a heap, and can't do it,' he
said, impatiently.  'Bear a hand and help me.  Well!' when somebody
had done so.  'Now give me that theer hat!'

Ham asked him whither he was going.

'I'm a going to seek my niece.  I'm a going to seek my Em'ly.  I'm
a going, first, to stave in that theer boat, and sink it where I
would have drownded him, as I'm a living soul, if I had had one
thought of what was in him!  As he sat afore me,' he said, wildly,
holding out his clenched right hand, 'as he sat afore me, face to
face, strike me down dead, but I'd have drownded him, and thought
it right! - I'm a going to seek my niece.'

'Where?' cried Ham, interposing himself before the door.

'Anywhere!  I'm a going to seek my niece through the wureld.  I'm
a going to find my poor niece in her shame, and bring her back.  No
one stop me!  I tell you I'm a going to seek my niece!'

'No, no!' cried Mrs. Gummidge, coming between them, in a fit of
crying.  'No, no, Dan'l, not as you are now.  Seek her in a little
while, my lone lorn Dan'l, and that'll be but right! but not as you
are now.  Sit ye down, and give me your forgiveness for having ever
been a worrit to you, Dan'l - what have my contraries ever been to
this! - and let us speak a word about them times when she was first
an orphan, and when Ham was too, and when I was a poor widder
woman, and you took me in.  It'll soften your poor heart, Dan'l,'
laying her head upon his shoulder, 'and you'll bear your sorrow
better; for you know the promise, Dan'l, "As you have done it unto
one of the least of these, you have done it unto me",- and that can
never fail under this roof, that's been our shelter for so many,
many year!'

He was quite passive now; and when I heard him crying, the impulse
that had been upon me to go down upon my knees, and ask their
pardon for the desolation I had caused, and curse Steer- forth,
yielded to a better feeling, My overcharged heart found the same
relief, and I cried too.

CHAPTER 32
THE BEGINNING OF A LONG JOURNEY

What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and
so I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth
better than when the ties that bound me to him were broken.  In the
keen distress of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more
of all that was brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that
was good in him, I did more justice to the qualities that might
have made him a man of a noble nature and a great name, than ever
I had done in the height of my devotion to him.  Deeply as I felt
my own unconscious part in his pollution of an honest home, I
believed that if I had been brought face to face with him, I could
not have uttered one reproach.  I should have loved him so well
still - though he fascinated me no longer - I should have held in
so much tenderness the memory of my affection for him, that I think
I should have been as weak as a spirit-wounded child, in all but
the entertainment of a thought that we could ever be re-united. 
That thought I never had.  I felt, as he had felt, that all was at
an end between us.  What his remembrances of me were, I have never
known - they were light enough, perhaps, and easily dismissed - but
mine of him were as the remembrances of a cherished friend, who was
dead.

Yes, Steerforth, long removed from the scenes of this poor history!
My sorrow may bear involuntary witness against you at the judgement
Throne; but my angry thoughts or my reproaches never will, I know!

The news of what had happened soon spread through the town;
insomuch that as I passed along the streets next morning, I
overheard the people speaking of it at their doors.  Many were hard
upon her, some few were hard upon him, but towards her second
father and her lover there was but one sentiment.  Among all kinds
of people a respect for them in their distress prevailed, which was
full of gentleness and delicacy.  The seafaring men kept apart,
when those two were seen early, walking with slow steps on the
beach; and stood in knots, talking compassionately among
themselves.

It was on the beach, close down by the sea, that I found them.  It
would have been easy to perceive that they had not slept all last
night, even if Peggotty had failed to tell me of their still
sitting just as I left them, when it was broad day.  They looked
worn; and I thought Mr. Peggotty's head was bowed in one night more
than in all the years I had known him.  But they were both as grave
and steady as the sea itself, then lying beneath a dark sky,
waveless - yet with a heavy roll upon it, as if it breathed in its
rest - and touched, on the horizon, with a strip of silvery light
from the unseen sun.

'We have had a mort of talk, sir,' said Mr. Peggotty to me, when we
had all three walked a little while in silence, 'of what we ought
and doen't ought to do.  But we see our course now.'

I happened to glance at Ham, then looking out to sea upon the
distant light, and a frightful thought came into my mind - not that
his face was angry, for it was not; I recall nothing but an
expression of stern determination in it - that if ever he
encountered Steerforth, he would kill him.

'My dooty here, sir,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'is done.  I'm a going to
seek my -' he stopped, and went on in a firmer voice: 'I'm a going
to seek her.  That's my dooty evermore.'

He shook his head when I asked him where he would seek her, and
inquired if I were going to London tomorrow?  I told him I had not
gone today, fearing to lose the chance of being of any service to
him; but that I was ready to go when he would.

'I'll go along with you, sir,' he rejoined, 'if you're agreeable,
tomorrow.'

We walked again, for a while, in silence.

'Ham,'he presently resumed,'he'll hold to his present work, and go
and live along with my sister.  The old boat yonder -'

'Will you desert the old boat, Mr. Peggotty?' I gently interposed.

'My station, Mas'r Davy,' he returned, 'ain't there no longer; and
if ever a boat foundered, since there was darkness on the face of
the deep, that one's gone down.  But no, sir, no; I doen't mean as
it should be deserted.  Fur from that.'

We walked again for a while, as before, until he explained:

'My wishes is, sir, as it shall look, day and night, winter and
summer, as it has always looked, since she fust know'd it.  If ever
she should come a wandering back, I wouldn't have the old place
seem to cast her off, you understand, but seem to tempt her to draw
nigher to 't, and to peep in, maybe, like a ghost, out of the wind
and rain, through the old winder, at the old seat by the fire. 
Then, maybe, Mas'r Davy, seein' none but Missis Gummidge there, she
might take heart to creep in, trembling; and might come to be laid
down in her old bed, and rest her weary head where it was once so
gay.'

I could not speak to him in reply, though I tried.

'Every night,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'as reg'lar as the night comes,
the candle must be stood in its old pane of glass, that if ever she
should see it, it may seem to say "Come back, my child, come back!"
If ever there's a knock, Ham (partic'ler a soft knock), arter dark,
at your aunt's door, doen't you go nigh it.  Let it be her - not
you - that sees my fallen child!'

He walked a little in front of us, and kept before us for some
minutes.  During this interval, I glanced at Ham again, and
observing the same expression on his face, and his eyes still
directed to the distant light, I touched his arm.

Twice I called him by his name, in the tone in which I might have
tried to rouse a sleeper, before he heeded me.  When I at last
inquired on what his thoughts were so bent, he replied:

'On what's afore me, Mas'r Davy; and over yon.'
'On the life before you, do you mean?' He had pointed confusedly
out to sea.

'Ay, Mas'r Davy.  I doen't rightly know how 'tis, but from over yon
there seemed to me to come - the end of it like,' looking at me as
if he were waking, but with the same determined face.

'What end?' I asked, possessed by my former fear.

'I doen't know,'he said, thoughtfully; 'I was calling to mind that
the beginning of it all did take place here - and then the end
come.  But it's gone!  Mas'r Davy,' he added; answering, as I
think, my look; 'you han't no call to be afeerd of me: but I'm
kiender muddled; I don't fare to feel no matters,' - which was as
much as to say that he was not himself, and quite confounded.

Mr. Peggotty stopping for us to join him: we did so, and said no
more.  The remembrance of this, in connexion with my former
thought, however, haunted me at intervals, even until the
inexorable end came at its appointed time.

We insensibly approached the old boat, and entered.  Mrs. Gummidge,
no longer moping in her especial corner, was busy preparing
breakfast.  She took Mr. Peggotty's hat, and placed his seat for
him, and spoke so comfortably and softly, that I hardly knew her.

'Dan'l, my good man,' said she, 'you must eat and drink, and keep
up your strength, for without it you'll do nowt.  Try, that's a
dear soul!  An if I disturb you with my clicketten,' she meant her
chattering, 'tell me so, Dan'l, and I won't.'

When she had served us all, she withdrew to the window, where she
sedulously employed herself in repairing some shirts and other
clothes belonging to Mr. Peggotty, and neatly folding and packing
them in an old oilskin bag, such as sailors carry.  Meanwhile, she
continued talking, in the same quiet manner:

'All times and seasons, you know, Dan'l,' said Mrs. Gummidge, 'I
shall be allus here, and everythink will look accordin' to your
wishes.  I'm a poor scholar, but I shall write to you, odd times,
when you're away, and send my letters to Mas'r Davy.  Maybe you'll
write to me too, Dan'l, odd times, and tell me how you fare to feel
upon your lone lorn journies.'

'You'll be a solitary woman heer, I'm afeerd!' said Mr. Peggotty.

'No, no, Dan'l,' she returned, 'I shan't be that.  Doen't you mind
me.  I shall have enough to do to keep a Beein for you' (Mrs.
Gummidge meant a home), 'again you come back - to keep a Beein here
for any that may hap to come back, Dan'l.  In the fine time, I
shall set outside the door as I used to do.  If any should come
nigh, they shall see the old widder woman true to 'em, a long way
off.'

What a change in Mrs. Gummidge in a little time!  She was another
woman.  She was so devoted, she had such a quick perception of what
it would be well to say, and what it would be well to leave unsaid;
she was so forgetful of herself, and so regardful of the sorrow
about her, that I held her in a sort of veneration.  The work she
did that day!  There were many things to be brought up from the
beach and stored in the outhouse - as oars, nets, sails, cordage,
spars, lobster-pots, bags of ballast, and the like; and though
there was abundance of assistance rendered, there being not a pair
of working hands on all that shore but would have laboured hard for
Mr. Peggotty, and been well paid in being asked to do it, yet she
persisted, all day long, in toiling under weights that she was
quite unequal to, and fagging to and fro on all sorts of
unnecessary errands.  As to deploring her misfortunes, she appeared
to have entirely lost the recollection of ever having had any.  She
preserved an equable cheerfulness in the midst of her sympathy,
which was not the least astonishing part of the change that had
come over her.  Querulousness was out of the question.  I did not
even observe her voice to falter, or a tear to escape from her
eyes, the whole day through, until twilight; when she and I and Mr.
Peggotty being alone together, and he having fallen asleep in
perfect exhaustion, she broke into a half-suppressed fit of sobbing
and crying, and taking me to the door, said, 'Ever bless you, Mas'r
Davy, be a friend to him, poor dear!' Then, she immediately ran out
of the house to wash her face, in order that she might sit quietly
beside him, and be found at work there, when he should awake.  In
short I left her, when I went away at night, the prop and staff of
Mr. Peggotty's affliction; and I could not meditate enough upon the
lesson that I read in Mrs. Gummidge, and the new experience she
unfolded to me.

It was between nine and ten o'clock when, strolling in a melancholy
manner through the town, I stopped at Mr. Omer's door.  Mr. Omer
had taken it so much to heart, his daughter told me, that he had
been very low and poorly all day, and had gone to bed without his
pipe.

'A deceitful, bad-hearted girl,' said Mrs. Joram.  'There was no
good in her, ever!'

'Don't say so,' I returned.  'You don't think so.'

'Yes, I do!' cried Mrs. Joram, angrily.

'No, no,' said I.

Mrs. Joram tossed her head, endeavouring to be very stern and
cross; but she could not command her softer self, and began to cry. 
I was young, to be sure; but I thought much the better of her for
this sympathy, and fancied it became her, as a virtuous wife and
mother, very well indeed.

'What will she ever do!' sobbed Minnie.  'Where will she go!  What
will become of her!  Oh, how could she be so cruel, to herself and
him!'

I remembered the time when Minnie was a young and pretty girl; and
I was glad she remembered it too, so feelingly.

'My little Minnie,' said Mrs. Joram, 'has only just now been got to
sleep.  Even in her sleep she is sobbing for Em'ly.  All day long,
little Minnie has cried for her, and asked me, over and over again,
whether Em'ly was wicked?  What can I say to her, when Em'ly tied
a ribbon off her own neck round little Minnie's the last night she
was here, and laid her head down on the pillow beside her till she
was fast asleep!  The ribbon's round my little Minnie's neck now. 
It ought not to be, perhaps, but what can I do?  Em'ly is very bad,
but they were fond of one another.  And the child knows nothing!'

Mrs. Joram was so unhappy that her husband came out to take care of
her.  Leaving them together, I went home to Peggotty's; more
melancholy myself, if possible, than I had been yet.

That good creature - I mean Peggotty - all untired by her late
anxieties and sleepless nights, was at her brother's, where she
meant to stay till morning.  An old woman, who had been employed
about the house for some weeks past, while Peggotty had been unable
to attend to it, was the house's only other occupant besides
myself.  As I had no occasion for her services, I sent her to bed,
by no means against her will, and sat down before the kitchen fire
a little while, to think about all this.

I was blending it with the deathbed of the late Mr. Barkis, and was
driving out with the tide towards the distance at which Ham had
looked so singularly in the morning, when I was recalled from my
wanderings by a knock at the door.  There was a knocker upon the
door, but it was not that which made the sound.  The tap was from
a hand, and low down upon the door, as if it were given by a child.

It made me start as much as if it had been the knock of a footman
to a person of distinction.  I opened the door; and at first looked
down, to my amazement, on nothing but a great umbrella that
appeared to be walking about of itself.  But presently I discovered
underneath it, Miss Mowcher.

I might not have been prepared to give the little creature a very
kind reception, if, on her removing the umbrella, which her utmost
efforts were unable to shut up, she had shown me the 'volatile'
expression of face which had made so great an impression on me at
our first and last meeting.  But her face, as she turned it up to
mine, was so earnest; and when I relieved her of the umbrella
(which would have been an inconvenient one for the Irish Giant),
she wrung her little hands in such an afflicted manner; that I
rather inclined towards her.

'Miss Mowcher!' said I, after glancing up and down the empty
street, without distinctly knowing what I expected to see besides;
'how do you come here?  What is the matter?'
She motioned to me with her short right arm, to shut the umbrella
for her; and passing me hurriedly, went into the kitchen.  When I
had closed the door, and followed, with the umbrella in my hand, I
found her sitting on the corner of the fender - it was a low iron
one, with two flat bars at top to stand plates upon - in the shadow
of the boiler, swaying herself backwards and forwards, and chafing
her hands upon her knees like a person in pain.

Quite alarmed at being the only recipient of this untimely visit,
and the only spectator of this portentous behaviour, I exclaimed
again, 'Pray tell me, Miss Mowcher, what is the matter! are you
ill?'

'My dear young soul,' returned Miss Mowcher, squeezing her hands
upon her heart one over the other.  'I am ill here, I am very ill. 
To think that it should come to this, when I might have known it
and perhaps prevented it, if I hadn't been a thoughtless fool!'

Again her large bonnet (very disproportionate to the figure) went
backwards and forwards, in her swaying of her little body to and
fro; while a most gigantic bonnet rocked, in unison with it, upon
the wall.

'I am surprised,' I began, 'to see you so distressed and serious'-
when she interrupted me.

'Yes, it's always so!' she said.  'They are all surprised, these
inconsiderate young people, fairly and full grown, to see any
natural feeling in a little thing like me!  They make a plaything
of me, use me for their amusement, throw me away when they are
tired, and wonder that I feel more than a toy horse or a wooden
soldier!  Yes, yes, that's the way.  The old way!'

'It may be, with others,' I returned, 'but I do assure you it is
not with me.  Perhaps I ought not to be at all surprised to see you
as you are now: I know so little of you.  I said, without
consideration, what I thought.'

'What can I do?' returned the little woman, standing up, and
holding out her arms to show herself.  'See!  What I am, my father
was; and my sister is; and my brother is.  I have worked for sister
and brother these many years - hard, Mr. Copperfield - all day.  I
must live.  I do no harm.  If there are people so unreflecting or
so cruel, as to make a jest of me, what is left for me to do but to
make a jest of myself, them, and everything?  If I do so, for the
time, whose fault is that?  Mine?'

No.  Not Miss Mowcher's, I perceived.

'If I had shown myself a sensitive dwarf to your false friend,'
pursued the little woman, shaking her head at me, with reproachful
earnestness, 'how much of his help or good will do you think I
should ever have had?  If little Mowcher (who had no hand, young
gentleman, in the making of herself) addressed herself to him, or
the like of him, because of her misfortunes, when do you suppose
her small voice would have been heard?  Little Mowcher would have
as much need to live, if she was the bitterest and dullest of
pigmies; but she couldn't do it.  No.  She might whistle for her
bread and butter till she died of Air.'

Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her
handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.

'Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you
have,' she said, 'that while I know well what I am, I can be
cheerful and endure it all.  I am thankful for myself, at any rate,
that I can find my tiny way through the world, without being
beholden to anyone; and that in return for all that is thrown at
me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can throw bubbles back. 
If I don't brood over all I want, it is the better for me, and not
the worse for anyone.  If I am a plaything for you giants, be
gentle with me.'

Miss Mowcher replaced her handkerchief in her pocket, looking at me
with very intent expression all the while, and pursued:

'I saw you in the street just now.  You may suppose I am not able
to walk as fast as you, with my short legs and short breath, and I
couldn't overtake you; but I guessed where you came, and came after
you.  I have been here before, today, but the good woman wasn't at
home.'

'Do you know her?' I demanded.

'I know of her, and about her,' she replied, 'from Omer and Joram. 
I was there at seven o'clock this morning.  Do you remember what
Steerforth said to me about this unfortunate girl, that time when
I saw you both at the inn?'

The great bonnet on Miss Mowcher's head, and the greater bonnet on
the wall, began to go backwards and forwards again when she asked
this question.

I remembered very well what she referred to, having had it in my
thoughts many times that day.  I told her so.

'May the Father of all Evil confound him,' said the little woman,
holding up her forefinger between me and her sparkling eyes, 'and
ten times more confound that wicked servant; but I believed it was
YOU who had a boyish passion for her!'

'I?' I repeated.

'Child, child!  In the name of blind ill-fortune,' cried Miss
Mowcher, wringing her hands impatiently, as she went to and fro
again upon the fender, 'why did you praise her so, and blush, and
look disturbed?  '

I could not conceal from myself that I had done this, though for a
reason very different from her supposition.

'What did I know?' said Miss Mowcher, taking out her handkerchief
again, and giving one little stamp on the ground whenever, at short
intervals, she applied it to her eyes with both hands at once.  'He
was crossing you and wheedling you, I saw; and you were soft wax in
his hands, I saw.  Had I left the room a minute, when his man told
me that "Young Innocence" (so he called you, and you may call him
"Old Guilt" all the days of your life) had set his heart upon her,
and she was giddy and liked him, but his master was resolved that
no harm should come of it - more for your sake than for hers - and
that that was their business here?  How could I BUT believe him? 
I saw Steerforth soothe and please you by his praise of her!  You
were the first to mention her name.  You owned to an old admiration
of her.  You were hot and cold, and red and white, all at once when
I spoke to you of her.  What could I think - what DID I think - but
that you were a young libertine in everything but experience, and
had fallen into hands that had experience enough, and could manage
you (having the fancy) for your own good?  Oh! oh! oh!  They were
afraid of my finding out the truth,' exclaimed Miss Mowcher,
getting off the fender, and trotting up and down the kitchen with
her two short arms distressfully lifted up, 'because I am a sharp
little thing - I need be, to get through the world at all! - and
they deceived me altogether, and I gave the poor unfortunate girl
a letter, which I fully believe was the beginning of her ever
speaking to Littimer, who was left behind on purpose!'

I stood amazed at the revelation of all this perfidy, looking at
Miss Mowcher as she walked up and down the kitchen until she was
out of breath: when she sat upon the fender again, and, drying her
face with her handkerchief, shook her head for a long time, without
otherwise moving, and without breaking silence.

'My country rounds,' she added at length, 'brought me to Norwich,
Mr. Copperfield, the night before last.  What I happened to find
there, about their secret way of coming and going, without you -
which was strange - led to my suspecting something wrong.  I got
into the coach from London last night, as it came through Norwich,
and was here this morning.  Oh, oh, oh! too late!'

Poor little Mowcher turned so chilly after all her crying and
fretting, that she turned round on the fender, putting her poor
little wet feet in among the ashes to warm them, and sat looking at
the fire, like a large doll.  I sat in a chair on the other side of
the hearth, lost in unhappy reflections, and looking at the fire
too, and sometimes at her.

'I must go,' she said at last, rising as she spoke.  'It's late. 
You don't mistrust me?'

Meeting her sharp glance, which was as sharp as ever when she asked
me, I could not on that short challenge answer no, quite frankly.

'Come!' said she, accepting the offer of my hand to help her over
the fender, and looking wistfully up into my face, 'you know you
wouldn't mistrust me, if I was a full-sized woman!'

I felt that there was much truth in this; and I felt rather ashamed
of myself.

'You are a young man,' she said, nodding.  'Take a word of advice,
even from three foot nothing.  Try not to associate bodily defects
with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason.'

She had got over the fender now, and I had got over my suspicion. 
I told her that I believed she had given me a faithful account of
herself, and that we had both been hapless instruments in designing
hands.  She thanked me, and said I was a good fellow.

'Now, mind!' she exclaimed, turning back on her way to the door,
and looking shrewdly at me, with her forefinger up again.- 'I have
some reason to suspect, from what I have heard - my ears are always
open; I can't afford to spare what powers I have - that they are
gone abroad.  But if ever they return, if ever any one of them
returns, while I am alive, I am more likely than another, going
about as I do, to find it out soon.  Whatever I know, you shall
know.  If ever I can do anything to serve the poor betrayed girl,
I will do it faithfully, please Heaven!  And Littimer had better
have a bloodhound at his back, than little Mowcher!'

I placed implicit faith in this last statement, when I marked the
look with which it was accompanied.

'Trust me no more, but trust me no less, than you would trust a
full-sized woman,' said the little creature, touching me
appealingly on the wrist.  'If ever you see me again, unlike what
I am now, and like what I was when you first saw me, observe what
company I am in.  Call to mind that I am a very helpless and
defenceless little thing.  Think of me at home with my brother like
myself and sister like myself, when my day's work is done.  Perhaps
you won't, then, be very hard upon me, or surprised if I can be
distressed and serious.  Good night!'

I gave Miss Mowcher my hand, with a very different opinion of her
from that which I had hitherto entertained, and opened the door to
let her out.  It was not a trifling business to get the great
umbrella up, and properly balanced in her grasp; but at last I
successfully accomplished this, and saw it go bobbing down the
street through the rain, without the least appearance of having
anybody underneath it, except when a heavier fall than usual from
some over-charged water-spout sent it toppling over, on one side,
and discovered Miss Mowcher struggling violently to get it right. 
After making one or two sallies to her relief, which were rendered
futile by the umbrella's hopping on again, like an immense bird,
before I could reach it, I came in, went to bed, and slept till
morning.

In the morning I was joined by Mr. Peggotty and by my old nurse,
and we went at an early hour to the coach office, where Mrs.
Gummidge and Ham were waiting to take leave of us.

'Mas'r Davy,' Ham whispered, drawing me aside, while Mr. Peggotty
was stowing his bag among the luggage, 'his life is quite broke up. 
He doen't know wheer he's going; he doen't know -what's afore him;
he's bound upon a voyage that'll last, on and off, all the rest of
his days, take my wured for 't, unless he finds what he's a seeking
of.  I am sure you'll be a friend to him, Mas'r Davy?'

'Trust me, I will indeed,' said I, shaking hands with Ham
earnestly.

'Thankee.  Thankee, very kind, sir.  One thing furder.  I'm in good
employ, you know, Mas'r Davy, and I han't no way now of spending
what I gets.  Money's of no use to me no more, except to live.  If
you can lay it out for him, I shall do my work with a better art. 
Though as to that, sir,' and he spoke very steadily and mildly,
'you're not to think but I shall work at all times, like a man, and
act the best that lays in my power!'

I told him I was well convinced of it; and I hinted that I hoped
the time might even come, when he would cease to lead the lonely
life he naturally contemplated now.

'No, sir,' he said, shaking his head, 'all that's past and over
with me, sir.  No one can never fill the place that's empty.  But
you'll bear in mind about the money, as theer's at all times some
laying by for him?'

Reminding him of the fact, that Mr. Peggotty derived a steady,
though certainly a very moderate income from the bequest of his
late brother-in-law, I promised to do so.  We then took leave of
each other.  I cannot leave him even now, without remembering with
a pang, at once his modest fortitude and his great sorrow.

As to Mrs. Gummidge, if I were to endeavour to describe how she ran
down the street by the side of the coach, seeing nothing but Mr.
Peggotty on the roof, through the tears she tried to repress, and
dashing herself against the people who were coming in the opposite
direction, I should enter on a task of some difficulty.  Therefore
I had better leave her sitting on a baker's door-step, out of
breath, with no shape at all remaining in her bonnet, and one of
her shoes off, lying on the pavement at a considerable distance.

When we got to our journey's end, our first pursuit was to look
about for a little lodging for Peggotty, where her brother could
have a bed.  We were so fortunate as to find one, of a very clean
and cheap description, over a chandler's shop, only two streets
removed from me.  When we had engaged this domicile, I bought some
cold meat at an eating-house, and took my fellow-travellers home to
tea; a proceeding, I regret to state, which did not meet with Mrs.
Crupp's approval, but quite the contrary.  I ought to observe,
however, in explanation of that lady's state of mind, that she was
much offended by Peggotty's tucking up her widow's gown before she
had been ten minutes in the place, and setting to work to dust my
bedroom.  This Mrs. Crupp regarded in the light of a liberty, and
a liberty, she said, was a thing she never allowed.

Mr. Peggotty had made a communication to me on the way to London
for which I was not unprepared.  It was, that he purposed first
seeing Mrs. Steerforth.  As I felt bound to assist him in this, and
also to mediate between them; with the view of sparing the mother's
feelings as much as possible, I wrote to her that night.  I told
her as mildly as I could what his wrong was, and what my own share
in his injury.  I said he was a man in very common life, but of a
most gentle and upright character; and that I ventured to express
a hope that she would not refuse to see him in his heavy trouble. 
I mentioned two o'clock in the afternoon as the hour of our coming,
and I sent the letter myself by the first coach in the morning.

At the appointed time, we stood at the door - the door of that
house where I had been, a few days since, so happy: where my
youthful confidence and warmth of heart had been yielded up so
freely: which was closed against me henceforth: which was now a
waste, a ruin.

No Littimer appeared.  The pleasanter face which had replaced his,
on the occasion of my last visit, answered to our summons, and went
before us to the drawing-room.  Mrs. Steerforth was sitting there. 
Rosa Dartle glided, as we went in, from another part of the room
and stood behind her chair.

I saw, directly, in his mother's face, that she knew from himself
what he had done.  It was very pale; and bore the traces of deeper
emotion than my letter alone, weakened by the doubts her fondness
would have raised upon it, would have been likely to create.  I
thought her more like him than ever I had thought her; and I felt,
rather than saw, that the resemblance was not lost on my companion.

She sat upright in her arm-chair, with a stately, immovable,
passionless air, that it seemed as if nothing could disturb.  She
looked very steadfastly at Mr. Peggotty when he stood before her;
and he looked quite as steadfastly at her.  Rosa Dartle's keen
glance comprehended all of us.  For some moments not a word was
spoken.

She motioned to Mr. Peggotty to be seated.  He said, in a low
voice, 'I shouldn't feel it nat'ral, ma'am, to sit down in this
house.  I'd sooner stand.'  And this was succeeded by another
silence, which she broke thus:

'I know, with deep regret, what has brought you here.  What do you
want of me?  What do you ask me to do?'

He put his hat under his arm, and feeling in his breast for Emily's
letter, took it out, unfolded it, and gave it to her.
'Please to read that, ma'am.  That's my niece's hand!'

She read it, in the same stately and impassive way, - untouched by
its contents, as far as I could see, - and returned it to him.

'"Unless he brings me back a lady,"' said Mr. Peggotty, tracing out
that part with his finger.  'I come to know, ma'am, whether he will
keep his wured?'

'No,' she returned.

'Why not?' said Mr. Peggotty.

'It is impossible.  He would disgrace himself.  You cannot fail to
know that she is far below him.'

'Raise her up!' said Mr. Peggotty.

'She is uneducated and ignorant.'

'Maybe she's not; maybe she is,' said Mr. Peggotty.  'I think not,
ma'am; but I'm no judge of them things.  Teach her better!'

'Since you oblige me to speak more plainly, which I am very
unwilling to do, her humble connexions would render such a thing
impossible, if nothing else did.'

'Hark to this, ma'am,' he returned, slowly and quietly.  'You know
what it is to love your child.  So do I.  If she was a hundred
times my child, I couldn't love her more.  You doen't know what it
is to lose your child.  I do.  All the heaps of riches in the
wureld would be nowt to me (if they was mine) to buy her back! 
But, save her from this disgrace, and she shall never be disgraced
by us.  Not one of us that she's growed up among, not one of us
that's lived along with her and had her for their all in all, these
many year, will ever look upon her pritty face again.  We'll be
content to let her be; we'll be content to think of her, far off,
as if she was underneath another sun and sky; we'll be content to
trust her to her husband, - to her little children, p'raps, - and
bide the time when all of us shall be alike in quality afore our
God!'

The rugged eloquence with which he spoke, was not devoid of all
effect.  She still preserved her proud manner, but there was a
touch of softness in her voice, as she answered:

'I justify nothing.  I make no counter-accusations.  But I am sorry
to repeat, it is impossible.  Such a marriage would irretrievably
blight my son's career, and ruin his prospects.  Nothing is more
certain than that it never can take place, and never will.  If
there is any other compensation -'

'I am looking at the likeness of the face,' interrupted Mr.
Peggotty, with a steady but a kindling eye, 'that has looked at me,
in my home, at my fireside, in my boat - wheer not?  - smiling and
friendly, when it was so treacherous, that I go half wild when I
think of it.  If the likeness of that face don't turn to burning
fire, at the thought of offering money to me for my child's blight
and ruin, it's as bad.  I doen't know, being a lady's, but what
it's worse.'

She changed now, in a moment.  An angry flush overspread her
features; and she said, in an intolerant manner, grasping the
arm-chair tightly with her hands:

'What compensation can you make to ME for opening such a pit
between me and my son?  What is your love to mine?  What is your
separation to ours?'

Miss Dartle softly touched her, and bent down her head to whisper,
but she would not hear a word.

'No, Rosa, not a word!  Let the man listen to what I say!  My son,
who has been the object of my life, to whom its every thought has
been devoted, whom I have gratified from a child in every wish,
from whom I have had no separate existence since his birth, - to
take up in a moment with a miserable girl, and avoid me!  To repay
my confidence with systematic deception, for her sake, and quit me
for her!  To set this wretched fancy, against his mother's claims
upon his duty, love, respect, gratitude - claims that every day and
hour of his life should have strengthened into ties that nothing
could be proof against!  Is this no injury?'

Again Rosa Dartle tried to soothe her; again ineffectually.

'I say, Rosa, not a word!  If he can stake his all upon the
lightest object, I can stake my all upon a greater purpose.  Let
him go where he will, with the means that my love has secured to
him!  Does he think to reduce me by long absence?  He knows his
mother very little if he does.  Let him put away his whim now, and
he is welcome back.  Let him not put her away now, and he never
shall come near me, living or dying, while I can raise my hand to
make a sign against it, unless, being rid of her for ever, he comes
humbly to me and begs for my forgiveness.  This is my right.  This
is the acknowledgement I WILL HAVE.  This is the separation that
there is between us!  And is this,' she added, looking at her
visitor with the proud intolerant air with which she had begun, 'no
injury?'

While I heard and saw the mother as she said these words, I seemed
to hear and see the son, defying them.  All that I had ever seen in
him of an unyielding, wilful spirit, I saw in her.  All the
understanding that I had now of his misdirected energy, became an
understanding of her character too, and a perception that it was,
in its strongest springs, the same.

She now observed to me, aloud, resuming her former restraint, that
it was useless to hear more, or to say more, and that she begged to
put an end to the interview.  She rose with an air of dignity to
leave the room, when Mr. Peggotty signified that it was needless.

'Doen't fear me being any hindrance to you, I have no more to say,
ma'am,' he remarked, as he moved towards the door.  'I come beer
with no hope, and I take away no hope.  I have done what I thowt
should be done, but I never looked fur any good to come of my
stan'ning where I do.  This has been too evil a house fur me and
mine, fur me to be in my right senses and expect it.'

With this, we departed; leaving her standing by her elbow-chair, a
picture of a noble presence and a handsome face.

We had, on our way out, to cross a paved hall, with glass sides and
roof, over which a vine was trained.  Its leaves and shoots were
green then, and the day being sunny, a pair of glass doors leading
to the garden were thrown open.  Rosa Dartle, entering this way
with a noiseless step, when we were close to them, addressed
herself to me:

'You do well,' she said, 'indeed, to bring this fellow here!'

Such a concentration of rage and scorn as darkened her face, and
flashed in her jet-black eyes, I could not have thought
compressible even into that face.  The scar made by the hammer was,
as usual in this excited state of her features, strongly marked. 
When the throbbing I had seen before, came into it as I looked at
her, she absolutely lifted up her hand, and struck it.

'This is a fellow,' she said, 'to champion and bring here, is he
not?  You are a true man!'

'Miss Dartle,' I returned, 'you are surely not so unjust as to
condemn ME!'

'Why do you bring division between these two mad creatures?' she
returned.  'Don't you know that they are both mad with their own
self-will and pride?'

'Is it my doing?' I returned.

'Is it your doing!' she retorted.  'Why do you bring this man
here?' 

'He is a deeply-injured man, Miss Dartle,' I replied.  'You may not
know it.'

'I know that James Steerforth,' she said, with her hand on her
bosom, as if to prevent the storm that was raging there, from being
loud, 'has a false, corrupt heart, and is a traitor.  But what need
I know or care about this fellow, and his common niece?'

'Miss Dartle,' I returned, 'you deepen the injury.  It is
sufficient already.  I will only say, at parting, that you do him
a great wrong.'

'I do him no wrong,' she returned.  'They are a depraved, worthless
set.  I would have her whipped!'

Mr. Peggotty passed on, without a word, and went out at the door.

'Oh, shame, Miss Dartle! shame!' I said indignantly.  'How can you
bear to trample on his undeserved affliction!'

'I would trample on them all,' she answered.  'I would have his
house pulled down.  I would have her branded on the face, dressed
in rags, and cast out in the streets to starve.  If I had the power
to sit in judgement on her, I would see it done.  See it done?  I
would do it!  I detest her.  If I ever could reproach her with her
infamous condition, I would go anywhere to do so.  If I could hunt
her to her grave, I would.  If there was any word of comfort that
would be a solace to her in her dying hour, and only I possessed
it, I wouldn't part with it for Life itself.'

The mere vehemence of her words can convey, I am sensible, but a
weak impression of the passion by which she was possessed, and
which made itself articulate in her whole figure, though her voice,
instead of being raised, was lower than usual.  No description I
could give of her would do justice to my recollection of her, or to
her entire deliverance of herself to her anger.  I have seen
passion in many forms, but I have never seen it in such a form as
that.

When I joined Mr. Peggotty, he was walking slowly and thoughtfully
down the hill.  He told me, as soon as I came up with him, that
having now discharged his mind of what he had purposed doing in
London, he meant 'to set out on his travels', that night.  I asked
him where he meant to go?  He only answered, 'I'm a going, sir, to
seek my niece.'

We went back to the little lodging over the chandler's shop, and
there I found an opportunity of repeating to Peggotty what he had
said to me.  She informed me, in return, that he had said the same
to her that morning.  She knew no more than I did, where he was
going, but she thought he had some project shaped out in his mind.

I did not like to leave him, under such circumstances, and we all
three dined together off a beefsteak pie - which was one of the
many good things for which Peggotty was famous - and which was
curiously flavoured on this occasion, I recollect well, by a
miscellaneous taste of tea, coffee, butter, bacon, cheese, new
loaves, firewood, candles, and walnut ketchup, continually
ascending from the shop.  After dinner we sat for an hour or so
near the window, without talking much; and then Mr. Peggotty got
up, and brought his oilskin bag and his stout stick, and laid them
on the table.

He accepted, from his sister's stock of ready money, a small sum on
account of his legacy; barely enough, I should have thought, to
keep him for a month.  He promised to communicate with me, when
anything befell him; and he slung his bag about him, took his hat
and stick, and bade us both 'Good-bye!'

'All good attend you, dear old woman,' he said, embracing Peggotty,
'and you too, Mas'r Davy!' shaking hands with me.  'I'm a-going to
seek her, fur and wide.  If she should come home while I'm away -
but ah, that ain't like to be! - or if I should bring her back, my
meaning is, that she and me shall live and die where no one can't
reproach her.  If any hurt should come to me, remember that the
last words I left for her was, "My unchanged love is with my
darling child, and I forgive her!"'

He said this solemnly, bare-headed; then, putting on his hat, he
went down the stairs, and away.  We followed to the door.  It was
a warm, dusty evening, just the time when, in the great main
thoroughfare out of which that by-way turned, there was a temporary
lull in the eternal tread of feet upon the pavement, and a strong
red sunshine.  He turned, alone, at the corner of our shady street,
into a glow of light, in which we lost him.

Rarely did that hour of the evening come, rarely did I wake at
night, rarely did I look up at the moon, or stars, or watch the
falling rain, or hear the wind, but I thought of his solitary
figure toiling on, poor pilgrim, and recalled the words:

'I'm a going to seek her, fur and wide.  If any hurt should come to
me, remember that the last words I left for her was, "My unchanged
love is with my darling child, and I forgive her!"'

CHAPTER 33
BLISSFUL

All this time, I had gone on loving Dora, harder than ever.  Her
idea was my refuge in disappointment and distress, and made some
amends to me, even for the loss of my friend.  The more I pitied
myself, or pitied others, the more I sought for consolation in the
image of Dora.  The greater the accumulation of deceit and trouble
in the world, the brighter and the purer shone the star of Dora
high above the world.  I don't think I had any definite idea where
Dora came from, or in what degree she was related to a higher order
of beings; but I am quite sure I should have scouted the notion of
her being simply human, like any other young lady, with indignation
and contempt.

If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora.  I was not merely
over head and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through
and through.  Enough love might have been wrung out of me,
metaphorically speaking, to drown anybody in; and yet there would
have remained enough within me, and all over me, to pervade my
entire existence.

The first thing I did, on my own account, when I came back, was to
take a night-walk to Norwood, and, like the subject of a venerable
riddle of my childhood, to go 'round and round the house, without
ever touching the house', thinking about Dora.  I believe the theme
of this incomprehensible conundrum was the moon.  No matter what it
was, I, the moon-struck slave of Dora, perambulated round and round
the house and garden for two hours, looking through crevices in the
palings, getting my chin by dint of violent exertion above the
rusty nails on the top, blowing kisses at the lights in the
windows, and romantically calling on the night, at intervals, to
shield my Dora - I don't exactly know what from, I suppose from
fire.  Perhaps from mice, to which she had a great objection.

My love was so much in my mind and it was so natural to me to
confide in Peggotty, when I found her again by my side of an
evening with the old set of industrial implements, busily making
the tour of my wardrobe, that I imparted to her, in a sufficiently
roundabout way, my great secret.  Peggotty was strongly interested,
but I could not get her into my view of the case at all.  She was
audaciously prejudiced in my favour, and quite unable to understand
why I should have any misgivings, or be low-spirited about it. 
'The young lady might think herself well off,' she observed, 'to
have such a beau.  And as to her Pa,' she said, 'what did the
gentleman expect, for gracious sake!'

I observed, however, that Mr. Spenlow's proctorial gown and stiff
cravat took Peggotty down a little, and inspired her with a greater
reverence for the man who was gradually becoming more and more
etherealized in my eyes every day, and about whom a reflected
radiance seemed to me to beam when he sat erect in Court among his
papers, like a little lighthouse in a sea of stationery.  And by
the by, it used to be uncommonly strange to me to consider, I
remember, as I sat in Court too, how those dim old judges and
doctors wouldn't have cared for Dora, if they had known her; how
they wouldn't have gone out of their senses with rapture, if
marriage with Dora had been proposed to them; how Dora might have
sung, and played upon that glorified guitar, until she led me to
the verge of madness, yet not have tempted one of those slow-goers
an inch out of his road!

I despised them, to a man.  Frozen-out old gardeners in the
flower-beds of the heart, I took a personal offence against them
all.  The Bench was nothing to me but an insensible blunderer.  The
Bar had no more tenderness or poetry in it, than the bar of a
public-house.

Taking the management of Peggotty's affairs into my own hands, with
no little pride, I proved the will, and came to a settlement with
the Legacy Duty-office, and took her to the Bank, and soon got
everything into an orderly train.  We varied the legal character of
these proceedings by going to see some perspiring Wax-work, in
Fleet Street (melted, I should hope, these twenty years); and by
visiting Miss Linwood's Exhibition, which I remember as a Mausoleum
of needlework, favourable to self-examination and repentance; and
by inspecting the Tower of London; and going to the top of St.
Paul's.  All these wonders afforded Peggotty as much pleasure as
she was able to enjoy, under existing circumstances: except, I
think, St. Paul's, which, from her long attachment to her work-box,
became a rival of the picture on the lid, and was, in some
particulars, vanquished, she considered, by that work of art.

Peggotty's business, which was what we used to call 'common-form
business' in the Commons (and very light and lucrative the
common-form business was), being settled, I took her down to the
office one morning to pay her bill.  Mr. Spenlow had stepped out,
old Tiffey said, to get a gentleman sworn for a marriage licence;
but as I knew he would be back directly, our place lying close to
the Surrogate's, and to the Vicar-General's office too, I told
Peggotty to wait.

We were a little like undertakers, in the Commons, as regarded
Probate transactions; generally making it a rule to look more or
less cut up, when we had to deal with clients in mourning.  In a
similar feeling of delicacy, we were always blithe and
light-hearted with the licence clients.  Therefore I hinted to
Peggotty that she would find Mr. Spenlow much recovered from the
shock of Mr. Barkis's decease; and indeed he came in like a
bridegroom.

But neither Peggotty nor I had eyes for him, when we saw, in
company with him, Mr. Murdstone.  He was very little changed.  His
hair looked as thick, and was certainly as black, as ever; and his
glance was as little to be trusted as of old.

'Ah, Copperfield?' said Mr. Spenlow.  'You know this gentleman, I
believe?'

I made my gentleman a distant bow, and Peggotty barely recognized
him.  He was, at first, somewhat disconcerted to meet us two
together; but quickly decided what to do, and came up to me.

'I hope,' he said, 'that you are doing well?'

'It can hardly be interesting to you,' said I.  'Yes, if you wish
to know.'

We looked at each other, and he addressed himself to Peggotty.

'And you,' said he.  'I am sorry to observe that you have lost your
husband.'

'It's not the first loss I have had in my life, Mr. Murdstone,'
replied Peggotty, trembling from head to foot.  'I am glad to hope
that there is nobody to blame for this one, - nobody to answer for
it.'

'Ha!' said he; 'that's a comfortable reflection.  You have done
your duty?'

'I have not worn anybody's life away,' said Peggotty, 'I am
thankful to think!  No, Mr. Murdstone, I have not worrited and
frightened any sweet creetur to an early grave!'

He eyed her gloomily - remorsefully I thought - for an instant; and
said, turning his head towards me, but looking at my feet instead
of my face:

'We are not likely to encounter soon again; - a source of
satisfaction to us both, no doubt, for such meetings as this can
never be agreeable.  I do not expect that you, who always rebelled
against my just authority, exerted for your benefit and
reformation, should owe me any good-will now.  There is an
antipathy between us -'

'An old one, I believe?' said I, interrupting him.

He smiled, and shot as evil a glance at me as could come from his
dark eyes.

'It rankled in your baby breast,' he said.  'It embittered the life
of your poor mother.  You are right.  I hope you may do better,
yet; I hope you may correct yourself.'

Here he ended the dialogue, which had been carried on in a low
voice, in a corner of the outer office, by passing into Mr.
Spenlow's room, and saying aloud, in his smoothest manner:

'Gentlemen of Mr. Spenlow's profession are accustomed to family
differences, and know how complicated and difficult they always
are!' With that, he paid the money for his licence; and, receiving
it neatly folded from Mr. Spenlow, together with a shake of the
hand, and a polite wish for his happiness and the lady's, went out
of the office.

I might have had more difficulty in constraining myself to be
silent under his words, if I had had less difficulty in impressing
upon Peggotty (who was only angry on my account, good creature!)
that we were not in a place for recrimination, and that I besought
her to hold her peace.  She was so unusually roused, that I was
glad to compound for an affectionate hug, elicited by this revival
in her mind of our old injuries, and to make the best I could of
it, before Mr. Spenlow and the clerks.

Mr. Spenlow did not appear to know what the connexion between Mr.
Murdstone and myself was; which I was glad of, for I could not bear
to acknowledge him, even in my own breast, remembering what I did
of the history of my poor mother.  Mr. Spenlow seemed to think, if
he thought anything about the matter, that my aunt was the leader
of the state party in our family, and that there was a rebel party
commanded by somebody else - so I gathered at least from what he
said, while we were waiting for Mr. Tiffey to make out Peggotty's
bill of costs.

'Miss Trotwood,' he remarked, 'is very firm, no doubt, and not
likely to give way to opposition.  I have an admiration for her
character, and I may congratulate you, Copperfield, on being on the
right side.  Differences between relations are much to be deplored
- but they are extremely general - and the great thing is, to be on
the right side': meaning, I take it, on the side of the moneyed
interest.

'Rather a good marriage this, I believe?' said Mr. Spenlow.

I explained that I knew nothing about it.

'Indeed!' he said.  'Speaking from the few words Mr. Murdstone
dropped - as a man frequently does on these occasions - and from
what Miss Murdstone let fall, I should say it was rather a good
marriage.'

'Do you mean that there is money, sir?' I asked.

'Yes,' said Mr. Spenlow, 'I understand there's money.  Beauty too,
I am told.'

'Indeed!  Is his new wife young?'

'Just of age,' said Mr. Spenlow.  'So lately, that I should think
they had been waiting for that.'

'Lord deliver her!' said Peggotty.  So very emphatically and
unexpectedly, that we were all three discomposed; until Tiffey came
in with the bill.

Old Tiffey soon appeared, however, and handed it to Mr. Spenlow, to
look over.  Mr. Spenlow, settling his chin in his cravat and
rubbing it softly, went over the items with a deprecatory air - as
if it were all Jorkins's doing - and handed it back to Tiffey with
a bland sigh.

'Yes,' he said.  'That's right.  Quite right.  I should have been
extremely happy, Copperfield, to have limited these charges to the
actual expenditure out of pocket, but it is an irksome incident in
my professional life, that I am not at liberty to consult my own
wishes.  I have a partner - Mr. Jorkins.'

As he said this with a gentle melancholy, which was the next thing
to making no charge at all, I expressed my acknowledgements on
Peggotty's behalf, and paid Tiffey in banknotes.  Peggotty then
retired to her lodging, and Mr. Spenlow and I went into Court,
where we had a divorce-suit coming on, under an ingenious little
statute (repealed now, I believe, but in virtue of which I have
seen several marriages annulled), of which the merits were these. 
The husband, whose name was Thomas Benjamin, had taken out his
marriage licence as Thomas only; suppressing the Benjamin, in case
he should not find himself as comfortable as he expected.  NOT
finding himself as comfortable as he expected, or being a little
fatigued with his wife, poor fellow, he now came forward, by a
friend, after being married a year or two, and declared that his
name was Thomas Benjamin, and therefore he was not married at all. 
Which the Court confirmed, to his great satisfaction.

I must say that I had my doubts about the strict justice of this,
and was not even frightened out of them by the bushel of wheat
which reconciles all anomalies.  But Mr. Spenlow argued the matter
with me.  He said, Look at the world, there was good and evil in
that; look at the ecclesiastical law, there was good and evil in
THAT.  It was all part of a system.  Very good.  There you were!

I had not the hardihood to suggest to Dora's father that possibly
we might even improve the world a little, if we got up early in the
morning, and took off our coats to the work; but I confessed that
I thought we might improve the Commons.  Mr. Spenlow replied that
he would particularly advise me to dismiss that idea from my mind,
as not being worthy of my gentlemanly character; but that he would
be glad to hear from me of what improvement I thought the Commons
susceptible?

Taking that part of the Commons which happened to be nearest to us
- for our man was unmarried by this time, and we were out of Court,
and strolling past the Prerogative Office - I submitted that I
thought the Prerogative Office rather a queerly managed
institution.  Mr. Spenlow inquired in what respect?  I replied,
with all due deference to his experience (but with more deference,
I am afraid, to his being Dora's father), that perhaps it was a
little nonsensical that the Registry of that Court, containing the
original wills of all persons leaving effects within the immense
province of Canterbury, for three whole centuries, should be an
accidental building, never designed for the purpose, leased by the
registrars for their Own private emolument, unsafe, not even
ascertained to be fire-proof, choked with the important documents
it held, and positively, from the roof to the basement, a mercenary
speculation of the registrars, who took great fees from the public,
and crammed the public's wills away anyhow and anywhere, having no
other object than to get rid of them cheaply.  That, perhaps, it
was a little unreasonable that these registrars in the receipt of
profits amounting to eight or nine thousand pounds a year (to say
nothing of the profits of the deputy registrars, and clerks of
seats), should not be obliged to spend a little of that money, in
finding a reasonably safe place for the important documents which
all classes of people were compelled to hand over to them, whether
they would or no.  That, perhaps, it was a little unjust, that all
the great offices in this great office should be magnificent
sinecures, while the unfortunate working-clerks in the cold dark
room upstairs were the worst rewarded, and the least considered
men, doing important services, in London.  That perhaps it was a
little indecent that the principal registrar of all, whose duty it
was to find the public, constantly resorting to this place, all
needful accommodation, should be an enormous sinecurist in virtue
of that post (and might be, besides, a clergyman, a pluralist, the
holder of a staff in a cathedral, and what not), - while the public
was put to the inconvenience of which we had a specimen every
afternoon when the office was busy, and which we knew to be quite
monstrous.  That, perhaps, in short, this Prerogative Office of the
diocese of Canterbury was altogether such a pestilent job, and such
a pernicious absurdity, that but for its being squeezed away in a
corner of St. Paul's Churchyard, which few people knew, it must
have been turned completely inside out, and upside down, long ago.

Mr. Spenlow smiled as I became modestly warm on the subject, and
then argued this question with me as he had argued the other.  He
said, what was it after all?  It was a question of feeling.  If the
public felt that their wills were in safe keeping, and took it for
granted that the office was not to be made better, who was the
worse for it?  Nobody.  Who was the better for it?  All the
Sinecurists.  Very well.  Then the good predominated.  It might not
be a perfect system; nothing was perfect; but what he objected to,
was, the insertion of the wedge.  Under the Prerogative Office, the
country had been glorious.  Insert the wedge into the Prerogative
Office, and the country would cease to be glorious.  He considered
it the principle of a gentleman to take things as he found them;
and he had no doubt the Prerogative Office would last our time.  I
deferred to his opinion, though I had great doubts of it myself. 
I find he was right, however; for it has not only lasted to the
present moment, but has done so in the teeth of a great
parliamentary report made (not too willingly) eighteen years ago,
when all these objections of mine were set forth in detail, and
when the existing stowage for wills was described as equal to the
accumulation of only two years and a half more.  What they have
done with them since; whether they have lost many, or whether they
sell any, now and then, to the butter shops; I don't know.  I am
glad mine is not there, and I hope it may not go there, yet awhile.

I have set all this down, in my present blissful chapter, because
here it comes into its natural place.  Mr. Spenlow and I falling
into this conversation, prolonged it and our saunter to and fro,
until we diverged into general topics.  And so it came about, in
the end, that Mr. Spenlow told me this day week was Dora's
birthday, and he would be glad if I would come down and join a
little picnic on the occasion.  I went out of my senses
immediately; became a mere driveller next day, on receipt of a
little lace-edged sheet of note-paper, 'Favoured by papa.  To
remind'; and passed the intervening period in a state of dotage.

I think I committed every possible absurdity in the way of
preparation for this blessed event.  I turn hot when I remember the
cravat I bought.  My boots might be placed in any collection of
instruments of torture.  I provided, and sent down by the Norwood
coach the night before, a delicate little hamper, amounting in
itself, I thought, almost to a declaration.  There were crackers in
it with the tenderest mottoes that could be got for money.  At six
in the morning, I was in Covent Garden Market, buying a bouquet for
Dora.  At ten I was on horseback (I hired a gallant grey, for the
occasion), with the bouquet in my hat, to keep it fresh, trotting
down to Norwood.

I suppose that when I saw Dora in the garden and pretended not to
see her, and rode past the house pretending to be anxiously looking
for it, I committed two small fooleries which other young gentlemen
in my circumstances might have committed - because they came so
very natural to me.  But oh! when I DID find the house, and DID
dismount at the garden-gate, and drag those stony-hearted boots
across the lawn to Dora sitting on a garden-seat under a lilac
tree, what a spectacle she was, upon that beautiful morning, among
the butterflies, in a white chip bonnet and a dress of celestial
blue!  There was a young lady with her - comparatively stricken in
years - almost twenty, I should say.  Her name was Miss Mills.  and
Dora called her Julia.  She was the bosom friend of Dora.  Happy
Miss Mills!

Jip was there, and Jip WOULD bark at me again.  When I presented my
bouquet, he gnashed his teeth with jealousy.  Well he might.  If he
had the least idea how I adored his mistress, well he might!

'Oh, thank you, Mr. Copperfield!  What dear flowers!' said Dora.

I had had an intention of saying (and had been studying the best
form of words for three miles) that I thought them beautiful before
I saw them so near HER.  But I couldn't manage it.  She was too
bewildering.  To see her lay the flowers against her little dimpled
chin, was to lose all presence of mind and power of language in a
feeble ecstasy.  I wonder I didn't say, 'Kill me, if you have a
heart, Miss Mills.  Let me die here!'

Then Dora held my flowers to Jip to smell.  Then Jip growled, and
wouldn't smell them.  Then Dora laughed, and held them a little
closer to Jip, to make him.  Then Jip laid hold of a bit of
geranium with his teeth, and worried imaginary cats in it.  Then
Dora beat him, and pouted, and said, 'My poor beautiful flowers!'
as compassionately, I thought, as if Jip had laid hold of me.  I
wished he had!

'You'll be so glad to hear, Mr. Copperfield,' said Dora, 'that that
cross Miss Murdstone is not here.  She has gone to her brother's
marriage, and will be away at least three weeks.  Isn't that
delightful?'

I said I was sure it must be delightful to her, and all that was
delightful to her was delightful to me.  Miss Mills, with an air of
superior wisdom and benevolence, smiled upon us.

'She is the most disagreeable thing I ever saw,' said Dora.  'You
can't believe how ill-tempered and shocking she is, Julia.'

'Yes, I can, my dear!' said Julia.

'YOU can, perhaps, love,' returned Dora, with her hand on julia's. 
'Forgive my not excepting you, my dear, at first.'

I learnt, from this, that Miss Mills had had her trials in the
course of a chequered existence; and that to these, perhaps, I
might refer that wise benignity of manner which I had already
noticed.  i found, in the course of the day, that this was the
case: Miss Mills having been unhappy in a misplaced affection, and
being understood to have retired from the world on her awful stock
of experience, but still to take a calm interest in the unblighted
hopes and loves of youth.

But now Mr. Spenlow came out of the house, and Dora went to him,
saying, 'Look, papa, what beautiful flowers!' And Miss Mills smiled
thoughtfully, as who should say, 'Ye Mayflies, enjoy your brief
existence in the bright morning of life!' And we all walked from
the lawn towards the carriage, which was getting ready.

I shall never have such a ride again.  I have never had such
another.  There were only those three, their hamper, my hamper, and
the guitar-case, in the phaeton; and, of course, the phaeton was
open; and I rode behind it, and Dora sat with her back to the
horses, looking towards me.  She kept the bouquet close to her on
the cushion, and wouldn't allow Jip to sit on that side of her at
all, for fear he should crush it.  She often carried it in her
hand, often refreshed herself with its fragrance.  Our eyes at
those times often met; and my great astonishment is that I didn't
go over the head of my gallant grey into the carriage.

There was dust, I believe.  There was a good deal of dust, I
believe.  I have a faint impression that Mr. Spenlow remonstrated
with me for riding in it; but I knew of none.  I was sensible of a
mist of love and beauty about Dora, but of nothing else.  He stood
up sometimes, and asked me what I thought of the prospect.  I said
it was delightful, and I dare say it was; but it was all Dora to
me.  The sun shone Dora, and the birds sang Dora.  The south wind
blew Dora, and the wild flowers in the hedges were all Doras, to a
bud.  My comfort is, Miss Mills understood me.  Miss Mills alone
could enter into my feelings thoroughly.

I don't know how long we were going, and to this hour I know as
little where we went.  Perhaps it was near Guildford.  Perhaps some
Arabian-night magician, opened up the place for the day, and shut
it up for ever when we came away.  It was a green spot, on a hill,
carpeted with soft turf.  There were shady trees, and heather, and,
as far as the eye could see, a rich landscape.

It was a trying thing to find people here, waiting for us; and my
jealousy, even of the ladies, knew no bounds.  But all of my own
sex - especially one impostor, three or four years my elder, with
a red whisker, on which he established an amount of presumption not
to be endured - were my mortal foes.

We all unpacked our baskets, and employed ourselves in getting
dinner ready.  Red Whisker pretended he could make a salad (which
I don't believe), and obtruded himself on public notice.  Some of
the young ladies washed the lettuces for him, and sliced them under
his directions.  Dora was among these.  I felt that fate had pitted
me against this man, and one of us must fall.

Red Whisker made his salad (I wondered how they could eat it. 
Nothing should have induced ME to touch it!) and voted himself into
the charge of the wine-cellar, which he constructed, being an
ingenious beast, in the hollow trunk of a tree.  By and by, I saw
him, with the majority of a lobster on his plate, eating his dinner
at the feet of Dora!

I have but an indistinct idea of what happened for some time after
this baleful object presented itself to my view.  I was very merry,
I know; but it was hollow merriment.  I attached myself to a young
creature in pink, with little eyes, and flirted with her
desperately.  She received my attentions with favour; but whether
on my account solely, or because she had any designs on Red
Whisker, I can't say.  Dora's health was drunk.  When I drank it,
I affected to interrupt my conversation for that purpose, and to
resume it immediately afterwards.  I caught Dora's eye as I bowed
to her, and I thought it looked appealing.  But it looked at me
over the head of Red Whisker, and I was adamant.

The young creature in pink had a mother in green; and I rather
think the latter separated us from motives of policy.  Howbeit,
there was a general breaking up of the party, while the remnants of
the dinner were being put away; and I strolled off by myself among
the trees, in a raging and remorseful state.  I was debating
whether I should pretend that I was not well, and fly - I don't
know where - upon my gallant grey, when Dora and Miss Mills met me.

'Mr. Copperfield,' said Miss Mills, 'you are dull.'

I begged her pardon.  Not at all.

'And Dora,' said Miss Mills, 'YOU are dull.'

Oh dear no!  Not in the least.

'Mr. Copperfield and Dora,' said Miss Mills, with an almost
venerable air.  'Enough of this.  Do not allow a trivial
misunderstanding to wither the blossoms of spring, which, once put
forth and blighted, cannot be renewed.  I speak,' said Miss Mills,
'from experience of the past - the remote, irrevocable past.  The
gushing fountains which sparkle in the sun, must not be stopped in
mere caprice; the oasis in the desert of Sahara must not be plucked
up idly.'

I hardly knew what I did, I was burning all over to that
extraordinary extent; but I took Dora's little hand and kissed it
- and she let me!  I kissed Miss Mills's hand; and we all seemed,
to my thinking, to go straight up to the seventh heaven.
We did not come down again.  We stayed up there all the evening. 
At first we strayed to and fro among the trees: I with Dora's shy
arm drawn through mine: and Heaven knows, folly as it all was, it
would have been a happy fate to have been struck immortal with
those foolish feelings, and have stayed among the trees for ever!

But, much too soon, we heard the others laughing and talking, and
calling 'where's Dora?' So we went back, and they wanted Dora to
sing.  Red Whisker would have got the guitar-case out of the
carriage, but Dora told him nobody knew where it was, but I.  So
Red Whisker was done for in a moment; and I got it, and I unlocked
it, and I took the guitar out, and I sat by her, and I held her
handkerchief and gloves, and I drank in every note of her dear
voice, and she sang to ME who loved her, and all the others might
applaud as much as they liked, but they had nothing to do with it!

I was intoxicated with joy.  I was afraid it was too happy to be
real, and that I should wake in Buckingham Street presently, and
hear Mrs. Crupp clinking the teacups in getting breakfast ready. 
But Dora sang, and others sang, and Miss Mills sang - about the
slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory; as if she were a
hundred years old - and the evening came on; and we had tea, with
the kettle boiling gipsy-fashion; and I was still as happy as ever.

I was happier than ever when the party broke up, and the other
people, defeated Red Whisker and all, went their several ways, and
we went ours through the still evening and the dying light, with
sweet scents rising up around us.  Mr. Spenlow being a little
drowsy after the champagne - honour to the soil that grew the
grape, to the grape that made the wine, to the sun that ripened it,
and to the merchant who adulterated it! - and being fast asleep in
a corner of the carriage, I rode by the side and talked to Dora. 
She admired my horse and patted him - oh, what a dear little hand
it looked upon a horse! - and her shawl would not keep right, and
now and then I drew it round her with my arm; and I even fancied
that Jip began to see how it was, and to understand that he must
make up his mind to be friends with me.

That sagacious Miss Mills, too; that amiable, though quite used up,
recluse; that little patriarch of something less than twenty, who
had done with the world, and mustn't on any account have the
slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory awakened; what a kind
thing she did!

'Mr. Copperfield,' said Miss Mills, 'come to this side of the
carriage a moment - if you can spare a moment.  I want to speak to
you.'

Behold me, on my gallant grey, bending at the side of Miss Mills,
with my hand upon the carriage door!

'Dora is coming to stay with me.  She is coming home with me the
day after tomorrow.  If you would like to call, I am sure papa
would be happy to see you.'
What could I do but invoke a silent blessing on Miss Mills's head,
and store Miss Mills's address in the securest corner of my memory!
What could I do but tell Miss Mills, with grateful looks and
fervent words, how much I appreciated her good offices, and what an
inestimable value I set upon her friendship!

Then Miss Mills benignantly dismissed me, saying, 'Go back to
Dora!' and I went; and Dora leaned out of the carriage to talk to
me, and we talked all the rest of the way; and I rode my gallant
grey so close to the wheel that I grazed his near fore leg against
it, and 'took the bark off', as his owner told me, 'to the tune of
three pun' sivin' - which I paid, and thought extremely cheap for
so much joy.  What time Miss Mills sat looking at the moon,
murmuring verses- and recalling, I suppose, the ancient days when
she and earth had anything in common.

Norwood was many miles too near, and we reached it many hours too
soon; but Mr. Spenlow came to himself a little short of it, and
said, 'You must come in, Copperfield, and rest!' and I consenting,
we had sandwiches and wine-and-water.  In the light room, Dora
blushing looked so lovely, that I could not tear myself away, but
sat there staring, in a dream, until the snoring of Mr. Spenlow
inspired me with sufficient consciousness to take my leave.  So we
parted; I riding all the way to London with the farewell touch of
Dora's hand still light on mine, recalling every incident and word
ten thousand times; lying down in my own bed at last, as enraptured
a young noodle as ever was carried out of his five wits by love.

When I awoke next morning, I was resolute to declare my passion to
Dora, and know my fate.  Happiness or misery was now the question. 
There was no other question that I knew of in the world, and only
Dora could give the answer to it.  I passed three days in a luxury
of wretchedness, torturing myself by putting every conceivable
variety of discouraging construction on all that ever had taken
place between Dora and me.  At last, arrayed for the purpose at a
vast expense, I went to Miss Mills's, fraught with a declaration.

How many times I went up and down the street, and round the square
- painfully aware of being a much better answer to the old riddle
than the original one - before I could persuade myself to go up the
steps and knock, is no matter now.  Even when, at last, I had
knocked, and was waiting at the door, I had some flurried thought
of asking if that were Mr. Blackboy's (in imitation of poor
Barkis), begging pardon, and retreating.  But I kept my ground.

Mr. Mills was not at home.  I did not expect he would be.  Nobody
wanted HIM.  Miss Mills was at home.  Miss Mills would do.

I was shown into a room upstairs, where Miss Mills and Dora were. 
Jip was there.  Miss Mills was copying music (I recollect, it was
a new song, called 'Affection's Dirge'), and Dora was painting
flowers.  What were my feelings, when I recognized my own flowers;
the identical Covent Garden Market purchase!  I cannot say that
they were very like, or that they particularly resembled any
flowers that have ever come under my observation; but I knew from
the paper round them which was accurately copied, what the
composition was.

Miss Mills was very glad to see me, and very sorry her papa was not
at home: though I thought we all bore that with fortitude.  Miss
Mills was conversational for a few minutes, and then, laying down
her pen upon 'Affection's Dirge', got up, and left the room.

I began to think I would put it off till tomorrow.

'I hope your poor horse was not tired, when he got home at night,'
said Dora, lifting up her beautiful eyes.  'It was a long way for
him.'

I began to think I would do it today.

'It was a long way for him,' said I, 'for he had nothing to uphold
him on the journey.'

'Wasn't he fed, poor thing?' asked Dora.

I began to think I would put it off till tomorrow.

'Ye-yes,' I said, 'he was well taken care of.  I mean he had not
the unutterable happiness that I had in being so near you.'

Dora bent her head over her drawing and said, after a little while
- I had sat, in the interval, in a burning fever, and with my legs
in a very rigid state -

'You didn't seem to be sensible of that happiness yourself, at one
time of the day.'

I saw now that I was in for it, and it must be done on the spot.

'You didn't care for that happiness in the least,' said Dora,
slightly raising her eyebrows, and shaking her head, 'when you were
sitting by Miss Kitt.'

Kitt, I should observe, was the name of the creature in pink, with
the little eyes.

'Though certainly I don't know why you should,' said Dora, or why
you should call it a happiness at all.  But of course you don't
mean what you say.  And I am sure no one doubts your being at
liberty to do whatever you like.  Jip, you naughty boy, come here!'

I don't know how I did it.  I did it in a moment.  I intercepted
Jip.  I had Dora in my arms.  I was full of eloquence.  I never
stopped for a word.  I told her how I loved her.  I told her I
should die without her.  I told her that I idolized and worshipped
her.  Jip barked madly all the time.

When Dora hung her head and cried, and trembled, my eloquence
increased so much the more.  If she would like me to die for her,
she had but to say the word, and I was ready.  Life without Dora's
love was not a thing to have on any terms.  I couldn't bear it, and
I wouldn't.  I had loved her every minute, day and night, since I
first saw her.  I loved her at that minute to distraction.  I
should always love her, every minute, to distraction.  Lovers had
loved before, and lovers would love again; but no lover had loved,
might, could, would, or should ever love, as I loved Dora.  The
more I raved, the more Jip barked.  Each of us, in his own way, got
more mad every moment.

Well, well!  Dora and I were sitting on the sofa by and by, quiet
enough, and Jip was lying in her lap, winking peacefully at me.  It
was off my mind.  I was in a state of perfect rapture.  Dora and I
were engaged.

I suppose we had some notion that this was to end in marriage.  We
must have had some, because Dora stipulated that we were never to
be married without her papa's consent.  But, in our youthful
ecstasy, I don't think that we really looked before us or behind
us; or had any aspiration beyond the ignorant present.  We were to
keep our secret from Mr. Spenlow; but I am sure the idea never
entered my head, then, that there was anything dishonourable in
that.

Miss Mills was more than usually pensive when Dora, going to find
her, brought her back; - I apprehend, because there was a tendency
in what had passed to awaken the slumbering echoes in the caverns
of Memory.  But she gave us her blessing, and the assurance of her
lasting friendship, and spoke to us, generally, as became a Voice
from the Cloister.

What an idle time it was!  What an insubstantial, happy, foolish
time it was!

When I measured Dora's finger for a ring that was to be made of
Forget-me-nots, and when the jeweller, to whom I took the measure,
found me out, and laughed over his order-book, and charged me
anything he liked for the pretty little toy, with its blue stones
- so associated in my remembrance with Dora's hand, that yesterday,
when I saw such another, by chance, on the finger of my own
daughter, there was a momentary stirring in my heart, like pain!

When I walked about, exalted with my secret, and full of my own
interest, and felt the dignity of loving Dora, and of being
beloved, so much, that if I had walked the air, I could not have
been more above the people not so situated, who were creeping on
the earth!

When we had those meetings in the garden of the square, and sat
within the dingy summer-house, so happy, that I love the London
sparrows to this hour, for nothing else, and see the plumage of the
tropics in their smoky feathers!
When we had our first great quarrel (within a week of our
betrothal), and when Dora sent me back the ring, enclosed in a
despairing cocked-hat note, wherein she used the terrible
expression that 'our love had begun in folly, and ended in
madness!' which dreadful words occasioned me to tear my hair, and
cry that all was over!

When, under cover of the night, I flew to Miss Mills, whom I saw by
stealth in a back kitchen where there was a mangle, and implored
Miss Mills to interpose between us and avert insanity.  When Miss
Mills undertook the office and returned with Dora, exhorting us,
from the pulpit of her own bitter youth, to mutual concession, and
the avoidance of the Desert of Sahara!

When we cried, and made it up, and were so blest again, that the
back kitchen, mangle and all, changed to Love's own temple, where
we arranged a plan of correspondence through Miss Mills, always to
comprehend at least one letter on each side every day!

What an idle time!  What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time!  Of
all the times of mine that Time has in his grip, there is none that
in one retrospect I can smile at half so much, and think of half so
tenderly.

CHAPTER 34
MY AUNT ASTONISHES ME

I wrote to Agnes as soon as Dora and I were engaged.  I wrote her
a long letter, in which I tried to make her comprehend how blest I
was, and what a darling Dora was.  I entreated Agnes not to regard
this as a thoughtless passion which could ever yield to any other,
or had the least resemblance to the boyish fancies that we used to
joke about.  I assured her that its profundity was quite
unfathomable, and expressed my belief that nothing like it had ever
been known.

Somehow, as I wrote to Agnes on a fine evening by my open window,
and the remembrance of her clear calm eyes and gentle face came
stealing over me, it shed such a peaceful influence upon the hurry
and agitation in which I had been living lately, and of which my
very happiness partook in some degree, that it soothed me into
tears.  I remember that I sat resting my head upon my hand, when
the letter was half done, cherishing a general fancy as if Agnes
were one of the elements of my natural home.  As if, in the
retirement of the house made almost sacred to me by her presence,
Dora and I must be happier than anywhere.  As if, in love, joy,
sorrow, hope, or disappointment; in all emotions; my heart turned
naturally there, and found its refuge and best friend.

Of Steerforth I said nothing.  I only told her there had been sad
grief at Yarmouth, on account of Emily's flight; and that on me it
made a double wound, by reason of the circumstances attending it. 
I knew how quick she always was to divine the truth, and that she
would never be the first to breathe his name.

To this letter, I received an answer by return of post.  As I read
it, I seemed to hear Agnes speaking to me.  It was like her cordial
voice in my ears.  What can I say more!

While I had been away from home lately, Traddles had called twice
or thrice.  Finding Peggotty within, and being informed by Peggotty
(who always volunteered that information to whomsoever would
receive it), that she was my old nurse, he had established a
good-humoured acquaintance with her, and had stayed to have a
little chat with her about me.  So Peggotty said; but I am afraid
the chat was all on her own side, and of immoderate length, as she
was very difficult indeed to stop, God bless her! when she had me
for her theme.

This reminds me, not only that I expected Traddles on a certain
afternoon of his own appointing, which was now come, but that Mrs.
Crupp had resigned everything appertaining to her office (the
salary excepted) until Peggotty should cease to present herself. 
Mrs. Crupp, after holding divers conversations respecting Peggotty,
in a very high-pitched voice, on the staircase - with some
invisible Familiar it would appear, for corporeally speaking she
was quite alone at those times - addressed a letter to me,
developing her views.  Beginning it with that statement of
universal application, which fitted every occurrence of her life,
namely, that she was a mother herself, she went on to inform me
that she had once seen very different days, but that at all periods
of her existence she had had a constitutional objection to spies,
intruders, and informers.  She named no names, she said; let them
the cap fitted, wear it; but spies, intruders, and informers,
especially in widders' weeds (this clause was underlined), she had
ever accustomed herself to look down upon.  If a gentleman was the
victim of spies, intruders, and informers (but still naming no
names), that was his own pleasure.  He had a right to please
himself; so let him do.  All that she, Mrs. Crupp, stipulated for,
was, that she should not be 'brought in contract' with such
persons.  Therefore she begged to be excused from any further
attendance on the top set, until things were as they formerly was,
and as they could be wished to be; and further mentioned that her
little book would be found upon the breakfast-table every Saturday
morning, when she requested an immediate settlement of the same,
with the benevolent view of saving trouble 'and an ill-conwenience'
to all parties.

After this, Mrs. Crupp confined herself to making pitfalls on the
stairs, principally with pitchers, and endeavouring to delude
Peggotty into breaking her legs.  I found it rather harassing to
live in this state of siege, but was too much afraid of Mrs. Crupp
to see any way out of it.

'My dear Copperfield,' cried Traddles, punctually appearing at my
door, in spite of all these obstacles, 'how do you do?'

'My dear Traddles,' said I, 'I am delighted to see you at last, and
very sorry I have not been at home before.  But I have been so much
engaged -'

'Yes, yes, I know,' said Traddles, 'of course.  Yours lives in
London, I think.'

'What did you say?'

'She - excuse me - Miss D., you know,' said Traddles, colouring in
his great delicacy, 'lives in London, I believe?'

'Oh yes.  Near London.'

'Mine, perhaps you recollect,' said Traddles, with a serious look,
'lives down in Devonshire - one of ten.  Consequently, I am not so
much engaged as you - in that sense.'

'I wonder you can bear,' I returned, 'to see her so seldom.'

'Hah!' said Traddles, thoughtfully.  'It does seem a wonder.  I
suppose it is, Copperfield, because there is no help for it?'

'I suppose so,' I replied with a smile, and not without a blush. 
'And because you have so much constancy and patience, Traddles.'

'Dear me!' said Traddles, considering about it, 'do I strike you in
that way, Copperfield?  Really I didn't know that I had.  But she
is such an extraordinarily dear girl herself, that it's possible
she may have imparted something of those virtues to me.  Now you
mention it, Copperfield, I shouldn't wonder at all.  I assure you
she is always forgetting herself, and taking care of the other
nine.'

'Is she the eldest?' I inquired.

'Oh dear, no,' said Traddles.  'The eldest is a Beauty.'

He saw, I suppose, that I could not help smiling at the simplicity
of this reply; and added, with a smile upon his own ingenuous face:

'Not, of course, but that my Sophy - pretty name, Copperfield, I
always think?'

'Very pretty!' said I.

'Not, of course, but that Sophy is beautiful too in my eyes, and
would be one of the dearest girls that ever was, in anybody's eyes
(I should think).  But when I say the eldest is a Beauty, I mean
she really is a -' he seemed to be describing clouds about himself,
with both hands: 'Splendid, you know,' said Traddles,
energetically.
'Indeed!' said I.

'Oh, I assure you,' said Traddles, 'something very uncommon,
indeed!  Then, you know, being formed for society and admiration,
and not being able to enjoy much of it in consequence of their
limited means, she naturally gets a little irritable and exacting,
sometimes.  Sophy puts her in good humour!'

'Is Sophy the youngest?' I hazarded.

'Oh dear, no!' said Traddles, stroking his chin.  'The two youngest
are only nine and ten.  Sophy educates 'em.'

'The second daughter, perhaps?' I hazarded.

'No,' said Traddles.  'Sarah's the second.  Sarah has something the
matter with her spine, poor girl.  The malady will wear out by and
by, the doctors say, but in the meantime she has to lie down for a
twelvemonth.  Sophy nurses her.  Sophy's the fourth.'

'Is the mother living?' I inquired.

'Oh yes,' said Traddles, 'she is alive.  She is a very superior
woman indeed, but the damp country is not adapted to her
constitution, and - in fact, she has lost the use of her limbs.'

'Dear me!' said I.

'Very sad, is it not?' returned Traddles.  'But in a merely
domestic view it is not so bad as it might be, because Sophy takes
her place.  She is quite as much a mother to her mother, as she is
to the other nine.'

I felt the greatest admiration for the virtues of this young lady;
and, honestly with the view of doing my best to prevent the
good-nature of Traddles from being imposed upon, to the detriment
of their joint prospects in life, inquired how Mr. Micawber was?

'He is quite well, Copperfield, thank you,' said Traddles.  'I am
not living with him at present.'

'No?'

'No.  You see the truth is,' said Traddles, in a whisper, 'he had
changed his name to Mortimer, in consequence of his temporary
embarrassments; and he don't come out till after dark - and then in
spectacles.  There was an execution put into our house, for rent. 
Mrs. Micawber was in such a dreadful state that I really couldn't
resist giving my name to that second bill we spoke of here.  You
may imagine how delightful it was to my feelings, Copperfield, to
see the matter settled with it, and Mrs. Micawber recover her
spirits.'

'Hum!' said I.
'Not that her happiness was of long duration,' pursued Traddles,
'for, unfortunately, within a week another execution came in.  It
broke up the establishment.  I have been living in a furnished
apartment since then, and the Mortimers have been very private
indeed.  I hope you won't think it selfish, Copperfield, if I
mention that the broker carried off my little round table with the
marble top, and Sophy's flower-pot and stand?'

'What a hard thing!' I exclaimed indignantly.

'It was a - it was a pull,' said Traddles, with his usual wince at
that expression.  'I don't mention it reproachfully, however, but
with a motive.  The fact is, Copperfield, I was unable to
repurchase them at the time of their seizure; in the first place,
because the broker, having an idea that I wanted them, ran the
price up to an extravagant extent; and, in the second place,
because I - hadn't any money.  Now, I have kept my eye since, upon
the broker's shop,' said Traddles, with a great enjoyment of his
mystery, 'which is up at the top of Tottenham Court Road, and, at
last, today I find them put out for sale.  I have only noticed them
from over the way, because if the broker saw me, bless you, he'd
ask any price for them!  What has occurred to me, having now the
money, is, that perhaps you wouldn't object to ask that good nurse
of yours to come with me to the shop - I can show it her from round
the corner of the next street - and make the best bargain for them,
as if they were for herself, that she can!'

The delight with which Traddles propounded this plan to me, and the
sense he had of its uncommon artfulness, are among the freshest
things in my remembrance.

I told him that my old nurse would be delighted to assist him, and
that we would all three take the field together, but on one
condition.  That condition was, that he should make a solemn
resolution to grant no more loans of his name, or anything else, to
Mr. Micawber.

'My dear Copperfield,' said Traddles, 'I have already done so,
because I begin to feel that I have not only been inconsiderate,
but that I have been positively unjust to Sophy.  My word being
passed to myself, there is no longer any apprehension; but I pledge
it to you, too, with the greatest readiness.  That first unlucky
obligation, I have paid.  I have no doubt Mr. Micawber would have
paid it if he could, but he could not.  One thing I ought to
mention, which I like very much in Mr. Micawber, Copperfield.  It
refers to the second obligation, which is not yet due.  He don't
tell me that it is provided for, but he says it WILL BE.  Now, I
think there is something very fair and honest about that!'

I was unwilling to damp my good friend's confidence, and therefore
assented.  After a little further conversation, we went round to
the chandler's shop, to enlist Peggotty; Traddles declining to pass
the evening with me, both because he endured the liveliest
apprehensions that his property would be bought by somebody else
before he could re-purchase it, and because it was the evening he
always devoted to writing to the dearest girl in the world.

I never shall forget him peeping round the corner of the street in
Tottenham Court Road, while Peggotty was bargaining for the
precious articles; or his agitation when she came slowly towards us
after vainly offering a price, and was hailed by the relenting
broker, and went back again.  The end of the negotiation was, that
she bought the property on tolerably easy terms, and Traddles was
transported with pleasure.

'I am very much obliged to you, indeed,' said Traddles, on hearing
it was to be sent to where he lived, that night.  'If I might ask
one other favour, I hope you would not think it absurd,
Copperfield?'

I said beforehand, certainly not.

'Then if you WOULD be good enough,' said Traddles to Peggotty, 'to
get the flower-pot now, I think I should like (it being Sophy's,
Copperfield) to carry it home myself!'

Peggotty was glad to get it for him, and he overwhelmed her with
thanks, and went his way up Tottenham Court Road, carrying the
flower-pot affectionately in his arms, with one of the most
delighted expressions of countenance I ever saw.

We then turned back towards my chambers.  As the shops had charms
for Peggotty which I never knew them possess in the same degree for
anybody else, I sauntered easily along, amused by her staring in at
the windows, and waiting for her as often as she chose.  We were
thus a good while in getting to the Adelphi.

On our way upstairs, I called her attention to the sudden
disappearance of Mrs. Crupp's pitfalls, and also to the prints of
recent footsteps.  We were both very much surprised, coming higher
up, to find my outer door standing open (which I had shut) and to
hear voices inside.

We looked at one another, without knowing what to make of this, and
went into the sitting-room.  What was my amazement to find, of all
people upon earth, my aunt there, and Mr. Dick!  My aunt sitting on
a quantity of luggage, with her two birds before her, and her cat
on her knee, like a female Robinson Crusoe, drinking tea.  Mr. Dick
leaning thoughtfully on a great kite, such as we had often been out
together to fly, with more luggage piled about him!

'My dear aunt!' cried I.  'Why, what an unexpected pleasure!'

We cordially embraced; and Mr. Dick and I cordially shook hands;
and Mrs. Crupp, who was busy making tea, and could not be too
attentive, cordially said she had knowed well as Mr. Copperfull
would have his heart in his mouth, when he see his dear relations.

'Holloa!' said my aunt to Peggotty, who quailed before her awful
presence.  'How are YOU?'

'You remember my aunt, Peggotty?' said I.

'For the love of goodness, child,' exclaimed my aunt, 'don't call
the woman by that South Sea Island name!  If she married and got
rid of it, which was the best thing she could do, why don't you
give her the benefit of the change?  What's your name now, - P?'
said my aunt, as a compromise for the obnoxious appellation.

'Barkis, ma'am,' said Peggotty, with a curtsey.

'Well!  That's human,' said my aunt.  'It sounds less as if you
wanted a missionary.  How d'ye do, Barkis?  I hope you're well?'

Encouraged by these gracious words, and by my aunt's extending her
hand, Barkis came forward, and took the hand, and curtseyed her
acknowledgements.

'We are older than we were, I see,' said my aunt.  'We have only
met each other once before, you know.  A nice business we made of
it then!  Trot, my dear, another cup.'

I handed it dutifully to my aunt, who was in her usual inflexible
state of figure; and ventured a remonstrance with her on the
subject of her sitting on a box.

'Let me draw the sofa here, or the easy-chair, aunt,' said I.  'Why
should you be so uncomfortable?'

'Thank you, Trot,' replied my aunt, 'I prefer to sit upon my
property.'  Here my aunt looked hard at Mrs. Crupp, and observed,
'We needn't trouble you to wait, ma'am.'

'Shall I put a little more tea in the pot afore I go, ma'am?' said
Mrs. Crupp.

'No, I thank you, ma'am,' replied my aunt.

'Would you let me fetch another pat of butter, ma'am?' said Mrs.
Crupp.  'Or would you be persuaded to try a new-laid hegg?  or
should I brile a rasher?  Ain't there nothing I could do for your
dear aunt, Mr. Copperfull?'

'Nothing, ma'am,' returned my aunt.  'I shall do very well, I thank
you.'

Mrs. Crupp, who had been incessantly smiling to express sweet
temper, and incessantly holding her head on one side, to express a
general feebleness of constitution, and incessantly rubbing her
hands, to express a desire to be of service to all deserving
objects, gradually smiled herself, one-sided herself, and rubbed
herself, out of the room.
'Dick!' said my aunt.  'You know what I told you about time-servers
and wealth-worshippers?'

Mr. Dick - with rather a scared look, as if he had forgotten it -
returned a hasty answer in the affirmative.

'Mrs. Crupp is one of them,' said my aunt.  'Barkis, I'll trouble
you to look after the tea, and let me have another cup, for I don't
fancy that woman's pouring-out!'

I knew my aunt sufficiently well to know that she had something of
importance on her mind, and that there was far more matter in this
arrival than a stranger might have supposed.  I noticed how her eye
lighted on me, when she thought my attention otherwise occupied;
and what a curious process of hesitation appeared to be going on
within her, while she preserved her outward stiffness and
composure.  I began to reflect whether I had done anything to
offend her; and my conscience whispered me that I had not yet told
her about Dora.  Could it by any means be that, I wondered!

As I knew she would only speak in her own good time, I sat down
near her, and spoke to the birds, and played with the cat, and was
as easy as I could be.  But I was very far from being really easy;
and I should still have been so, even if Mr. Dick, leaning over the
great kite behind my aunt, had not taken every secret opportunity
of shaking his head darkly at me, and pointing at her.

'Trot,' said my aunt at last, when she had finished her tea, and
carefully smoothed down her dress, and wiped her lips - 'you
needn't go, Barkis! - Trot, have you got to be firm and
self-reliant?'

'I hope so, aunt.'

'What do you think?' inquired Miss Betsey.

'I think so, aunt.'

'Then why, my love,' said my aunt, looking earnestly at me, 'why do
you think I prefer to sit upon this property of mine tonight?'

I shook my head, unable to guess.

'Because,' said my aunt, 'it's all I have.  Because I'm ruined, my
dear!'

If the house, and every one of us, had tumbled out into the river
together, I could hardly have received a greater shock.

'Dick knows it,' said my aunt, laying her hand calmly on my
shoulder.  'I am ruined, my dear Trot!  All I have in the world is
in this room, except the cottage; and that I have left Janet to
let.  Barkis, I want to get a bed for this gentleman tonight.  To
save expense, perhaps you can make up something here for myself. 
Anything will do.  It's only for tonight.  We'll talk about this,
more, tomorrow.'

I was roused from my amazement, and concern for her - I am sure,
for her - by her falling on my neck, for a moment, and crying that
she only grieved for me.  In another moment she suppressed this
emotion; and said with an aspect more triumphant than dejected:

'We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us,
my dear.  We must learn to act the play out.  We must live
misfortune down, Trot!'

CHAPTER 35
DEPRESSION

As soon as I could recover my presence of mind, which quite
deserted me in the first overpowering shock of my aunt's
intelligence, I proposed to Mr. Dick to come round to the
chandler's shop, and take possession of the bed which Mr. Peggotty
had lately vacated.  The chandler's shop being in Hungerford
Market, and Hungerford Market being a very different place in those
days, there was a low wooden colonnade before the door (not very
unlike that before the house where the little man and woman used to
live, in the old weather-glass), which pleased Mr. Dick mightily. 
The glory of lodging over this structure would have compensated
him, I dare say, for many inconveniences; but, as there were really
few to bear, beyond the compound of flavours I have already
mentioned, and perhaps the want of a little more elbow-room, he was
perfectly charmed with his accommodation.  Mrs. Crupp had
indignantly assured him that there wasn't room to swing a cat
there; but, as Mr. Dick justly observed to me, sitting down on the
foot of the bed, nursing his leg, 'You know, Trotwood, I don't want
to swing a cat.  I never do swing a cat.  Therefore, what does that
signify to ME!'

I tried to ascertain whether Mr. Dick had any understanding of the
causes of this sudden and great change in my aunt's affairs.  As I
might have expected, he had none at all.  The only account he could
give of it was, that my aunt had said to him, the day before
yesterday, 'Now, Dick, are you really and truly the philosopher I
take you for?' That then he had said, Yes, he hoped so.  That then
my aunt had said, 'Dick, I am ruined.'  That then he had said, 'Oh,
indeed!' That then my aunt had praised him highly, which he was
glad of.  And that then they had come to me, and had had bottled
porter and sandwiches on the road.

Mr. Dick was so very complacent, sitting on the foot of the bed,
nursing his leg, and telling me this, with his eyes wide open and
a surprised smile, that I am sorry to say I was provoked into
explaining to him that ruin meant distress, want, and starvation;
but I was soon bitterly reproved for this harshness, by seeing his
face turn pale, and tears course down his lengthened cheeks, while
he fixed upon me a look of such unutterable woe, that it might have
softened a far harder heart than mine.  I took infinitely greater
pains to cheer him up again than I had taken to depress him; and I
soon understood (as I ought to have known at first) that he had
been so confident, merely because of his faith in the wisest and
most wonderful of women, and his unbounded reliance on my
intellectual resources.  The latter, I believe, he considered a
match for any kind of disaster not absolutely mortal.

'What can we do, Trotwood?' said Mr. Dick.  'There's the Memorial
-'

'To be sure there is,' said I.  'But all we can do just now, Mr.
Dick, is to keep a cheerful countenance, and not let my aunt see
that we are thinking about it.'

He assented to this in the most earnest manner; and implored me, if
I should see him wandering an inch out of the right course, to
recall him by some of those superior methods which were always at
my command.  But I regret to state that the fright I had given him
proved too much for his best attempts at concealment.  All the
evening his eyes wandered to my aunt's face, with an expression of
the most dismal apprehension, as if he saw her growing thin on the
spot.  He was conscious of this, and put a constraint upon his
head; but his keeping that immovable, and sitting rolling his eyes
like a piece of machinery, did not mend the matter at all.  I saw
him look at the loaf at supper (which happened to be a small one),
as if nothing else stood between us and famine; and when my aunt
insisted on his making his customary repast, I detected him in the
act of pocketing fragments of his bread and cheese; I have no doubt
for the purpose of reviving us with those savings, when we should
have reached an advanced stage of attenuation.

My aunt, on the other hand, was in a composed frame of mind, which
was a lesson to all of us - to me, I am sure.  She was extremely
gracious to Peggotty, except when I inadvertently called her by
that name; and, strange as I knew she felt in London, appeared
quite at home.  She was to have my bed, and I was to lie in the
sitting-room, to keep guard over her.  She made a great point of
being so near the river, in case of a conflagration; and I suppose
really did find some satisfaction in that circumstance.

'Trot, my dear,' said my aunt, when she saw me making preparations
for compounding her usual night-draught, 'No!'

'Nothing, aunt?'

'Not wine, my dear.  Ale.'

'But there is wine here, aunt.  And you always have it made of
wine.'

'Keep that, in case of sickness,' said my aunt.  'We mustn't use it
carelessly, Trot.  Ale for me.  Half a pint.'

I thought Mr. Dick would have fallen, insensible.  My aunt being
resolute, I went out and got the ale myself.  As it was growing
late, Peggotty and Mr. Dick took that opportunity of repairing to
the chandler's shop together.  I parted from him, poor fellow, at
the corner of the street, with his great kite at his back, a very
monument of human misery.

My aunt was walking up and down the room when I returned, crimping
the borders of her nightcap with her fingers.  I warmed the ale and
made the toast on the usual infallible principles.  When it was
ready for her, she was ready for it, with her nightcap on, and the
skirt of her gown turned back on her knees.

'My dear,' said my aunt, after taking a spoonful of it; 'it's a
great deal better than wine.  Not half so bilious.'

I suppose I looked doubtful, for she added:

'Tut, tut, child.  If nothing worse than Ale happens to us, we are
well off.'

'I should think so myself, aunt, I am sure,' said I.

'Well, then, why DON'T you think so?' said my aunt.

'Because you and I are very different people,' I returned.

'Stuff and nonsense, Trot!' replied my aunt.

MY aunt went on with a quiet enjoyment, in which there was very
little affectation, if any; drinking the warm ale with a tea-spoon,
and soaking her strips of toast in it.

'Trot,' said she, 'I don't care for strange faces in general, but
I rather like that Barkis of yours, do you know!'

'It's better than a hundred pounds to hear you say so!' said I.

'It's a most extraordinary world,' observed my aunt, rubbing her
nose; 'how that woman ever got into it with that name, is
unaccountable to me.  It would be much more easy to be born a
Jackson, or something of that sort, one would think.'

'Perhaps she thinks so, too; it's not her fault,' said I.

'I suppose not,' returned my aunt, rather grudging the admission;
'but it's very aggravating.  However, she's Barkis now.  That's
some comfort.  Barkis is uncommonly fond of you, Trot.'

'There is nothing she would leave undone to prove it,' said I.

'Nothing, I believe,' returned my aunt.  'Here, the poor fool has
been begging and praying about handing over some of her money -
because she has got too much of it.  A simpleton!'

My aunt's tears of pleasure were positively trickling down into the
warm ale.

'She's the most ridiculous creature that ever was born,' said my
aunt.  'I knew, from the first moment when I saw her with that poor
dear blessed baby of a mother of yours, that she was the most
ridiculous of mortals.  But there are good points in Barkis!'

Affecting to laugh, she got an opportunity of putting her hand to
her eyes.  Having availed herself of it, she resumed her toast and
her discourse together.

'Ah!  Mercy upon us!' sighed my aunt.  'I know all about it, Trot!
Barkis and myself had quite a gossip while you were out with Dick. 
I know all about it.  I don't know where these wretched girls
expect to go to, for my part.  I wonder they don't knock out their
brains against - against mantelpieces,' said my aunt; an idea which
was probably suggested to her by her contemplation of mine.

'Poor Emily!' said I.

'Oh, don't talk to me about poor,' returned my aunt.  'She should
have thought of that, before she caused so much misery!  Give me a
kiss, Trot.  I am sorry for your early experience.'

As I bent forward, she put her tumbler on my knee to detain me, and
said:

'Oh, Trot, Trot!  And so you fancy yourself in love!  Do you?'

'Fancy, aunt!' I exclaimed, as red as I could be.  'I adore her
with my whole soul!'

'Dora, indeed!' returned my aunt.  'And you mean to say the little
thing is very fascinating, I suppose?'

'My dear aunt,' I replied, 'no one can form the least idea what she
is!'

'Ah!  And not silly?' said my aunt.

'Silly, aunt!'

I seriously believe it had never once entered my head for a single
moment, to consider whether she was or not.  I resented the idea,
of course; but I was in a manner struck by it, as a new one
altogether.

'Not light-headed?' said my aunt.

'Light-headed, aunt!' I could only repeat this daring speculation
with the same kind of feeling with which I had repeated the
preceding question.

'Well, well!' said my aunt.  'I only ask.  I don't depreciate her. 
Poor little couple!  And so you think you were formed for one
another, and are to go through a party-supper-table kind of life,
like two pretty pieces of confectionery, do you, Trot?'

She asked me this so kindly, and with such a gentle air, half
playful and half sorrowful, that I was quite touched.

'We are young and inexperienced, aunt, I know,' I replied; 'and I
dare say we say and think a good deal that is rather foolish.  But
we love one another truly, I am sure.  If I thought Dora could ever
love anybody else, or cease to love me; or that I could ever love
anybody else, or cease to love her; I don't know what I should do
- go out of my mind, I think!'

'Ah, Trot!' said my aunt, shaking her head, and smiling gravely;
'blind, blind, blind!'

'Someone that I know, Trot,' my aunt pursued, after a pause,
'though of a very pliant disposition, has an earnestness of
affection in him that reminds me of poor Baby.  Earnestness is what
that Somebody must look for, to sustain him and improve him, Trot. 
Deep, downright, faithful earnestness.'

'If you only knew the earnestness of Dora, aunt!' I cried.

'Oh, Trot!' she said again; 'blind, blind!' and without knowing
why, I felt a vague unhappy loss or want of something overshadow me
like a cloud.

'However,' said my aunt, 'I don't want to put two young creatures
out of conceit with themselves, or to make them unhappy; so, though
it is a girl and boy attachment, and girl and boy attachments very
often - mind! I don't say always! - come to nothing, still we'll be
serious about it, and hope for a prosperous issue one of these
days.  There's time enough for it to come to anything!'

This was not upon the whole very comforting to a rapturous lover;
but I was glad to have my aunt in my confidence, and I was mindful
of her being fatigued.  So I thanked her ardently for this mark of
her affection, and for all her other kindnesses towards me; and
after a tender good night, she took her nightcap into my bedroom.

How miserable I was, when I lay down!  How I thought and thought
about my being poor, in Mr. Spenlow's eyes; about my not being what
I thought I was, when I proposed to Dora; about the chivalrous
necessity of telling Dora what my worldly condition was, and
releasing her from her engagement if she thought fit; about how I
should contrive to live, during the long term of my articles, when
I was earning nothing; about doing something to assist my aunt, and
seeing no way of doing anything; about coming down to have no money
in my pocket, and to wear a shabby coat, and to be able to carry
Dora no little presents, and to ride no gallant greys, and to show
myself in no agreeable light!  Sordid and selfish as I knew it was,
and as I tortured myself by knowing that it was, to let my mind run
on my own distress so much, I was so devoted to Dora that I could
not help it.  I knew that it was base in me not to think more of my
aunt, and less of myself; but, so far, selfishness was inseparable
from Dora, and I could not put Dora on one side for any mortal
creature.  How exceedingly miserable I was, that night!

As to sleep, I had dreams of poverty in all sorts of shapes, but I
seemed to dream without the previous ceremony of going to sleep. 
Now I was ragged, wanting to sell Dora matches, six bundles for a
halfpenny; now I was at the office in a nightgown and boots,
remonstrated with by Mr. Spenlow on appearing before the clients in
that airy attire; now I was hungrily picking up the crumbs that
fell from old Tiffey's daily biscuit, regularly eaten when St.
Paul's struck one; now I was hopelessly endeavouring to get a
licence to marry Dora, having nothing but one of Uriah Heep's
gloves to offer in exchange, which the whole Commons rejected; and
still, more or less conscious of my own room, I was always tossing
about like a distressed ship in a sea of bed-clothes.

My aunt was restless, too, for I frequently heard her walking to
and fro.  Two or,three times in the course of the night, attired in
a long flannel wrapper in which she looked seven feet high, she
appeared, like a disturbed ghost, in my room, and came to the side
of the sofa on which I lay.  On the first occasion I started up in
alarm, to learn that she inferred from a particular light in the
sky, that Westminster Abbey was on fire; and to be consulted in
reference to the probability of its igniting Buckingham Street, in
case the wind changed.  Lying still, after that, I found that she
sat down near me, whispering to herself 'Poor boy!' And then it
made me twenty times more wretched, to know how unselfishly mindful
she was of me, and how selfishly mindful I was of myself.

It was difficult to believe that a night so long to me, could be
short to anybody else.  This consideration set me thinking and
thinking of an imaginary party where people were dancing the hours
away, until that became a dream too, and I heard the music
incessantly playing one tune, and saw Dora incessantly dancing one
dance, without taking the least notice of me.  The man who had been
playing the harp all night, was trying in vain to cover it with an
ordinary-sized nightcap, when I awoke; or I should rather say, when
I left off trying to go to sleep, and saw the sun shining in
through the window at last.

There was an old Roman bath in those days at the bottom of one of
the streets out of the Strand - it may be there still - in which I
have had many a cold plunge.  Dressing myself as quietly as I
could, and leaving Peggotty to look after my aunt, I tumbled head
foremost into it, and then went for a walk to Hampstead.  I had a
hope that this brisk treatment might freshen my wits a little; and
I think it did them good, for I soon came to the conclusion that
the first step I ought to take was, to try if my articles could be
cancelled and the premium recovered.  I got some breakfast on the
Heath, and walked back to Doctors' Commons, along the watered roads

and through a pleasant smell of summer flowers, growing in gardens
and carried into town on hucksters' heads, intent on this first
effort to meet our altered circumstances.

I arrived at the office so soon, after all, that I had half an
hour's loitering about the Commons, before old Tiffey, who was
always first, appeared with his key.  Then I sat down in my shady
corner, looking up at the sunlight on the opposite chimney-pots,
and thinking about Dora; until Mr. Spenlow came in, crisp and
curly.

'How are you, Copperfield?' said he.  'Fine morning!'

'Beautiful morning, sir,' said I.  'Could I say a word to you
before you go into Court?'

'By all means,' said he.  'Come into my room.'

I followed him into his room, and he began putting on his gown, and
touching himself up before a little glass he had, hanging inside a
closet door.

'I am sorry to say,' said I, 'that I have some rather disheartening
intelligence from my aunt.'

'No!' said he.  'Dear me!  Not paralysis, I hope?'

'It has no reference to her health, sir,' I replied.  'She has met
with some large losses.  In fact, she has very little left,
indeed.'

'You as-tound me, Copperfield!' cried Mr. Spenlow.

I shook my head.  'Indeed, sir,' said I, 'her affairs are so
changed, that I wished to ask you whether it would be possible - at
a sacrifice on our part of some portion of the premium, of course,'
I put in this, on the spur of the moment, warned by the blank
expression of his face - 'to cancel my articles?'

What it cost me to make this proposal, nobody knows.  It was like
asking, as a favour, to be sentenced to transportation from Dora.

'To cancel your articles, Copperfield?  Cancel?'

I explained with tolerable firmness, that I really did not know
where my means of subsistence were to come from, unless I could
earn them for myself.  I had no fear for the future, I said - and
I laid great emphasis on that, as if to imply that I should still
be decidedly eligible for a son-in-law one of these days - but, for
the present, I was thrown upon my own resources.
'I am extremely sorry to hear this, Copperfield,' said Mr. Spenlow. 
'Extremely sorry.  It is not usual to cancel articles for any such
reason.  It is not a professional course of proceeding.  It is not
a convenient precedent at all.  Far from it.  At the same time -'

'You are very good, sir,' I murmured, anticipating a concession.

'Not at all.  Don't mention it,' said Mr. Spenlow.  'At the same
time, I was going to say, if it had been my lot to have my hands
unfettered - if I had not a partner - Mr. Jorkins -'

My hopes were dashed in a moment, but I made another effort.

'Do you think, sir,' said I, 'if I were to mention it to Mr.
Jorkins -'

Mr. Spenlow shook his head discouragingly.  'Heaven forbid,
Copperfield,' he replied, 'that I should do any man an injustice:
still less, Mr. jorkins.  But I know my partner, Copperfield.  Mr.
jorkins is not a man to respond to a proposition of this peculiar
nature.  Mr. jorkins is very difficult to move from the beaten
track.  You know what he is!'

I am sure I knew nothing about him, except that he had originally
been alone in the business, and now lived by himself in a house
near Montagu Square, which was fearfully in want of painting; that
he came very late of a day, and went away very early; that he never
appeared to be consulted about anything; and that he had a dingy
little black-hole of his own upstairs, where no business was ever
done, and where there was a yellow old cartridge-paper pad upon his
desk, unsoiled by ink, and reported to be twenty years of age.

'Would you object to my mentioning it to him, sir?' I asked.

'By no means,' said Mr. Spenlow.  'But I have some experience of
Mr. jorkins, Copperfield.  I wish it were otherwise, for I should
be happy to meet your views in any respect.  I cannot have the
objection to your mentioning it to Mr. jorkins, Copperfield, if you
think it worth while.'

Availing myself of this permission, which was given with a warm
shake of the hand, I sat thinking about Dora, and looking at the
sunlight stealing from the chimney-pots down the wall of the
opposite house, until Mr. jorkins came.  I then went up to Mr.
jorkins's room, and evidently astonished Mr. jorkins very much by
making my appearance there.

'Come in, Mr. Copperfield,' said Mr. jorkins.  'Come in!'

I went in, and sat down; and stated my case to Mr. jorkins pretty
much as I had stated it to Mr. Spenlow.  Mr. Jorkins was not by any
means the awful creature one might have expected, but a large,
mild, smooth-faced man of sixty, who took so much snuff that there
was a tradition in the Commons that he lived principally on that
stimulant, having little room in his system for any other article
of diet.

'You have mentioned this to Mr. Spenlow, I suppose?' said Mr.
jorkins; when he had heard me, very restlessly, to an end.

I answered Yes, and told him that Mr. Spenlow had introduced his
name.

'He said I should object?' asked Mr. jorkins.

I was obliged to admit that Mr. Spenlow had considered it probable.

'I am sorry to say, Mr. Copperfield, I can't advance your object,'
said Mr. jorkins, nervously.  'The fact is - but I have an
appointment at the Bank, if you'll have the goodness to excuse me.'

With that he rose in a great hurry, and was going out of the room,
when I made bold to say that I feared, then, there was no way of
arranging the matter?

'No!' said Mr. jorkins, stopping at the door to shake his head. 
'Oh, no!  I object, you know,' which he said very rapidly, and went
out.  'You must be aware, Mr. Copperfield,' he added, looking
restlessly in at the door again, 'if Mr. Spenlow objects -'

'Personally, he does not object, sir,' said I.

'Oh!  Personally!' repeated Mr. Jorkins, in an impatient manner. 
'I assure you there's an objection, Mr. Copperfield.  Hopeless!
What you wish to be done, can't be done.  I - I really have got an
appointment at the Bank.'  With that he fairly ran away; and to the
best of my knowledge, it was three days before he showed himself in
the Commons again.

Being very anxious to leave no stone unturned, I waited until Mr.
Spenlow came in, and then described what had passed; giving him to
understand that I was not hopeless of his being able to soften the
adamantine jorkins, if he would undertake the task.

'Copperfield,' returned Mr. Spenlow, with a gracious smile, 'you
have not known my partner, Mr. jorkins, as long as I have.  Nothing
is farther from my thoughts than to attribute any degree of
artifice to Mr. jorkins.  But Mr. jorkins has a way of stating his
objections which often deceives people.  No, Copperfield!' shaking
his head.  'Mr. jorkins is not to be moved, believe me!'

I was completely bewildered between Mr. Spenlow and Mr. jorkins, as
to which of them really was the objecting partner; but I saw with
sufficient clearness that there was obduracy somewhere in the firm,
and that the recovery of my aunt's thousand pounds was out of the
question.  In a state of despondency, which I remember with
anything but satisfaction, for I know it still had too much
reference to myself (though always in connexion with Dora), I left
the office, and went homeward.

I was trying to familiarize my mind with the worst, and to present
to myself the arrangements we should have to make for the future in
their sternest aspect, when a hackney-chariot coming after me, and
stopping at my very feet, occasioned me to look up.  A fair hand
was stretched forth to me from the window; and the face I had never
seen without a feeling of serenity and happiness, from the moment
when it first turned back on the old oak staircase with the great
broad balustrade, and when I associated its softened beauty with
the stained-glass window in the church, was smiling on me.

'Agnes!' I joyfully exclaimed.  'Oh, my dear Agnes, of all people
in the world, what a pleasure to see you!'

'Is it, indeed?' she said, in her cordial voice.

'I want to talk to you so much!' said I.  'It's such a lightening
of my heart, only to look at you!  If I had had a conjuror's cap,
there is no one I should have wished for but you!'

'What?' returned Agnes.

'Well! perhaps Dora first,' I admitted, with a blush.

'Certainly, Dora first, I hope,' said Agnes, laughing.

'But you next!' said I.  'Where are you going?'

She was going to my rooms to see my aunt.  The day being very fine,
she was glad to come out of the chariot, which smelt (I had my head
in it all this time) like a stable put under a cucumber-frame.  I
dismissed the coachman, and she took my arm, and we walked on
together.  She was like Hope embodied, to me.  How different I felt
in one short minute, having Agnes at my side!

My aunt had written her one of the odd, abrupt notes - very little
longer than a Bank note - to which her epistolary efforts were
usually limited.  She had stated therein that she had fallen into
adversity, and was leaving Dover for good, but had quite made up
her mind to it, and was so well that nobody need be uncomfortable
about her.  Agnes had come to London to see my aunt, between whom
and herself there had been a mutual liking these many years:
indeed, it dated from the time of my taking up my residence in Mr.
Wickfield's house.  She was not alone, she said.  Her papa was with
her - and Uriah Heep.

'And now they are partners,' said I.  'Confound him!'

'Yes,' said Agnes.  'They have some business here; and I took
advantage of their coming, to come too.  You must not think my
visit all friendly and disinterested, Trotwood, for - I am afraid
I may be cruelly prejudiced - I do not like to let papa go away
alone, with him.'
'Does he exercise the same influence over Mr. Wickfield still,
Agnes?'

Agnes shook her head.  'There is such a change at home,' said she,
'that you would scarcely know the dear old house.  They live with
us now.'

'They?' said I.

'Mr. Heep and his mother.  He sleeps in your old room,' said Agnes,
looking up into my face.

'I wish I had the ordering of his dreams,' said I.  'He wouldn't
sleep there long.'

'I keep my own little room,' said Agnes, 'where I used to learn my
lessons.  How the time goes!  You remember?  The little panelled
room that opens from the drawing-room?'

'Remember, Agnes?  When I saw you, for the first time, coming out
at the door, with your quaint little basket of keys hanging at your
side?'

'It is just the same,' said Agnes, smiling.  'I am glad you think
of it so pleasantly.  We were very happy.'

'We were, indeed,' said I.

'I keep that room to myself still; but I cannot always desert Mrs.
Heep, you know.  And so,' said Agnes, quietly, 'I feel obliged to
bear her company, when I might prefer to be alone.  But I have no
other reason to complain of her.  If she tires me, sometimes, by
her praises of her son, it is only natural in a mother.  He is a
very good son to her.'

I looked at Agnes when she said these words, without detecting in
her any consciousness of Uriah's design.  Her mild but earnest eyes
met mine with their own beautiful frankness, and there was no
change in her gentle face.

'The chief evil of their presence in the house,' said Agnes, 'is
that I cannot be as near papa as I could wish - Uriah Heep being so
much between us - and cannot watch over him, if that is not too
bold a thing to say, as closely as I would.  But if any fraud or
treachery is practising against him, I hope that simple love and
truth will be strong in the end.  I hope that real love and truth
are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.'

A certain bright smile, which I never saw on any other face, died
away, even while I thought how good it was, and how familiar it had
once been to me; and she asked me, with a quick change of
expression (we were drawing very near my street), if I knew how the
reverse in my aunt's circumstances had been brought about.  On my
replying no, she had not told me yet, Agnes became thoughtful, and
I fancied I felt her arm tremble in mine.

We found my aunt alone, in a state of some excitement.  A
difference of opinion had arisen between herself and Mrs. Crupp, on
an abstract question (the propriety of chambers being inhabited by
the gentler sex); and my aunt, utterly indifferent to spasms on the
part of Mrs. Crupp, had cut the dispute short, by informing that
lady that she smelt of my brandy, and that she would trouble her to
walk out.  Both of these expressions Mrs. Crupp considered
actionable, and had expressed her intention of bringing before a
'British Judy' - meaning, it was supposed, the bulwark of our
national liberties.

MY aunt, however, having had time to cool, while Peggotty was out
showing Mr. Dick the soldiers at the Horse Guards - and being,
besides, greatly pleased to see Agnes - rather plumed herself on
the affair than otherwise, and received us with unimpaired good
humour.  When Agnes laid her bonnet on the table, and sat down
beside her, I could not but think, looking on her mild eyes and her
radiant forehead, how natural it seemed to have her there; how
trustfully, although she was so young and inexperienced, my aunt
confided in her; how strong she was, indeed, in simple love and
truth.

We began to talk about my aunt's losses, and I told them what I had
tried to do that morning.

'Which was injudicious, Trot,' said my aunt, 'but well meant.  You
are a generous boy - I suppose I must say, young man, now - and I
am proud of you, my dear.  So far, so good.  Now, Trot and Agnes,
let us look the case of Betsey Trotwood in the face, and see how it
stands.'

I observed Agnes turn pale, as she looked very attentively at my
aunt.  My aunt, patting her cat, looked very attentively at Agnes.

'Betsey Trotwood,' said my aunt, who had always kept her money
matters to herself.  '- I don't mean your sister, Trot, my dear,
but myself - had a certain property.  It don't matter how much;
enough to live on.  More; for she had saved a little, and added to
it.  Betsey funded her property for some time, and then, by the
advice of her man of business, laid it out on landed security. 
That did very well, and returned very good interest, till Betsey
was paid off.  I am talking of Betsey as if she was a man-of-war. 
Well!  Then, Betsey had to look about her, for a new investment. 
She thought she was wiser, now, than her man of business, who was
not such a good man of business by this time, as he used to be - I
am alluding to your father, Agnes - and she took it into her head
to lay it out for herself.  So she took her pigs,' said my aunt,
'to a foreign market; and a very bad market it turned out to be. 
First, she lost in the mining way, and then she lost in the diving
way - fishing up treasure, or some such Tom Tiddler nonsense,'
explained my aunt, rubbing her nose; 'and then she lost in the
mining way again, and, last of all, to set the thing entirely to
rights, she lost in the banking way.  I don't know what the Bank
shares were worth for a little while,' said my aunt; 'cent per cent
was the lowest of it, I believe; but the Bank was at the other end
of the world, and tumbled into space, for what I know; anyhow, it
fell to pieces, and never will and never can pay sixpence; and
Betsey's sixpences were all there, and there's an end of them. 
Least said, soonest mended!'

My aunt concluded this philosophical summary, by fixing her eyes
with a kind of triumph on Agnes, whose colour was gradually
returning.

'Dear Miss Trotwood, is that all the history?' said Agnes.

'I hope it's enough, child,' said my aunt.  'If there had been more
money to lose, it wouldn't have been all, I dare say.  Betsey would
have contrived to throw that after the rest, and make another
chapter, I have little doubt.  But there was no more money, and
there's no more story.'

Agnes had listened at first with suspended breath.  Her colour
still came and went, but she breathed more freely.  I thought I
knew why.  I thought she had had some fear that her unhappy father
might be in some way to blame for what had happened.  My aunt took
her hand in hers, and laughed.

'Is that all?' repeated my aunt.  'Why, yes, that's all, except,
"And she lived happy ever afterwards." Perhaps I may add that of
Betsey yet, one of these days.  Now, Agnes, you have a wise head. 
So have you, Trot, in some things, though I can't compliment you
always'; and here my aunt shook her own at me, with an energy
peculiar to herself.  'What's to be done?  Here's the cottage,
taking one time with another, will produce say seventy pounds a
year.  I think we may safely put it down at that.  Well! - That's
all we've got,' said my aunt; with whom it was an idiosyncrasy, as
it is with some horses, to stop very short when she appeared to be
in a fair way of going on for a long while.

'Then,' said my aunt, after a rest, 'there's Dick.  He's good for
a hundred a-year, but of course that must be expended on himself. 
I would sooner send him away, though I know I am the only person
who appreciates him, than have him, and not spend his money on
himself.  How can Trot and I do best, upon our means?  What do you
say, Agnes?'

'I say, aunt,' I interposed, 'that I must do something!'

'Go for a soldier, do you mean?' returned my aunt, alarmed; 'or go
to sea?  I won't hear of it.  You are to be a proctor.  We're not
going to have any knockings on the head in THIS family, if you
please, sir.'

I was about to explain that I was not desirous of introducing that
mode of provision into the family, when Agnes inquired if my rooms
were held for any long term?

'You come to the point, my dear,' said my aunt.  'They are not to
be got rid of, for six months at least, unless they could be
underlet, and that I don't believe.  The last man died here.  Five
people out of six would die - of course - of that woman in nankeen
with the flannel petticoat.  I have a little ready money; and I
agree with you, the best thing we can do, is, to live the term out
here, and get a bedroom hard by.'

I thought it my duty to hint at the discomfort my aunt would
sustain, from living in a continual state of guerilla warfare with
Mrs. Crupp; but she disposed of that objection summarily by
declaring that, on the first demonstration of hostilities, she was
prepared to astonish Mrs. Crupp for the whole remainder of her
natural life.

'I have been thinking, Trotwood,' said Agnes, diffidently, 'that if
you had time -'

'I have a good deal of time, Agnes.  I am always disengaged after
four or five o'clock, and I have time early in the morning.  In one
way and another,' said I, conscious of reddening a little as I
thought of the hours and hours I had devoted to fagging about town,
and to and fro upon the Norwood Road, 'I have abundance of time.'

'I know you would not mind,' said Agnes, coming to me, and speaking
in a low voice, so full of sweet and hopeful consideration that I
hear it now, 'the duties of a secretary.'

'Mind, my dear Agnes?'

'Because,' continued Agnes, 'Doctor Strong has acted on his
intention of retiring, and has come to live in London; and he asked
papa, I know, if he could recommend him one.  Don't you think he
would rather have his favourite old pupil near him, than anybody
else?'

'Dear Agnes!' said I.  'What should I do without you!  You are
always my good angel.  I told you so.  I never think of you in any
other light.'

Agnes answered with her pleasant laugh, that one good Angel
(meaning Dora) was enough; and went on to remind me that the Doctor
had been used to occupy himself in his study, early in the morning,
and in the evening - and that probably my leisure would suit his
requirements very well.  I was scarcely more delighted with the
prospect of earning my own bread, than with the hope of earning it
under my old master; in short, acting on the advice of Agnes, I sat
down and wrote a letter to the Doctor, stating my object, and
appointing to call on him next day at ten in the forenoon.  This I
addressed to Highgate - for in that place, so memorable to me, he
lived - and went and posted, myself, without losing a minute.

Wherever Agnes was, some agreeable token of her noiseless presence
seemed inseparable from the place.  When I came back, I found my
aunt's birds hanging, just as they had hung so long in the parlour
window of the cottage; and my easy-chair imitating my aunt's much
easier chair in its position at the open window; and even the round
green fan, which my aunt had brought away with her, screwed on to
the window-sill.  I knew who had done all this, by its seeming to
have quietly done itself; and I should have known in a moment who
had arranged my neglected books in the old order of my school days,
even if I had supposed Agnes to be miles away, instead of seeing
her busy with them, and smiling at the disorder into which they had
fallen.

My aunt was quite gracious on the subject of the Thames (it really
did look very well with the sun upon it, though not like the sea
before the cottage), but she could not relent towards the London
smoke, which, she said, 'peppered everything'.  A complete
revolution, in which Peggotty bore a prominent part, was being
effected in every corner of my rooms, in regard of this pepper; and
I was looking on, thinking how little even Peggotty seemed to do
with a good deal of bustle, and how much Agnes did without any
bustle at all, when a knock came at the door.

'I think,' said Agnes, turning pale, 'it's papa.  He promised me
that he would come.'

I opened the door, and admitted, not only Mr. Wickfield, but Uriah
Heep.  I had not seen Mr. Wickfield for some time.  I was prepared
for a great change in him, after what I had heard from Agnes, but
his appearance shocked me.

It was not that he looked many years older, though still dressed
with the old scrupulous cleanliness; or that there was an
unwholesome ruddiness upon his face; or that his eyes were full and
bloodshot; or that there was a nervous trembling in his hand, the
cause of which I knew, and had for some years seen at work.  It was
not that he had lost his good looks, or his old bearing of a
gentleman - for that he had not - but the thing that struck me
most, was, that with the evidences of his native superiority still
upon him, he should submit himself to that crawling impersonation
of meanness, Uriah Heep.  The reversal of the two natures, in their
relative positions, Uriah's of power and Mr. Wickfield's of
dependence, was a sight more painful to me than I can express.  If
I had seen an Ape taking command of a Man, I should hardly have
thought it a more degrading spectacle.

He appeared to be only too conscious of it himself.  When he came
in, he stood still; and with his head bowed, as if he felt it. 
This was only for a moment; for Agnes softly said to him, 'Papa!
Here is Miss Trotwood - and Trotwood, whom you have not seen for a
long while!' and then he approached, and constrainedly gave my aunt
his hand, and shook hands more cordially with me.  In the moment's
pause I speak of, I saw Uriah's countenance form itself into a most
ill-favoured smile.  Agnes saw it too, I think, for she shrank from
him.

What my aunt saw, or did not see, I defy the science of physiognomy
to have made out, without her own consent.  I believe there never
was anybody with such an imperturbable countenance when she chose. 
Her face might have been a dead-wall on the occasion in question,
for any light it threw upon her thoughts; until she broke silence
with her usual abruptness.

'Well, Wickfield!' said my aunt; and he looked up at her for the
first time.  'I have been telling your daughter how well I have
been disposing of my money for myself, because I couldn't trust it
to you, as you were growing rusty in business matters.  We have
been taking counsel together, and getting on very well, all things
considered.  Agnes is worth the whole firm, in my opinion.'

'If I may umbly make the remark,' said Uriah Heep, with a writhe,
'I fully agree with Miss Betsey Trotwood, and should be only too
appy if Miss Agnes was a partner.'

'You're a partner yourself, you know,' returned my aunt, 'and
that's about enough for you, I expect.  How do you find yourself,
sir?'

In acknowledgement of this question, addressed to him with
extraordinary curtness, Mr. Heep, uncomfortably clutching the blue
bag he carried, replied that he was pretty well, he thanked my
aunt, and hoped she was the same.

'And you, Master - I should say, Mister Copperfield,' pursued
Uriah.  'I hope I see you well!  I am rejoiced to see you, Mister
Copperfield, even under present circumstances.'  I believed that;
for he seemed to relish them very much.  'Present circumstances is
not what your friends would wish for you, Mister Copperfield, but
it isn't money makes the man: it's - I am really unequal with my
umble powers to express what it is,' said Uriah, with a fawning
jerk, 'but it isn't money!'

Here he shook hands with me: not in the common way, but standing at
a good distance from me, and lifting my hand up and down like a
pump handle, that he was a little afraid of.

'And how do you think we are looking, Master Copperfield, - I
should say, Mister?' fawned Uriah.  'Don't you find Mr. Wickfield
blooming, sir?  Years don't tell much in our firm, Master
Copperfield, except in raising up the umble, namely, mother and
self - and in developing,' he added, as an afterthought, 'the
beautiful, namely, Miss Agnes.'

He jerked himself about, after this compliment, in such an
intolerable manner, that my aunt, who had sat looking straight at
him, lost all patience.

'Deuce take the man!' said my aunt, sternly, 'what's he about? 
Don't be galvanic, sir!'

'I ask your pardon, Miss Trotwood,' returned Uriah; 'I'm aware
you're nervous.'

'Go along with you, sir!' said my aunt, anything but appeased. 
'Don't presume to say so!  I am nothing of the sort.  If you're an
eel, sir, conduct yourself like one.  If you're a man, control your
limbs, sir!  Good God!' said my aunt, with great indignation, 'I am
not going to be serpentined and corkscrewed out of my senses!'

Mr. Heep was rather abashed, as most people might have been, by
this explosion; which derived great additional force from the
indignant manner in which my aunt afterwards moved in her chair,
and shook her head as if she were making snaps or bounces at him. 
But he said to me aside in a meek voice:

'I am well aware, Master Copperfield, that Miss Trotwood, though an
excellent lady, has a quick temper (indeed I think I had the
pleasure of knowing her, when I was a numble clerk, before you did,
Master Copperfield), and it's only natural, I am sure, that it
should be made quicker by present circumstances.  The wonder is,
that it isn't much worse!  I only called to say that if there was
anything we could do, in present circumstances, mother or self, or
Wickfield and Heep, -we should be really glad.  I may go so far?'
said Uriah, with a sickly smile at his partner.

'Uriah Heep,' said Mr. Wickfield, in a monotonous forced way, 'is
active in the business, Trotwood.  What he says, I quite concur in. 
You know I had an old interest in you.  Apart from that, what Uriah
says I quite concur in!'

'Oh, what a reward it is,' said Uriah, drawing up one leg, at the
risk of bringing down upon himself another visitation from my aunt,
'to be so trusted in!  But I hope I am able to do something to
relieve him from the fatigues of business, Master Copperfield!'

'Uriah Heep is a great relief to me,' said Mr. Wickfield, in the
same dull voice.  'It's a load off my mind, Trotwood, to have such
a partner.'

The red fox made him say all this, I knew, to exhibit him to me in
the light he had indicated on the night when he poisoned my rest. 
I saw the same ill-favoured smile upon his face again, and saw how
he watched me.

'You are not going, papa?' said Agnes, anxiously.  'Will you not
walk back with Trotwood and me?'

He would have looked to Uriah, I believe, before replying, if that
worthy had not anticipated him.

'I am bespoke myself,' said Uriah, 'on business; otherwise I should
have been appy to have kept with my friends.  But I leave my
partner to represent the firm.  Miss Agnes, ever yours!  I wish you
good-day, Master Copperfield, and leave my umble respects for Miss
Betsey Trotwood.'

With those words, he retired, kissing his great hand, and leering
at us like a mask.

We sat there, talking about our pleasant old Canterbury days, an
hour or two.  Mr. Wickfield, left to Agnes, soon became more like
his former self; though there was a settled depression upon him,
which he never shook off.  For all that, he brightened; and had an
evident pleasure in hearing us recall the little incidents of our
old life, many of which he remembered very well.  He said it was
like those times, to be alone with Agnes and me again; and he
wished to Heaven they had never changed.  I am sure there was an
influence in the placid face of Agnes, and in the very touch of her
hand upon his arm, that did wonders for him.

My aunt (who was busy nearly all this while with Peggotty, in the
inner room) would not accompany us to the place where they were
staying, but insisted on my going; and I went.  We dined together. 
After dinner, Agnes sat beside him, as of old, and poured out his
wine.  He took what she gave him, and no more - like a child - and
we all three sat together at a window as the evening gathered in. 
When it was almost dark, he lay down on a sofa, Agnes pillowing his
head and bending over him a little while; and when she came back to
the window, it was not so dark but I could see tears glittering in
her eyes.

I pray Heaven that I never may forget the dear girl in her love and
truth, at that time of my life; for if I should, I must be drawing
near the end, and then I would desire to remember her best!  She
filled my heart with such good resolutions, strengthened my
weakness so, by her example, so directed - I know not how, she was
too modest and gentle to advise me in many words - the wandering
ardour and unsettled purpose within me, that all the little good I
have done, and all the harm I have forborne, I solemnly believe I
may refer to her.

And how she spoke to me of Dora, sitting at the window in the dark;
listened to my praises of her; praised again; and round the little
fairy-figure shed some glimpses of her own pure light, that made it
yet more precious and more innocent to me!  Oh, Agnes, sister of my
boyhood, if I had known then, what I knew long afterwards! -

There was a beggar in the street, when I went down; and as I turned
my head towards the window, thinking of her calm seraphic eyes, he
made me start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the morning:
'Blind!  Blind!  Blind!'

CHAPTER 36
ENTHUSIASM

I began the next day with another dive into the Roman bath, and
then started for Highgate.  I was not dispirited now.  I was not
afraid of the shabby coat, and had no yearnings after gallant
greys.  My whole manner of thinking of our late misfortune was
changed.  What I had to do, was, to show my aunt that her past
goodness to me had not been thrown away on an insensible,
ungrateful object.  What I had to do, was, to turn the painful
discipline of my younger days to account, by going to work with a
resolute and steady heart.  What I had to do, was, to take my
woodman's axe in my hand, and clear my own way through the forest
of difficulty, by cutting down the trees until I came to Dora.  And
I went on at a mighty rate, as if it could be done by walking.

When I found myself on the familiar Highgate road, pursuing such a
different errand from that old one of pleasure, with which it was
associated, it seemed as if a complete change had come on my whole
life.  But that did not discourage me.  With the new life, came new
purpose, new intention.  Great was the labour; priceless the
reward.  Dora was the reward, and Dora must be won.

I got into such a transport, that I felt quite sorry my coat was
not a little shabby already.  I wanted to be cutting at those trees
in the forest of difficulty, under circumstances that should prove
my strength.  I had a good mind to ask an old man, in wire
spectacles, who was breaking stones upon the road, to lend me his
hammer for a little while, and let me begin to beat a path to Dora
out of granite.  I stimulated myself into such a heat, and got so
out of breath, that I felt as if I had been earning I don't know
how much.

In this state, I went into a cottage that I saw was to let, and
examined it narrowly, - for I felt it necessary to be practical. 
It would do for me and Dora admirably: with a little front garden
for Jip to run about in, and bark at the tradespeople through the
railings, and a capital room upstairs for my aunt.  I came out
again, hotter and faster than ever, and dashed up to Highgate, at
such a rate that I was there an hour too early; and, though I had
not been, should have been obliged to stroll about to cool myself,
before I was at all presentable.

My first care, after putting myself under this necessary course of
preparation, was to find the Doctor's house.  It was not in that
part of Highgate where Mrs. Steerforth lived, but quite on the
opposite side of the little town.  When I had made this discovery,
I went back, in an attraction I could not resist, to a lane by Mrs.
Steerforth's, and looked over the corner of the garden wall.  His
room was shut up close.  The conservatory doors were standing open,
and Rosa Dartle was walking, bareheaded, with a quick, impetuous
step, up and down a gravel walk on one side of the lawn.  She gave
me the idea of some fierce thing, that was dragging the length of
its chain to and fro upon a beaten track, and wearing its heart
out.

I came softly away from my place of observation, and avoiding that
part of the neighbourhood, and wishing I had not gone near it,
strolled about until it was ten o'clock.  The church with the
slender spire, that stands on the top of the hill now, was not
there then to tell me the time.  An old red-brick mansion, used as
a school, was in its place; and a fine old house it must have been
to go to school at, as I recollect it.

When I approached the Doctor's cottage - a pretty old place, on
which he seemed to have expended some money, if I might judge from
the embellishments and repairs that had the look of being just
completed - I saw him walking in the garden at the side, gaiters
and all, as if he had never left off walking since the days of my
pupilage.  He had his old companions about him, too; for there were
plenty of high trees in the neighbourhood, and two or three rooks
were on the grass, looking after him, as if they had been written
to about him by the Canterbury rooks, and were observing him
closely in consequence.

Knowing the utter hopelessness of attracting his attention from
that distance, I made bold to open the gate, and walk after him, so
as to meet him when he should turn round.  When he did, and came
towards me, he looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments,
evidently without thinking about me at all; and then his benevolent
face expressed extraordinary pleasure, and he took me by both
hands.

'Why, my dear Copperfield,' said the Doctor, 'you are a man!  How
do you do?  I am delighted to see you.  My dear Copperfield, how
very much you have improved!  You are quite - yes - dear me!'

I hoped he was well, and Mrs. Strong too.

'Oh dear, yes!' said the Doctor; 'Annie's quite well, and she'll be
delighted to see you.  You were always her favourite.  She said so,
last night, when I showed her your letter.  And - yes, to be sure
- you recollect Mr. Jack Maldon, Copperfield?'

'Perfectly, sir.'

'Of course,' said the Doctor.  'To be sure.  He's pretty well,
too.'

'Has he come home, sir?' I inquired.

'From India?' said the Doctor.  'Yes.  Mr. Jack Maldon couldn't
bear the climate, my dear.  Mrs. Markleham - you have not forgotten
Mrs. Markleham?'

Forgotten the Old Soldier!  And in that short time!

'Mrs. Markleham,' said the Doctor, 'was quite vexed about him, poor
thing; so we have got him at home again; and we have bought him a
little Patent place, which agrees with him much better.'
I knew enough of Mr. Jack Maldon to suspect from this account that
it was a place where there was not much to do, and which was pretty
well paid.  The Doctor, walking up and down with his hand on my
shoulder, and his kind face turned encouragingly to mine, went on:

'Now, my dear Copperfield, in reference to this proposal of yours. 
It's very gratifying and agreeable to me, I am sure; but don't you
think you could do better?  You achieved distinction, you know,
when you were with us.  You are qualified for many good things. 
You have laid a foundation that any edifice may be raised upon; and
is it not a pity that you should devote the spring-time of your
life to such a poor pursuit as I can offer?'

I became very glowing again, and, expressing myself in a
rhapsodical style, I am afraid, urged my request strongly;
reminding the Doctor that I had already a profession.

'Well, well,' said the Doctor, 'that's true.  Certainly, your
having a profession, and being actually engaged in studying it,
makes a difference.  But, my good young friend, what's seventy
pounds a year?'

'It doubles our income, Doctor Strong,' said I.

'Dear me!' replied the Doctor.  'To think of that!  Not that I mean
to say it's rigidly limited to seventy pounds a-year, because I
have always contemplated making any young friend I might thus
employ, a present too.  Undoubtedly,' said the Doctor, still
walking me up and down with his hand on my shoulder.  'I have
always taken an annual present into account.'

'My dear tutor,' said I (now, really, without any nonsense), 'to
whom I owe more obligations already than I ever can acknowledge -'

'No, no,' interposed the Doctor.  'Pardon me!'

'If you will take such time as I have, and that is my mornings and
evenings, and can think it worth seventy pounds a year, you will do
me such a service as I cannot express.'

'Dear me!' said the Doctor, innocently.  'To think that so little
should go for so much!  Dear, dear!  And when you can do better,
you will?  On your word, now?' said the Doctor, - which he had
always made a very grave appeal to the honour of us boys.

'On my word, sir!' I returned, answering in our old school manner.

'Then be it so,' said the Doctor, clapping me on the shoulder, and
still keeping his hand there, as we still walked up and down.

'And I shall be twenty times happier, sir,' said I, with a little
- I hope innocent - flattery, 'if my employment is to be on the
Dictionary.'

The Doctor stopped, smilingly clapped me on the shoulder again, and
exclaimed, with a triumph most delightful to behold, as if I had
penetrated to the profoundest depths of mortal sagacity, 'My dear
young friend, you have hit it.  It IS the Dictionary!'

How could it be anything else!  His pockets were as full of it as
his head.  It was sticking out of him in all directions.  He told
me that since his retirement from scholastic life, he had been
advancing with it wonderfully; and that nothing could suit him
better than the proposed arrangements for morning and evening work,
as it was his custom to walk about in the daytime with his
considering cap on.  His papers were in a little confusion, in
consequence of Mr. Jack Maldon having lately proffered his
occasional services as an amanuensis, and not being accustomed to
that occupation; but we should soon put right what was amiss, and
go on swimmingly.  Afterwards, when we were fairly at our work, I
found Mr. Jack Maldon's efforts more troublesome to me than I had
expected, as he had not confined himself to making numerous
mistakes, but had sketched so many soldiers, and ladies' heads,
over the Doctor's manuscript, that I often became involved in
labyrinths of obscurity.

The Doctor was quite happy in the prospect of our going to work
together on that wonderful performance, and we settled to begin
next morning at seven o'clock.  We were to work two hours every
morning, and two or three hours every night, except on Saturdays,
when I was to rest.  On Sundays, of course, I was to rest also, and
I considered these very easy terms.

Our plans being thus arranged to our mutual satisfaction, the
Doctor took me into the house to present me to Mrs. Strong, whom we
found in the Doctor's new study, dusting his books, - a freedom
which he never permitted anybody else to take with those sacred
favourites.

They had postponed their breakfast on my account, and we sat down
to table together.  We had not been seated long, when I saw an
approaching arrival in Mrs. Strong's face, before I heard any sound
of it.  A gentleman on horseback came to the gate, and leading his
horse into the little court, with the bridle over his arm, as if he
were quite at home, tied him to a ring in the empty coach-house
wall, and came into the breakfast parlour, whip in hand.  It was
Mr. Jack Maldon; and Mr. Jack Maldon was not at all improved by
India, I thought.  I was in a state of ferocious virtue, however,
as to young men who were not cutting down trees in the forest of
difficulty; and my impression must be received with due allowance.

'Mr. Jack!' said the Doctor.  'Copperfield!'

Mr. Jack Maldon shook hands with me; but not very warmly, I
believed; and with an air of languid patronage, at which I secretly
took great umbrage.  But his languor altogether was quite a
wonderful sight; except when he addressed himself to his cousin
Annie.
'Have you breakfasted this morning, Mr. Jack?' said the Doctor.

'I hardly ever take breakfast, sir,' he replied, with his head
thrown back in an easy-chair.  'I find it bores me.'

'Is there any news today?' inquired the Doctor.

'Nothing at all, sir,' replied Mr. Maldon.  'There's an account
about the people being hungry and discontented down in the North,
but they are always being hungry and discontented somewhere.'

The Doctor looked grave, and said, as though he wished to change
the subject, 'Then there's no news at all; and no news, they say,
is good news.'

'There's a long statement in the papers, sir, about a murder,'
observed Mr. Maldon.  'But somebody is always being murdered, and
I didn't read it.'

A display of indifference to all the actions and passions of
mankind was not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that
time, I think, as I have observed it to be considered since.  I
have known it very fashionable indeed.  I have seen it displayed
with such success, that I have encountered some fine ladies and
gentlemen who might as well have been born caterpillars.  Perhaps
it impressed me the more then, because it was new to me, but it
certainly did not tend to exalt my opinion of, or to strengthen my
confidence in, Mr. Jack Maldon.

'I came out to inquire whether Annie would like to go to the opera
tonight,' said Mr. Maldon, turning to her.  'It's the last good
night there will be, this season; and there's a singer there, whom
she really ought to hear.  She is perfectly exquisite.  Besides
which, she is so charmingly ugly,' relapsing into languor.

The Doctor, ever pleased with what was likely to please his young
wife, turned to her and said:

'You must go, Annie.  You must go.'

'I would rather not,' she said to the Doctor.  'I prefer to remain
at home.  I would much rather remain at home.'

Without looking at her cousin, she then addressed me, and asked me
about Agnes, and whether she should see her, and whether she was
not likely to come that day; and was so much disturbed, that I
wondered how even the Doctor, buttering his toast, could be blind
to what was so obvious.

But he saw nothing.  He told her, good-naturedly, that she was
young and ought to be amused and entertained, and must not allow
herself to be made dull by a dull old fellow.  Moreover, he said,
he wanted to hear her sing all the new singer's songs to him; and
how could she do that well, unless she went?  So the Doctor
persisted in making the engagement for her, and Mr. Jack Maldon was
to come back to dinner.  This concluded, he went to his Patent
place, I suppose; but at all events went away on his horse, looking
very idle.

I was curious to find out next morning, whether she had been.  She
had not, but had sent into London to put her cousin off; and had
gone out in the afternoon to see Agnes, and had prevailed upon the
Doctor to go with her; and they had walked home by the fields, the
Doctor told me, the evening being delightful.  I wondered then,
whether she would have gone if Agnes had not been in town, and
whether Agnes had some good influence over her too!

She did not look very happy, I thought; but it was a good face, or
a very false one.  I often glanced at it, for she sat in the window
all the time we were at work; and made our breakfast, which we took
by snatches as we were employed.  When I left, at nine o'clock, she
was kneeling on the ground at the Doctor's feet, putting on his
shoes and gaiters for him.  There was a softened shade upon her
face, thrown from some green leaves overhanging the open window of
the low room; and I thought all the way to Doctors' Commons, of the
night when I had seen it looking at him as he read.

I was pretty busy now; up at five in the morning, and home at nine
or ten at night.  But I had infinite satisfaction in being so
closely engaged, and never walked slowly on any account, and felt
enthusiastically that the more I tired myself, the more I was doing
to deserve Dora.  I had not revealed myself in my altered character
to Dora yet, because she was coming to see Miss Mills in a few
days, and I deferred all I had to tell her until then; merely
informing her in my letters (all our communications were secretly
forwarded through Miss Mills), that I had much to tell her.  In the
meantime, I put myself on a short allowance of bear's grease,
wholly abandoned scented soap and lavender water, and sold off
three waistcoats at a prodigious sacrifice, as being too luxurious
for my stern career.

Not satisfied with all these proceedings, but burning with
impatience to do something more, I went to see Traddles, now
lodging up behind the parapet of a house in Castle Street, Holborn. 
Mr. Dick, who had been with me to Highgate twice already, and had
resumed his companionship with the Doctor, I took with me.

I took Mr. Dick with me, because, acutely sensitive to my aunt's
reverses, and sincerely believing that no galley-slave or convict
worked as I did, he had begun to fret and worry himself out of
spirits and appetite, as having nothing useful to do.  In this
condition, he felt more incapable of finishing the Memorial than
ever; and the harder he worked at it, the oftener that unlucky head
of King Charles the First got into it.  Seriously apprehending that
his malady would increase, unless we put some innocent deception
upon him and caused him to believe that he was useful, or unless we
could put him in the way of being really useful (which would be
better), I made up my mind to try if Traddles could help us. 
Before we went, I wrote Traddles a full statement of all that had
happened, and Traddles wrote me back a capital answer, expressive
of his sympathy and friendship.

We found him hard at work with his inkstand and papers, refreshed
by the sight of the flower-pot stand and the little round table in
a corner of the small apartment.  He received us cordially, and
made friends with Mr. Dick in a moment.  Mr. Dick professed an
absolute certainty of having seen him before, and we both said,
'Very likely.'

The first subject on which I had to consult Traddles was this, - I
had heard that many men distinguished in various pursuits had begun
life by reporting the debates in Parliament.  Traddles having
mentioned newspapers to me, as one of his hopes, I had put the two
things together, and told Traddles in my letter that I wished to
know how I could qualify myself for this pursuit.  Traddles now
informed me, as the result of his inquiries, that the mere
mechanical acquisition necessary, except in rare cases, for
thorough excellence in it, that is to say, a perfect and entire
command of the mystery of short-hand writing and reading, was about
equal in difficulty to the mastery of six languages; and that it
might perhaps be attained, by dint of perseverance, in the course
of a few years.  Traddles reasonably supposed that this would
settle the business; but I, only feeling that here indeed were a
few tall trees to be hewn down, immediately resolved to work my way
on to Dora through this thicket, axe in hand.

'I am very much obliged to you, my dear Traddles!' said I.  'I'll
begin tomorrow.'

Traddles looked astonished, as he well might; but he had no notion
as yet of my rapturous condition.

'I'll buy a book,' said I, 'with a good scheme of this art in it;
I'll work at it at the Commons, where I haven't half enough to do;
I'll take down the speeches in our court for practice - Traddles,
my dear fellow, I'll master it!'

'Dear me,' said Traddles, opening his eyes, 'I had no idea you were
such a determined character, Copperfield!'

I don't know how he should have had, for it was new enough to me. 
I passed that off, and brought Mr. Dick on the carpet.

'You see,' said Mr. Dick, wistfully, 'if I could exert myself, Mr.
Traddles - if I could beat a drum- or blow anything!'

Poor fellow!  I have little doubt he would have preferred such an
employment in his heart to all others.  Traddles, who would not
have smiled for the world, replied composedly:

'But you are a very good penman, sir.  You told me so,
Copperfield?'
'Excellent!' said I.  And indeed he was.  He wrote with
extraordinary neatness.

'Don't you think,' said Traddles, 'you could copy writings, sir, if
I got them for you?'

Mr. Dick looked doubtfully at me.  'Eh, Trotwood?'

I shook my head.  Mr. Dick shook his, and sighed.  'Tell him about
the Memorial,' said Mr. Dick.

I explained to Traddles that there was a difficulty in keeping King
Charles the First out of Mr. Dick's manuscripts; Mr. Dick in the
meanwhile looking very deferentially and seriously at Traddles, and
sucking his thumb.

'But these writings, you know, that I speak of, are already drawn
up and finished,' said Traddles after a little consideration.  'Mr.
Dick has nothing to do with them.  Wouldn't that make a difference,
Copperfield?  At all events, wouldn't it be well to try?'

This gave us new hope.  Traddles and I laying our heads together
apart, while Mr. Dick anxiously watched us from his chair, we
concocted a scheme in virtue of which we got him to work next day,
with triumphant success.

On a table by the window in Buckingham Street, we set out the work
Traddles procured for him - which was to make, I forget how many
copies of a legal document about some right of way - and on another
table we spread the last unfinished original of the great Memorial. 
Our instructions to Mr. Dick were that he should copy exactly what
he had before him, without the least departure from the original;
and that when he felt it necessary to make the slightest allusion
to King Charles the First, he should fly to the Memorial.  We
exhorted him to be resolute in this, and left my aunt to observe
him.  My aunt reported to us, afterwards, that, at first, he was
like a man playing the kettle-drums, and constantly divided his
attentions between the two; but that, finding this confuse and
fatigue him, and having his copy there, plainly before his eyes, he
soon sat at it in an orderly business-like manner, and postponed
the Memorial to a more convenient time.  In a word, although we
took great care that he should have no more to do than was good for
him, and although he did not begin with the beginning of a week, he
earned by the following Saturday night ten shillings and
nine-pence; and never, while I live, shall I forget his going about
to all the shops in the neighbourhood to change this treasure into
sixpences, or his bringing them to my aunt arranged in the form of
a heart upon a waiter, with tears of joy and pride in his eyes.  He
was like one under the propitious influence of a charm, from the
moment of his being usefully employed; and if there were a happy
man in the world, that Saturday night, it was the grateful creature
who thought my aunt the most wonderful woman in existence, and me
the most wonderful young man.

'No starving now, Trotwood,' said Mr. Dick, shaking hands with me
in a corner.  'I'll provide for her, Sir!' and he flourished his
ten fingers in the air, as if they were ten banks.

I hardly know which was the better pleased, Traddles or I.  'It
really,' said Traddles, suddenly, taking a letter out of his
pocket, and giving it to me, 'put Mr. Micawber quite out of my
head!'

The letter (Mr. Micawber never missed any possible opportunity of
writing a letter) was addressed to me, 'By the kindness of T.
Traddles, Esquire, of the Inner Temple.'  It ran thus: -

'MY DEAR COPPERFIELD,

'You may possibly not be unprepared to receive the intimation that
something has turned up.  I may have mentioned to you on a former
occasion that I was in expectation of such an event.

'I am about to establish myself in one of the provincial towns of
our favoured island (where the society may be described as a happy
admixture of the agricultural and the clerical), in immediate
connexion with one of the learned professions.  Mrs. Micawber and
our offspring will accompany me.  Our ashes, at a future period,
will probably be found commingled in the cemetery attached to a
venerable pile, for which the spot to which I refer has acquired a
reputation, shall I say from China to Peru?

'In bidding adieu to the modern Babylon, where we have undergone
many vicissitudes, I trust not ignobly, Mrs. Micawber and myself
cannot disguise from our minds that we part, it may be for years
and it may be for ever, with an individual linked by strong
associations to the altar of our domestic life.  If, on the eve of
such a departure, you will accompany our mutual friend, Mr. Thomas
Traddles, to our present abode, and there reciprocate the wishes
natural to the occasion, you will confer a Boon

               'On
                    'One
                         'Who
                              'Is
                                   'Ever yours,
                                        'WILKINS MICAWBER.'

I was glad to find that Mr. Micawber had got rid of his dust and
ashes, and that something really had turned up at last.  Learning
from Traddles that the invitation referred to the evening then
wearing away, I expressed my readiness to do honour to it; and we
went off together to the lodging which Mr. Micawber occupied as Mr.
Mortimer, and which was situated near the top of the Gray's Inn
Road.

The resources of this lodging were so limited, that we found the
twins, now some eight or nine years old, reposing in a turn-up
bedstead in the family sitting-room, where Mr. Micawber had
prepared, in a wash-hand-stand jug, what he called 'a Brew' of the
agreeable beverage for which he was famous.  I had the pleasure, on
this occasion, of renewing the acquaintance of Master Micawber,
whom I found a promising boy of about twelve or thirteen, very
subject to that restlessness of limb which is not an unfrequent
phenomenon in youths of his age.  I also became once more known to
his sister, Miss Micawber, in whom, as Mr. Micawber told us, 'her
mother renewed her youth, like the Phoenix'.

'My dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'yourself and Mr.
Traddles find us on the brink of migration, and will excuse any
little discomforts incidental to that position.'

Glancing round as I made a suitable reply, I observed that the
family effects were already packed, and that the amount of luggage
was by no means overwhelming.  I congratulated Mrs. Micawber on the
approaching change.

'My dear Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'of your friendly
interest in all our affairs, I am well assured.  My family may
consider it banishment, if they please; but I am a wife and mother,
and I never will desert Mr. Micawber.'

Traddles, appealed to by Mrs. Micawber's eye, feelingly acquiesced.

'That,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'that, at least, is my view, my dear
Mr. Copperfield and Mr. Traddles, of the obligation which I took
upon myself when I repeated the irrevocable words, "I, Emma, take
thee, Wilkins." I read the service over with a flat-candle on the
previous night, and the conclusion I derived from it was, that I
never could desert Mr. Micawber.  And,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'though
it is possible I may be mistaken in my view of the ceremony, I
never will!'

'My dear,' said Mr. Micawber, a little impatiently, 'I am not
conscious that you are expected to do anything of the sort.'

'I am aware, my dear Mr. Copperfield,' pursued Mrs. Micawber, 'that
I am now about to cast my lot among strangers; and I am also aware
that the various members of my family, to whom Mr. Micawber has
written in the most gentlemanly terms, announcing that fact, have
not taken the least notice of Mr. Micawber's communication.  Indeed
I may be superstitious,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'but it appears to me
that Mr. Micawber is destined never to receive any answers whatever
to the great majority of the communications he writes.  I may
augur, from the silence of my family, that they object to the
resolution I have taken; but I should not allow myself to be
swerved from the path of duty, Mr. Copperfield, even by my papa and
mama, were they still living.'

I expressed my opinion that this was going in the right direction.
'It may be a sacrifice,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'to immure one's-self
in a Cathedral town; but surely, Mr. Copperfield, if it is a
sacrifice in me, it is much more a sacrifice in a man of Mr.
Micawber's abilities.'

'Oh!  You are going to a Cathedral town?' said I.

Mr. Micawber, who had been helping us all, out of the
wash-hand-stand jug, replied:

'To Canterbury.  In fact, my dear Copperfield, I have entered into
arrangements, by virtue of which I stand pledged and contracted to
our friend Heep, to assist and serve him in the capacity of - and
to be - his confidential clerk.'

I stared at Mr. Micawber, who greatly enjoyed my surprise.

'I am bound to state to you,' he said, with an official air, 'that
the business habits, and the prudent suggestions, of Mrs. Micawber,
have in a great measure conduced to this result.  The gauntlet, to
which Mrs. Micawber referred upon a former occasion, being thrown
down in the form of an advertisement, was taken up by my friend
Heep, and led to a mutual recognition.  Of my friend Heep,' said
Mr. Micawber, 'who is a man of remarkable shrewdness, I desire to
speak with all possible respect.  My friend Heep has not fixed the
positive remuneration at too high a figure, but he has made a great
deal, in the way of extrication from the pressure of pecuniary
difficulties, contingent on the value of my services; and on the
value of those services I pin my faith.  Such address and
intelligence as I chance to possess,' said Mr. Micawber, boastfully
disparaging himself, with the old genteel air, 'will be devoted to
my friend Heep's service.  I have already some acquaintance with
the law - as a defendant on civil process - and I shall immediately
apply myself to the Commentaries of one of the most eminent and
remarkable of our English jurists.  I believe it is unnecessary to
add that I allude to Mr. justice Blackstone.'

These observations, and indeed the greater part of the observations
made that evening, were interrupted by Mrs. Micawber's discovering
that Master Micawber was sitting on his boots, or holding his head
on with both arms as if he felt it loose, or accidentally kicking
Traddles under the table, or shuffling his feet over one another,
or producing them at distances from himself apparently outrageous
to nature, or lying sideways with his hair among the wine-glasses,
or developing his restlessness of limb in some other form
incompatible with the general interests of society; and by Master
Micawber's receiving those discoveries in a resentful spirit.  I
sat all the while, amazed by Mr. Micawber's disclosure, and
wondering what it meant; until Mrs. Micawber resumed the thread of
the discourse, and claimed my attention.

'What I particularly request Mr. Micawber to be careful of, is,'
said Mrs. Micawber, 'that he does not, my dear Mr. Copperfield, in
applying himself to this subordinate branch of the law, place it
out of his power to rise, ultimately, to the top of the tree.  I am
convinced that Mr. Micawber, giving his mind to a profession so
adapted to his fertile resources, and his flow of language, must
distinguish himself.  Now, for example, Mr. Traddles,' said Mrs.
Micawber, assuming a profound air, 'a judge, or even say a
Chancellor.  Does an individual place himself beyond the pale of
those preferments by entering on such an office as Mr. Micawber has
accepted?'

'My dear,' observed Mr. Micawber - but glancing inquisitively at
Traddles, too; 'we have time enough before us, for the
consideration of those questions.'

'Micawber,' she returned, 'no!  Your mistake in life is, that you
do not look forward far enough.  You are bound, in justice to your
family, if not to yourself, to take in at a comprehensive glance
the extremest point in the horizon to which your abilities may lead
you.'

Mr. Micawber coughed, and drank his punch with an air of exceeding
satisfaction - still glancing at Traddles, as if he desired to have
his opinion.

'Why, the plain state of the case, Mrs. Micawber,' said Traddles,
mildly breaking the truth to her.  'I mean the real prosaic fact,
you know -'

'Just so,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'my dear Mr. Traddles, I wish to be
as prosaic and literal as possible on a subject of so much
importance.'

'- Is,' said Traddles, 'that this branch of the law, even if Mr.
Micawber were a regular solicitor -'

'Exactly so,' returned Mrs. Micawber.  ('Wilkins, you are
squinting, and will not be able to get your eyes back.')

'- Has nothing,' pursued Traddles, 'to do with that.  Only a
barrister is eligible for such preferments; and Mr. Micawber could
not be a barrister, without being entered at an inn of court as a
student, for five years.'

'Do I follow you?' said Mrs. Micawber, with her most affable air of
business.  'Do I understand, my dear Mr. Traddles, that, at the
expiration of that period, Mr. Micawber would be eligible as a
Judge or Chancellor?'

'He would be ELIGIBLE,' returned Traddles, with a strong emphasis
on that word.

'Thank you,' said Mrs. Micawber.  'That is quite sufficient.  If
such is the case, and Mr. Micawber forfeits no privilege by
entering on these duties, my anxiety is set at rest.  I speak,'
said Mrs. Micawber, 'as a female, necessarily; but I have always
been of opinion that Mr. Micawber possesses what I have heard my
papa call, when I lived at home, the judicial mind; and I hope Mr.
Micawber is now entering on a field where that mind will develop
itself, and take a commanding station.'

I quite believe that Mr. Micawber saw himself, in his judicial
mind's eye, on the woolsack.  He passed his hand complacently over
his bald head, and said with ostentatious resignation:

'My dear, we will not anticipate the decrees of fortune.  If I am
reserved to wear a wig, I am at least prepared, externally,' in
allusion to his baldness, 'for that distinction.  I do not,' said
Mr. Micawber, 'regret my hair, and I may have been deprived of it
for a specific purpose.  I cannot say.  It is my intention, my dear
Copperfield, to educate my son for the Church; I will not deny that
I should be happy, on his account, to attain to eminence.'

'For the Church?' said I, still pondering, between whiles, on Uriah
Heep.

'Yes,' said Mr. Micawber.  'He has a remarkable head-voice, and
will commence as a chorister.  Our residence at Canterbury, and our
local connexion, will, no doubt, enable him to take advantage of
any vacancy that may arise in the Cathedral corps.'

On looking at Master Micawber again, I saw that he had a certain
expression of face, as if his voice were behind his eyebrows; where
it presently appeared to be, on his singing us (as an alternative
between that and bed) 'The Wood-Pecker tapping'.  After many
compliments on this performance, we fell into some general
conversation; and as I was too full of my desperate intentions to
keep my altered circumstances to myself, I made them known to Mr.
and Mrs. Micawber.  I cannot express how extremely delighted they
both were, by the idea of my aunt's being in difficulties; and how
comfortable and friendly it made them.

When we were nearly come to the last round of the punch, I
addressed myself to Traddles, and reminded him that we must not
separate, without wishing our friends health, happiness, and
success in their new career.  I begged Mr. Micawber to fill us
bumpers, and proposed the toast in due form: shaking hands with him
across the table, and kissing Mrs. Micawber, to commemorate that
eventful occasion.  Traddles imitated me in the first particular,
but did not consider himself a sufficiently old friend to venture
on the second.

'My dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, rising with one of his
thumbs in each of his waistcoat pockets, 'the companion of my
youth: if I may be allowed the expression - and my esteemed friend
Traddles: if I may be permitted to call him so - will allow me, on
the part of Mrs. Micawber, myself, and our offspring, to thank them
in the warmest and most uncompromising terms for their good wishes. 
It may be expected that on the eve of a migration which will
consign us to a perfectly new existence,' Mr. Micawber spoke as if
they were going five hundred thousand miles, 'I should offer a few
valedictory remarks to two such friends as I see before me.  But
all that I have to say in this way, I have said.  Whatever station
in society I may attain, through the medium of the learned
profession of which I am about to become an unworthy member, I
shall endeavour not to disgrace, and Mrs. Micawber will be safe to
adorn.  Under the temporary pressure of pecuniary liabilities,
contracted with a view to their immediate liquidation, but
remaining unliquidated through a combination of circumstances, I
have been under the necessity of assuming a garb from which my
natural instincts recoil - I allude to spectacles - and possessing
myself of a cognomen, to which I can establish no legitimate
pretensions.  All I have to say on that score is, that the cloud
has passed from the dreary scene, and the God of Day is once more
high upon the mountain tops.  On Monday next, on the arrival of the
four o'clock afternoon coach at Canterbury, my foot will be on my
native heath - my name, Micawber!'

Mr. Micawber resumed his seat on the close of these remarks, and
drank two glasses of punch in grave succession.  He then said with
much solemnity:

'One thing more I have to do, before this separation is complete,
and that is to perform an act of justice.  My friend Mr. Thomas
Traddles has, on two several occasions, "put his name", if I may
use a common expression, to bills of exchange for my accommodation. 
On the first occasion Mr. Thomas Traddles was left - let me say, in
short, in the lurch.  The fulfilment of the second has not yet
arrived.  The amount of the first obligation,' here Mr. Micawber
carefully referred to papers, 'was, I believe, twenty-three, four,
nine and a half, of the second, according to my entry of that
transaction, eighteen, six, two.  These sums, united, make a total,
if my calculation is correct, amounting to forty-one, ten, eleven
and a half.  My friend Copperfield will perhaps do me the favour to
check that total?'

I did so and found it correct.

'To leave this metropolis,' said Mr. Micawber, 'and my friend Mr.
Thomas Traddles, without acquitting myself of the pecuniary part of
this obligation, would weigh upon my mind to an insupportable
extent.  I have, therefore, prepared for my friend Mr. Thomas
Traddles, and I now hold in my hand, a document, which accomplishes
the desired object.  I beg to hand to my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles
my I.O.U.  for forty-one, ten, eleven and a half, and I am happy to
recover my moral dignity, and to know that I can once more walk
erect before my fellow man!'

With this introduction (which greatly affected him), Mr. Micawber
placed his I.O.U.  in the hands of Traddles, and said he wished him
well in every relation of life.  I am persuaded, not only that this
was quite the same to Mr. Micawber as paying the money, but that
Traddles himself hardly knew the difference until he had had time
to think about it.
Mr. Micawber walked so erect before his fellow man, on the strength
of this virtuous action, that his chest looked half as broad again
when he lighted us downstairs.  We parted with great heartiness on
both sides; and when I had seen Traddles to his own door, and was
going home alone, I thought, among the other odd and contradictory
things I mused upon, that, slippery as Mr. Micawber was, I was
probably indebted to some compassionate recollection he retained of
me as his boy-lodger, for never having been asked by him for money. 
I certainly should not have had the moral courage to refuse it; and
I have no doubt he knew that (to his credit be it written), quite
as well as I did.

CHAPTER 37
A LITTLE COLD WATER

My new life had lasted for more than a week, and I was stronger
than ever in those tremendous practical resolutions that I felt the
crisis required.  I continued to walk extremely fast, and to have
a general idea that I was getting on.  I made it a rule to take as
much out of myself as I possibly could, in my way of doing
everything to which I applied my energies.  I made a perfect victim
of myself.  I even entertained some idea of putting myself on a
vegetable diet, vaguely conceiving that, in becoming a
graminivorous animal, I should sacrifice to Dora.

As yet, little Dora was quite unconscious of my desperate firmness,
otherwise than as my letters darkly shadowed it forth.  But another
Saturday came, and on that Saturday evening she was to be at Miss
Mills's; and when Mr. Mills had gone to his whist-club (telegraphed
to me in the street, by a bird-cage in the drawing-room middle
window), I was to go there to tea.

By this time, we were quite settled down in Buckingham Street,
where Mr. Dick continued his copying in a state of absolute
felicity.  My aunt had obtained a signal victory over Mrs. Crupp,
by paying her off, throwing the first pitcher she planted on the
stairs out of window, and protecting in person, up and down the
staircase, a supernumerary whom she engaged from the outer world. 
These vigorous measures struck such terror to the breast of Mrs.
Crupp, that she subsided into her own kitchen, under the impression
that my aunt was mad.  My aunt being supremely indifferent to Mrs.
Crupp's opinion and everybody else's, and rather favouring than
discouraging the idea, Mrs. Crupp, of late the bold, became within
a few days so faint-hearted, that rather than encounter my aunt
upon the staircase, she would endeavour to hide her portly form
behind doors - leaving visible, however, a wide margin of flannel
petticoat - or would shrink into dark corners.  This gave my aunt
such unspeakable satisfaction, that I believe she took a delight in
prowling up and down, with her bonnet insanely perched on the top
of her head, at times when Mrs. Crupp was likely to be in the way.

My aunt, being uncommonly neat and ingenious, made so many little
improvements in our domestic arrangements, that I seemed to be
richer instead of poorer.  Among the rest, she converted the pantry
into a dressing-room for me; and purchased and embellished a
bedstead for my occupation, which looked as like a bookcase in the
daytime as a bedstead could.  I was the object of her constant
solicitude; and my poor mother herself could not have loved me
better, or studied more how to make me happy.

Peggotty had considered herself highly privileged in being allowed
to participate in these labours; and, although she still retained
something of her old sentiment of awe in reference to my aunt, had
received so many marks of encouragement and confidence, that they
were the best friends possible.  But the time had now come (I am
speaking of the Saturday when I was to take tea at Miss Mills's)
when it was necessary for her to return home, and enter on the
discharge of the duties she had undertaken in behalf of Ham.  'So
good-bye, Barkis,' said my aunt, 'and take care of yourself!  I am
sure I never thought I could be sorry to lose you!'

I took Peggotty to the coach office and saw her off.  She cried at
parting, and confided her brother to my friendship as Ham had done. 
We had heard nothing of him since he went away, that sunny
afternoon.

'And now, my own dear Davy,' said Peggotty, 'if, while you're a
prentice, you should want any money to spend; or if, when you're
out of your time, my dear, you should want any to set you up (and
you must do one or other, or both, my darling); who has such a good
right to ask leave to lend it you, as my sweet girl's own old
stupid me!'

I was not so savagely independent as to say anything in reply, but
that if ever I borrowed money of anyone, I would borrow it of her. 
Next to accepting a large sum on the spot, I believe this gave
Peggotty more comfort than anything I could have done.

'And, my dear!' whispered Peggotty, 'tell the pretty little angel
that I should so have liked to see her, only for a minute!  And
tell her that before she marries my boy, I'll come and make your
house so beautiful for you, if you'll let me!'

I declared that nobody else should touch it; and this gave Peggotty
such delight that she went away in good spirits.

I fatigued myself as much as I possibly could in the Commons all
day, by a variety of devices, and at the appointed time in the
evening repaired to Mr. Mills's street.  Mr. Mills, who was a
terrible fellow to fall asleep after dinner, had not yet gone out,
and there was no bird-cage in the middle window.

He kept me waiting so long, that I fervently hoped the Club would
fine him for being late.  At last he came out; and then I saw my
own Dora hang up the bird-cage, and peep into the balcony to look
for me, and run in again when she saw I was there, while Jip
remained behind, to bark injuriously at an immense butcher's dog in
the street, who could have taken him like a pill.

Dora came to the drawing-room door to meet me; and Jip came
scrambling out, tumbling over his own growls, under the impression
that I was a Bandit; and we all three went in, as happy and loving
as could be.  I soon carried desolation into the bosom of our joys
- not that I meant to do it, but that I was so full of the subject
- by asking Dora, without the smallest preparation, if she could
love a beggar?

My pretty, little, startled Dora!  Her only association with the
word was a yellow face and a nightcap, or a pair of crutches, or a
wooden leg, or a dog with a decanter-stand in his mouth, or
something of that kind; and she stared at me with the most
delightful wonder.

'How can you ask me anything so foolish?' pouted Dora.  'Love a
beggar!'

'Dora, my own dearest!' said I.  'I am a beggar!'

'How can you be such a silly thing,' replied Dora, slapping my
hand, 'as to sit there, telling such stories?  I'll make Jip bite
you!'

Her childish way was the most delicious way in the world to me, but
it was necessary to be explicit, and I solemnly repeated:

'Dora, my own life, I am your ruined David!'

'I declare I'll make Jip bite you!' said Dora, shaking her curls,
'if you are so ridiculous.'

But I looked so serious, that Dora left off shaking her curls, and
laid her trembling little hand upon my shoulder, and first looked
scared and anxious, then began to cry.  That was dreadful.  I fell
upon my knees before the sofa, caressing her, and imploring her not
to rend my heart; but, for some time, poor little Dora did nothing
but exclaim Oh dear!  Oh dear!  And oh, she was so frightened!  And
where was Julia Mills!  And oh, take her to Julia Mills, and go
away, please! until I was almost beside myself.

At last, after an agony of supplication and protestation, I got
Dora to look at me, with a horrified expression of face, which I
gradually soothed until it was only loving, and her soft, pretty
cheek was lying against mine.  Then I told her, with my arms
clasped round her, how I loved her, so dearly, and so dearly; how
I felt it right to offer to release her from her engagement,
because now I was poor; how I never could bear it, or recover it,
if I lost her; how I had no fears of poverty, if she had none, my
arm being nerved and my heart inspired by her; how I was already
working with a courage such as none but lovers knew; how I had
begun to be practical, and look into the future; how a crust well
earned was sweeter far than a feast inherited; and much more to the
same purpose, which I delivered in a burst of passionate eloquence
quite surprising to myself, though I had been thinking about it,
day and night, ever since my aunt had astonished me.

'Is your heart mine still, dear Dora?' said I, rapturously, for I
knew by her clinging to me that it was.

'Oh, yes!' cried Dora.  'Oh, yes, it's all yours.  Oh, don't be
dreadful!'

I dreadful!  To Dora!

'Don't talk about being poor, and working hard!' said Dora,
nestling closer to me.  'Oh, don't, don't!'

'My dearest love,' said I, 'the crust well-earned -'

'Oh, yes; but I don't want to hear any more about crusts!' said
Dora.  'And Jip must have a mutton-chop every day at twelve, or
he'll die.'

I was charmed with her childish, winning way.  I fondly explained
to Dora that Jip should have his mutton-chop with his accustomed
regularity.  I drew a picture of our frugal home, made independent
by my labour - sketching in the little house I had seen at
Highgate, and my aunt in her room upstairs.

'I am not dreadful now, Dora?' said I, tenderly.

'Oh, no, no!' cried Dora.  'But I hope your aunt will keep in her
own room a good deal.  And I hope she's not a scolding old thing!'

If it were possible for me to love Dora more than ever, I am sure
I did.  But I felt she was a little impracticable.  It damped my
new-born ardour, to find that ardour so difficult of communication
to her.  I made another trial.  When she was quite herself again,
and was curling Jip's ears, as he lay upon her lap, I became grave,
and said:

'My own!  May I mention something?'

'Oh, please don't be practical!' said Dora, coaxingly.  'Because it
frightens me so!'

'Sweetheart!' I returned; 'there is nothing to alarm you in all
this.  I want you to think of it quite differently.  I want to make
it nerve you, and inspire you, Dora!'

'Oh, but that's so shocking!' cried Dora.

'My love, no.  Perseverance and strength of character will enable
us to bear much worse things.'
'But I haven't got any strength at all,' said Dora, shaking her
curls.  'Have I, Jip?  Oh, do kiss Jip, and be agreeable!'

It was impossible to resist kissing Jip, when she held him up to me
for that purpose, putting her own bright, rosy little mouth into
kissing form, as she directed the operation, which she insisted
should be performed symmetrically, on the centre of his nose.  I
did as she bade me - rewarding myself afterwards for my obedience
- and she charmed me out of my graver character for I don't know
how long.

'But, Dora, my beloved!' said I, at last resuming it; 'I was going
to mention something.'

The judge of the Prerogative Court might have fallen in love with
her, to see her fold her little hands and hold them up, begging and
praying me not to be dreadful any more.

'Indeed I am not going to be, my darling!' I assured her.  'But,
Dora, my love, if you will sometimes think, - not despondingly, you
know; far from that! - but if you will sometimes think - just to
encourage yourself - that you are engaged to a poor man -'

'Don't, don't!  Pray don't!' cried Dora.  'It's so very dreadful!'

'My soul, not at all!' said I, cheerfully.  'If you will sometimes
think of that, and look about now and then at your papa's
housekeeping, and endeavour to acquire a little habit - of
accounts, for instance -'

Poor little Dora received this suggestion with something that was
half a sob and half a scream.

'- It would be so useful to us afterwards,' I went on.  'And if you
would promise me to read a little - a little Cookery Book that I
would send you, it would be so excellent for both of us.  For our
path in life, my Dora,' said I, warming with the subject, 'is stony
and rugged now, and it rests with us to smooth it.  We must fight
our way onward.  We must be brave.  There are obstacles to be met,
and we must meet, and crush them!'

I was going on at a great rate, with a clenched hand, and a most
enthusiastic countenance; but it was quite unnecessary to proceed. 
I had said enough.  I had done it again.  Oh, she was so
frightened!  Oh, where was Julia Mills!  Oh, take her to Julia
Mills, and go away, please!  So that, in short, I was quite
distracted, and raved about the drawing-room.

I thought I had killed her, this time.  I sprinkled water on her
face.  I went down on my knees.  I plucked at my hair.  I denounced
myself as a remorseless brute and a ruthless beast.  I implored her
forgiveness.  I besought her to look up.  I ravaged Miss Mills's
work-box for a smelling-bottle, and in my agony of mind applied an
ivory needle-case instead, and dropped all the needles over Dora.
I shook my fists at Jip, who was as frantic as myself.  I did every
wild extravagance that could be done, and was a long way beyond the
end of my wits when Miss Mills came into the room.

'Who has done this?' exclaimed Miss Mills, succouring her friend.

I replied, 'I, Miss Mills! I have done it!  Behold the destroyer!'
- or words to that effect - and hid my face from the light, in the
sofa cushion.

At first Miss Mills thought it was a quarrel, and that we were
verging on the Desert of Sahara; but she soon found out how matters
stood, for my dear affectionate little Dora, embracing her, began
exclaiming that I was 'a poor labourer'; and then cried for me, and
embraced me, and asked me would I let her give me all her money to
keep, and then fell on Miss Mills's neck, sobbing as if her tender
heart were broken.

Miss Mills must have been born to be a blessing to us.  She
ascertained from me in a few words what it was all about, comforted
Dora, and gradually convinced her that I was not a labourer - from
my manner of stating the case I believe Dora concluded that I was
a navigator, and went balancing myself up and down a plank all day
with a wheelbarrow - and so brought us together in peace.  When we
were quite composed, and Dora had gone up-stairs to put some
rose-water to her eyes, Miss Mills rang for tea.  In the ensuing
interval, I told Miss Mills that she was evermore my friend, and
that my heart must cease to vibrate ere I could forget her
sympathy.

I then expounded to Miss Mills what I had endeavoured, so very
unsuccessfully, to expound to Dora.  Miss Mills replied, on general
principles, that the Cottage of content was better than the Palace
of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was.

I said to Miss Mills that this was very true, and who should know
it better than I, who loved Dora with a love that never mortal had
experienced yet?  But on Miss Mills observing, with despondency,
that it were well indeed for some hearts if this were so, I
explained that I begged leave to restrict the observation to
mortals of the masculine gender.

I then put it to Miss Mills, to say whether she considered that
there was or was not any practical merit in the suggestion I had
been anxious to make, concerning the accounts, the housekeeping,
and the Cookery Book?

Miss Mills, after some consideration, thus replied:

'Mr. Copperfield, I will be plain with you.  Mental suffering and
trial supply, in some natures, the place of years, and I will be as
plain with you as if I were a Lady Abbess.  No.  The suggestion is
not appropriate to our Dora.  Our dearest Dora is a favourite child
of nature.  She is a thing of light, and airiness, and joy.  I am
free to confess that if it could be done, it might be well, but -'
And Miss Mills shook her head.

I was encouraged by this closing admission on the part of Miss
Mills to ask her, whether, for Dora's sake, if she had any
opportunity of luring her attention to such preparations for an
earnest life, she would avail herself of it?  Miss Mills replied in
the affirmative so readily, that I further asked her if she would
take charge of the Cookery Book; and, if she ever could insinuate
it upon Dora's acceptance, without frightening her, undertake to do
me that crowning service.  Miss Mills accepted this trust, too; but
was not sanguine.

And Dora returned, looking such a lovely little creature, that I
really doubted whether she ought to be troubled with anything so
ordinary.  And she loved me so much, and was so captivating
(particularly when she made Jip stand on his hind legs for toast,
and when she pretended to hold that nose of his against the hot
teapot for punishment because he wouldn't), that I felt like a sort
of Monster who had got into a Fairy's bower, when I thought of
having frightened her, and made her cry.

After tea we had the guitar; and Dora sang those same dear old
French songs about the impossibility of ever on any account leaving
off dancing, La ra la, La ra la, until I felt a much greater
Monster than before.

We had only one check to our pleasure, and that happened a little
while before I took my leave, when, Miss Mills chancing to make
some allusion to tomorrow morning, I unluckily let out that, being
obliged to exert myself now, I got up at five o'clock.  Whether
Dora had any idea that I was a Private Watchman, I am unable to
say; but it made a great impression on her, and she neither played
nor sang any more.

It was still on her mind when I bade her adieu; and she said to me,
in her pretty coaxing way - as if I were a doll, I used to think:

'Now don't get up at five o'clock, you naughty boy.  It's so
nonsensical!'

'My love,' said I, 'I have work to do.'

'But don't do it!' returned Dora.  'Why should you?'

It was impossible to say to that sweet little surprised face,
otherwise than lightly and playfully, that we must work to live.

'Oh!  How ridiculous!' cried Dora.

'How shall we live without, Dora?' said I.

'How?  Any how!' said Dora.

She seemed to think she had quite settled the question, and gave me
such a triumphant little kiss, direct from her innocent heart, that
I would hardly have put her out of conceit with her answer, for a
fortune.

Well!  I loved her, and I went on loving her, most absorbingly,
entirely, and completely.  But going on, too, working pretty hard,
and busily keeping red-hot all the irons I now had in the fire, I
would sit sometimes of a night, opposite my aunt, thinking how I
had frightened Dora that time, and how I could best make my way
with a guitar-case through the forest of difficulty, until I used
to fancy that my head was turning quite grey.

CHAPTER 38
A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP

I did not allow my resolution, with respect to the Parliamentary
Debates, to cool.  It was one of the irons I began to heat
immediately, and one of the irons I kept hot, and hammered at, with
a perseverance I may honestly admire.  I bought an approved scheme
of the noble art and mystery of stenography (which cost me ten and
sixpence); and plunged into a sea of perplexity that brought me, in
a few weeks, to the confines of distraction.  The changes that were
rung upon dots, which in such a position meant such a thing, and in
such another position something else, entirely different; the
wonderful vagaries that were played by circles; the unaccountable
consequences that resulted from marks like flies' legs; the
tremendous effects of a curve in a wrong place; not only troubled
my waking hours, but reappeared before me in my sleep.  When I had
groped my way, blindly, through these difficulties, and had
mastered the alphabet, which was an Egyptian Temple in itself,
there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary
characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who
insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a
cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket, stood
for disadvantageous.  When I had fixed these wretches in my mind,
I found that they had driven everything else out of it; then,
beginning again, I forgot them; while I was picking them up, I
dropped the other fragments of the system; in short, it was almost
heart-breaking.

It might have been quite heart-breaking, but for Dora, who was the
stay and anchor of my tempest-driven bark.  Every scratch in the
scheme was a gnarled oak in the forest of difficulty, and I went on
cutting them down, one after another, with such vigour, that in
three or four months I was in a condition to make an experiment on
one of our crack speakers in the Commons.  Shall I ever forget how
the crack speaker walked off from me before I began, and left my
imbecile pencil staggering about the paper as if it were in a fit!

This would not do, it was quite clear.  I was flying too high, and
should never get on, so.  I resorted to Traddles for advice; who
suggested that he should dictate speeches to me, at a pace, and
with occasional stoppages, adapted to my weakness.  Very grateful
for this friendly aid, I accepted the proposal; and night after
night, almost every night, for a long time, we had a sort of
Private Parliament in Buckingham Street, after I came home from the
Doctor's.

I should like to see such a Parliament anywhere else!  My aunt and
Mr. Dick represented the Government or the Opposition (as the case
might be), and Traddles, with the assistance of Enfield's Speakers,
or a volume of parliamentary orations, thundered astonishing
invectives against them.  Standing by the table, with his finger in
the page to keep the place, and his right arm flourishing above his
head, Traddles, as Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Burke, Lord
Castlereagh, Viscount Sidmouth, or Mr. Canning, would work himself
into the most violent heats, and deliver the most withering
denunciations of the profligacy and corruption of my aunt and Mr.
Dick; while I used to sit, at a little distance, with my notebook
on my knee, fagging after him with all my might and main.  The
inconsistency and recklessness of Traddles were not to be exceeded
by any real politician.  He was for any description of policy, in
the compass of a week; and nailed all sorts of colours to every
denomination of mast.  My aunt, looking very like an immovable
Chancellor of the Exchequer, would occasionally throw in an
interruption or two, as 'Hear!' or 'No!' or 'Oh!' when the text
seemed to require it: which was always a signal to Mr. Dick (a
perfect country gentleman) to follow lustily with the same cry. 
But Mr. Dick got taxed with such things in the course of his
Parliamentary career, and was made responsible for such awful
consequences, that he became uncomfortable in his mind sometimes. 
I believe he actually began to be afraid he really had been doing
something, tending to the annihilation of the British constitution,
and the ruin of the country.

Often and often we pursued these debates until the clock pointed to
midnight, and the candles were burning down.  The result of so much
good practice was, that by and by I began to keep pace with
Traddles pretty well, and should have been quite triumphant if I
had had the least idea what my notes were about.  But, as to
reading them after I had got them, I might as well have copied the
Chinese inscriptions of an immense collection of tea-chests, or the
golden characters on all the great red and green bottles in the
chemists' shops!

There was nothing for it, but to turn back and begin all over
again.  It was very hard, but I turned back, though with a heavy
heart, and began laboriously and methodically to plod over the same
tedious ground at a snail's pace; stopping to examine minutely
every speck in the way, on all sides, and making the most desperate
efforts to know these elusive characters by sight wherever I met
them.  I was always punctual at the office; at the Doctor's too:
and I really did work, as the common expression is, like a
cart-horse.
One day, when I went to the Commons as usual, I found Mr. Spenlow
in the doorway looking extremely grave, and talking to himself.  As
he was in the habit of complaining of pains in his head - he had
naturally a short throat, and I do seriously believe he
over-starched himself - I was at first alarmed by the idea that he
was not quite right in that direction; but he soon relieved my
uneasiness.

Instead of returning my 'Good morning' with his usual affability,
he looked at me in a distant, ceremonious manner, and coldly
requested me to accompany him to a certain coffee-house, which, in
those days, had a door opening into the Commons, just within the
little archway in St. Paul's Churchyard.  I complied, in a very
uncomfortable state, and with a warm shooting all over me, as if my
apprehensions were breaking out into buds.  When I allowed him to
go on a little before, on account of the narrowness of the way, I
observed that he carried his head with a lofty air that was
particularly unpromising; and my mind misgave me that he had found
out about my darling Dora.

If I had not guessed this, on the way to the coffee-house, I could
hardly have failed to know what was the matter when I followed him
into an upstairs room, and found Miss Murdstone there, supported by
a background of sideboard, on which were several inverted tumblers
sustaining lemons, and two of those extraordinary boxes, all
corners and flutings, for sticking knives and forks in, which,
happily for mankind, are now obsolete.

Miss Murdstone gave me her chilly finger-nails, and sat severely
rigid.  Mr. Spenlow shut the door, motioned me to a chair, and
stood on the hearth-rug in front of the fireplace.

'Have the goodness to show Mr. Copperfield,' said Mr. Spenlow, what
you have in your reticule, Miss Murdstone.'

I believe it was the old identical steel-clasped reticule of my
childhood, that shut up like a bite.  Compressing her lips, in
sympathy with the snap, Miss Murdstone opened it - opening her
mouth a little at the same time - and produced my last letter to
Dora, teeming with expressions of devoted affection.

'I believe that is your writing, Mr. Copperfield?' said Mr.
Spenlow.

I was very hot, and the voice I heard was very unlike mine, when I
said, 'It is, sir!'

'If I am not mistaken,' said Mr. Spenlow, as Miss Murdstone brought
a parcel of letters out of her reticule, tied round with the
dearest bit of blue ribbon, 'those are also from your pen, Mr.
Copperfield?'

I took them from her with a most desolate sensation; and, glancing
at such phrases at the top, as 'My ever dearest and own Dora,' 'My
best beloved angel,' 'My blessed one for ever,' and the like,
blushed deeply, and inclined my head.

'No, thank you!' said Mr. Spenlow, coldly, as I mechanically
offered them back to him.  'I will not deprive you of them.  Miss
Murdstone, be so good as to proceed!'

That gentle creature, after a moment's thoughtful survey of the
carpet, delivered herself with much dry unction as follows.

'I must confess to having entertained my suspicions of Miss
Spenlow, in reference to David Copperfield, for some time.  I
observed Miss Spenlow and David Copperfield, when they first met;
and the impression made upon me then was not agreeable.  The
depravity of the human heart is such -'

'You will oblige me, ma'am,' interrupted Mr. Spenlow, 'by confining
yourself to facts.'

Miss Murdstone cast down her eyes, shook her head as if protesting
against this unseemly interruption, and with frowning dignity
resumed:

'Since I am to confine myself to facts, I will state them as dryly
as I can.  Perhaps that will be considered an acceptable course of
proceeding.  I have already said, sir, that I have had my
suspicions of Miss Spenlow, in reference to David Copperfield, for
some time.  I have frequently endeavoured to find decisive
corroboration of those suspicions, but without effect.  I have
therefore forborne to mention them to Miss Spenlow's father';
looking severely at him- 'knowing how little disposition there
usually is in such cases, to acknowledge the conscientious
discharge of duty.'

Mr. Spenlow seemed quite cowed by the gentlemanly sternness of Miss
Murdstone's manner, and deprecated her severity with a conciliatory
little wave of his hand.

'On my return to Norwood, after the period of absence occasioned by
my brother's marriage,' pursued Miss Murdstone in a disdainful
voice, 'and on the return of Miss Spenlow from her visit to her
friend Miss Mills, I imagined that the manner of Miss Spenlow gave
me greater occasion for suspicion than before.  Therefore I watched
Miss Spenlow closely.'

Dear, tender little Dora, so unconscious of this Dragon's eye!

'Still,' resumed Miss Murdstone, 'I found no proof until last
night.  It appeared to me that Miss Spenlow received too many
letters from her friend Miss Mills; but Miss Mills being her friend
with her father's full concurrence,' another telling blow at Mr.
Spenlow, 'it was not for me to interfere.  If I may not be
permitted to allude to the natural depravity of the human heart, at
least I may - I must - be permitted, so far to refer to misplaced
confidence.'

Mr. Spenlow apologetically murmured his assent.

'Last evening after tea,' pursued Miss Murdstone, 'I observed the
little dog starting, rolling, and growling about the drawing-room,
worrying something.  I said to Miss Spenlow, "Dora, what is that
the dog has in his mouth?  It's paper." Miss Spenlow immediately
put her hand to her frock, gave a sudden cry, and ran to the dog. 
I interposed, and said, "Dora, my love, you must permit me." '

Oh Jip, miserable Spaniel, this wretchedness, then, was your work!

'Miss Spenlow endeavoured,' said Miss Murdstone, 'to bribe me with
kisses, work-boxes, and small articles of jewellery - that, of
course, I pass over.  The little dog retreated under the sofa on my
approaching him, and was with great difficulty dislodged by the
fire-irons.  Even when dislodged, he still kept the letter in his
mouth; and on my endeavouring to take it from him, at the imminent
risk of being bitten, he kept it between his teeth so
pertinaciously as to suffer himself to be held suspended in the air
by means of the document.  At length I obtained possession of it. 
After perusing it, I taxed Miss Spenlow with having many such
letters in her possession; and ultimately obtained from her the
packet which is now in David Copperfield's hand.'

Here she ceased; and snapping her reticule again, and shutting her
mouth, looked as if she might be broken, but could never be bent.

'You have heard Miss Murdstone,' said Mr. Spenlow, turning to me. 
'I beg to ask, Mr. Copperfield, if you have anything to say in
reply?'

The picture I had before me, of the beautiful little treasure of my
heart, sobbing and crying all night - of her being alone,
frightened, and wretched, then - of her having so piteously begged
and prayed that stony-hearted woman to forgive her - of her having
vainly offered her those kisses, work-boxes, and trinkets - of her
being in such grievous distress, and all for me - very much
impaired the little dignity I had been able to muster.  I am afraid
I was in a tremulous state for a minute or so, though I did my best
to disguise it.

'There is nothing I can say, sir,' I returned, 'except that all the
blame is mine.  Dora -'

'Miss Spenlow, if you please,' said her father, majestically.

'- was induced and persuaded by me,' I went on, swallowing that
colder designation, 'to consent to this concealment, and I bitterly
regret it.'

'You are very much to blame, sir,' said Mr. Spenlow, walking to and
fro upon the hearth-rug, and emphasizing what he said with his
whole body instead of his head, on account of the stiffness of his
cravat and spine.  'You have done a stealthy and unbecoming action,
Mr. Copperfield.  When I take a gentleman to my house, no matter
whether he is nineteen, twenty-nine, or ninety, I take him there in
a spirit of confidence.  If he abuses my confidence, he commits a
dishonourable action, Mr. Copperfield.'

'I feel it, sir, I assure you,' I returned.  'But I never thought
so, before.  Sincerely, honestly, indeed, Mr. Spenlow, I never
thought so, before.  I love Miss Spenlow to that extent -'

'Pooh! nonsense!' said Mr. Spenlow, reddening.  'Pray don't tell me
to my face that you love my daughter, Mr. Copperfield!'

'Could I defend my conduct if I did not, sir?' I returned, with all
humility.

'Can you defend your conduct if you do, sir?' said Mr. Spenlow,
stopping short upon the hearth-rug.  'Have you considered your
years, and my daughter's years, Mr. Copperfield?  Have you
considered what it is to undermine the confidence that should
subsist between my daughter and myself?  Have you considered my
daughter's station in life, the projects I may contemplate for her
advancement, the testamentary intentions I may have with reference
to her?  Have you considered anything, Mr. Copperfield?'

'Very little, sir, I am afraid;' I answered, speaking to him as
respectfully and sorrowfully as I felt; 'but pray believe me, I
have considered my own worldly position.  When I explained it to
you, we were already engaged -'

'I BEG,' said Mr. Spenlow, more like Punch than I had ever seen
him, as he energetically struck one hand upon the other - I could
not help noticing that even in my despair; 'that YOU Will NOT talk
to me of engagements, Mr. Copperfield!'

The otherwise immovable Miss Murdstone laughed contemptuously in
one short syllable.

'When I explained my altered position to you, sir,' I began again,
substituting a new form of expression for what was so unpalatable
to him, 'this concealment, into which I am so unhappy as to have
led Miss Spenlow, had begun.  Since I have been in that altered
position, I have strained every nerve, I have exerted every energy,
to improve it.  I am sure I shall improve it in time.  Will you
grant me time - any length of time?  We are both so young, sir, -'

'You are right,' interrupted Mr. Spenlow, nodding his head a great
many times, and frowning very much, 'you are both very young.  It's
all nonsense.  Let there be an end of the nonsense.  Take away
those letters, and throw them in the fire.  Give me Miss Spenlow's
letters to throw in the fire; and although our future intercourse
must, you are aware, be restricted to the Commons here, we will
agree to make no further mention of the past.  Come, Mr.
Copperfield, you don't want sense; and this is the sensible
course.'

No.  I couldn't think of agreeing to it.  I was very sorry, but
there was a higher consideration than sense.  Love was above all
earthly considerations, and I loved Dora to idolatry, and Dora
loved me.  I didn't exactly say so; I softened it down as much as
I could; but I implied it, and I was resolute upon it.  I don't
think I made myself very ridiculous, but I know I was resolute.

'Very well, Mr. Copperfield,' said Mr. Spenlow, 'I must try my
influence with my daughter.'

Miss Murdstone, by an expressive sound, a long drawn respiration,
which was neither a sigh nor a moan, but was like both, gave it as
her opinion that he should have done this at first.

'I must try,' said Mr. Spenlow, confirmed by this support, 'my
influence with my daughter.  Do you decline to take those letters,
Mr. Copperfield?' For I had laid them on the table.

Yes.  I told him I hoped he would not think it wrong, but I
couldn't possibly take them from Miss Murdstone.

'Nor from me?' said Mr. Spenlow.

No, I replied with the profoundest respect; nor from him.

'Very well!' said Mr. Spenlow.

A silence succeeding, I was undecided whether to go or stay.  At
length I was moving quietly towards the door, with the intention of
saying that perhaps I should consult his feelings best by
withdrawing: when he said, with his hands in his coat pockets, into
which it was as much as he could do to get them; and with what I
should call, upon the whole, a decidedly pious air:

'You are probably aware, Mr. Copperfield, that I am not altogether
destitute of worldly possessions, and that my daughter is my
nearest and dearest relative?'

I hurriedly made him a reply to the effect, that I hoped the error
into which I had been betrayed by the desperate nature of my love,
did not induce him to think me mercenary too?

'I don't allude to the matter in that light,' said Mr. Spenlow. 
'It would be better for yourself, and all of us, if you WERE
mercenary, Mr. Copperfield - I mean, if you were more discreet and
less influenced by all this youthful nonsense.  No.  I merely say,
with quite another view, you are probably aware I have some
property to bequeath to my child?'

I certainly supposed so.

'And you can hardly think,' said Mr. Spenlow, 'having experience of
what we see, in the Commons here, every day, of the various
unaccountable and negligent proceedings of men, in respect of their
testamentary arrangements - of all subjects, the one on which
perhaps the strangest revelations of human inconsistency are to be
met with - but that mine are made?'

I inclined my head in acquiescence.

'I should not allow,' said Mr. Spenlow, with an evident increase of
pious sentiment, and slowly shaking his head as he poised himself
upon his toes and heels alternately, 'my suitable provision for my
child to be influenced by a piece of youthful folly like the
present.  It is mere folly.  Mere nonsense.  In a little while, it
will weigh lighter than any feather.  But I might - I might - if
this silly business were not completely relinquished altogether, be
induced in some anxious moment to guard her from, and surround her
with protections against, the consequences of any foolish step in
the way of marriage.  Now, Mr. Copperfield, I hope that you will
not render it necessary for me to open, even for a quarter of an
hour, that closed page in the book of life, and unsettle, even for
a quarter of an hour, grave affairs long since composed.'

There was a serenity, a tranquillity, a calm sunset air about him,
which quite affected me.  He was so peaceful and resigned - clearly
had his affairs in such perfect train, and so systematically wound
up - that he was a man to feel touched in the contemplation of.  I
really think I saw tears rise to his eyes, from the depth of his
own feeling of all this.

But what could I do?  I could not deny Dora and my own heart.  When
he told me I had better take a week to consider of what he had
said, how could I say I wouldn't take a week, yet how could I fail
to know that no amount of weeks could influence such love as mine?

'In the meantime, confer with Miss Trotwood, or with any person
with any knowledge of life,' said Mr. Spenlow, adjusting his cravat
with both hands.  'Take a week, Mr. Copperfield.'

I submitted; and, with a countenance as expressive as I was able to
make it of dejected and despairing constancy, came out of the room. 
Miss Murdstone's heavy eyebrows followed me to the door - I say her
eyebrows rather than her eyes, because they were much more
important in her face - and she looked so exactly as she used to
look, at about that hour of the morning, in our parlour at
Blunderstone, that I could have fancied I had been breaking down in
my lessons again, and that the dead weight on my mind was that
horrible old spelling-book, with oval woodcuts, shaped, to my
youthful fancy, like the glasses out of spectacles.

When I got to the office, and, shutting out old Tiffey and the rest
of them with my hands, sat at my desk, in my own particular nook,
thinking of this earthquake that had taken place so unexpectedly,
and in the bitterness of my spirit cursing Jip, I fell into such a
state of torment about Dora, that I wonder I did not take up my hat
and rush insanely to Norwood.  The idea of their frightening her,
and making her cry, and of my not being there to comfort her, was
so excruciating, that it impelled me to write a wild letter to Mr.
Spenlow, beseeching him not to visit upon her the consequences of
my awful destiny.  I implored him to spare her gentle nature - not
to crush a fragile flower - and addressed him generally, to the
best of my remembrance, as if, instead of being her father, he had
been an Ogre, or the Dragon of Wantley.3 This letter I sealed and
laid upon his desk before he returned; and when he came in, I saw
him, through the half-opened door of his room, take it up and read
it.

He said nothing about it all the morning; but before he went away
in the afternoon he called me in, and told me that I need not make
myself at all uneasy about his daughter's happiness.  He had
assured her, he said, that it was all nonsense; and he had nothing
more to say to her.  He believed he was an indulgent father (as
indeed he was), and I might spare myself any solicitude on her
account.

'You may make it necessary, if you are foolish or obstinate, Mr.
Copperfield,' he observed, 'for me to send my daughter abroad
again, for a term; but I have a better opinion of you.  I hope you
will be wiser than that, in a few days.  As to Miss Murdstone,' for
I had alluded to her in the letter, 'I respect that lady's
vigilance, and feel obliged to her; but she has strict charge to
avoid the subject.  All I desire, Mr. Copperfield, is, that it
should be forgotten.  All you have got to do, Mr. Copperfield, is
to forget it.'

All!  In the note I wrote to Miss Mills, I bitterly quoted this
sentiment.  All I had to do, I said, with gloomy sarcasm, was to
forget Dora.  That was all, and what was that!  I entreated Miss
Mills to see me, that evening.  If it could not be done with Mr.
Mills's sanction and concurrence, I besought a clandestine
interview in the back kitchen where the Mangle was.  I informed her
that my reason was tottering on its throne, and only she, Miss
Mills, could prevent its being deposed.  I signed myself, hers
distractedly; and I couldn't help feeling, while I read this
composition over, before sending it by a porter, that it was
something in the style of Mr. Micawber.

However, I sent it.  At night I repaired to Miss Mills's street,
and walked up and down, until I was stealthily fetched in by Miss
Mills's maid, and taken the area way to the back kitchen.  I have
since seen reason to believe that there was nothing on earth to
prevent my going in at the front door, and being shown up into the
drawing-room, except Miss Mills's love of the romantic and
mysterious.

In the back kitchen, I raved as became me.  I went there, I
suppose, to make a fool of myself, and I am quite sure I did it. 
Miss Mills had received a hasty note from Dora, telling her that
all was discovered, and saying.  'Oh pray come to me, Julia, do,
do!' But Miss Mills, mistrusting the acceptability of her presence
to the higher powers, had not yet gone; and we were all benighted
in the Desert of Sahara.

Miss Mills had a wonderful flow of words, and liked to pour them
out.  I could not help feeling, though she mingled her tears with
mine, that she had a dreadful luxury in our afflictions.  She
petted them, as I may say, and made the most of them.  A deep gulf,
she observed, had opened between Dora and me, and Love could only
span it with its rainbow.  Love must suffer in this stern world; it
ever had been so, it ever would be so.  No matter, Miss Mills
remarked.  Hearts confined by cobwebs would burst at last, and then
Love was avenged.

This was small consolation, but Miss Mills wouldn't encourage
fallacious hopes.  She made me much more wretched than I was
before, and I felt (and told her with the deepest gratitude) that
she was indeed a friend.  We resolved that she should go to Dora
the first thing in the morning, and find some means of assuring
her, either by looks or words, of my devotion and misery.  We
parted, overwhelmed with grief; and I think Miss Mills enjoyed
herself completely.

I confided all to my aunt when I got home; and in spite of all she
could say to me, went to bed despairing.  I got up despairing, and
went out despairing.  It was Saturday morning, and I went straight
to the Commons.

I was surprised, when I came within sight of our office-door, to
see the ticket-porters standing outside talking together, and some
half-dozen stragglers gazing at the windows which were shut up.  I
quickened my pace, and, passing among them, wondering at their
looks, went hurriedly in.

The clerks were there, but nobody was doing anything.  Old Tiffey,
for the first time in his life I should think, was sitting on
somebody else's stool, and had not hung up his hat.

'This is a dreadful calamity, Mr. Copperfield,' said he, as I
entered.

'What is?' I exclaimed.  'What's the matter?'

'Don't you know?' cried Tiffey, and all the rest of them, coming
round me.

'No!' said I, looking from face to face.

'Mr. Spenlow,' said Tiffey.

'What about him!'

'Dead!'
I thought it was the office reeling, and not I, as one of the
clerks caught hold of me.  They sat me down in a chair, untied my
neck-cloth, and brought me some water.  I have no idea whether this
took any time.

'Dead?' said I.

'He dined in town yesterday, and drove down in the phaeton by
himself,' said Tiffey, 'having sent his own groom home by the
coach, as he sometimes did, you know -'

'Well?'

'The phaeton went home without him.  The horses stopped at the
stable-gate.  The man went out with a lantern.  Nobody in the
carriage.'

'Had they run away?'

'They were not hot,' said Tiffey, putting on his glasses; 'no
hotter, I understand, than they would have been, going down at the
usual pace.  The reins were broken, but they had been dragging on
the ground.  The house was roused up directly, and three of them
went out along the road.  They found him a mile off.'

'More than a mile off, Mr. Tiffey,' interposed a junior.

'Was it?  I believe you are right,' said Tiffey, - 'more than a
mile off - not far from the church - lying partly on the roadside,
and partly on the path, upon his face.  Whether he fell out in a
fit, or got out, feeling ill before the fit came on - or even
whether he was quite dead then, though there is no doubt he was
quite insensible - no one appears to know.  If he breathed,
certainly he never spoke.  Medical assistance was got as soon as
possible, but it was quite useless.'

I cannot describe the state of mind into which I was thrown by this
intelligence.  The shock of such an event happening so suddenly,
and happening to one with whom I had been in any respect at
variance - the appalling vacancy in the room he had occupied so
lately, where his chair and table seemed to wait for him, and his
handwriting of yesterday was like a ghost - the in- definable
impossibility of separating him from the place, and feeling, when
the door opened, as if he might come in - the lazy hush and rest
there was in the office, and the insatiable relish with which our
people talked about it, and other people came in and out all day,
and gorged themselves with the subject - this is easily
intelligible to anyone.  What I cannot describe is, how, in the
innermost recesses of my own heart, I had a lurking jealousy even
of Death.  How I felt as if its might would push me from my ground
in Dora's thoughts.  How I was, in a grudging way I have no words
for, envious of her grief.  How it made me restless to think of her
weeping to others, or being consoled by others.  How I had a
grasping, avaricious wish to shut out everybody from her but
myself, and to be all in all to her, at that unseasonable time of
all times.

In the trouble of this state of mind - not exclusively my own, I
hope, but known to others - I went down to Norwood that night; and
finding from one of the servants, when I made my inquiries at the
door, that Miss Mills was there, got my aunt to direct a letter to
her, which I wrote.  I deplored the untimely death of Mr. Spenlow,
most sincerely, and shed tears in doing so.  I entreated her to
tell Dora, if Dora were in a state to hear it, that he had spoken
to me with the utmost kindness and consideration; and had coupled
nothing but tenderness, not a single or reproachful word, with her
name.  I know I did this selfishly, to have my name brought before
her; but I tried to believe it was an act of justice to his memory. 
Perhaps I did believe it.

My aunt received a few lines next day in reply; addressed, outside,
to her; within, to me.  Dora was overcome by grief; and when her
friend had asked her should she send her love to me, had only
cried, as she was always crying, 'Oh, dear papa! oh, poor papa!'
But she had not said No, and that I made the most of.

Mr. jorkins, who had been at Norwood since the occurrence, came to
the office a few days afterwards.  He and Tiffey were closeted
together for some few moments, and then Tiffey looked out at the
door and beckoned me in.

'Oh!' said Mr. jorkins.  'Mr. Tiffey and myself, Mr. Copperfield,
are about to examine the desks, the drawers, and other such
repositories of the deceased, with the view of sealing up his
private papers, and searching for a Will.  There is no trace of
any, elsewhere.  It may be as well for you to assist us, if you
please.'

I had been in agony to obtain some knowledge of the circumstances
in which my Dora would be placed - as, in whose guardianship, and
so forth - and this was something towards it.  We began the search
at once; Mr. jorkins unlocking the drawers and desks, and we all
taking out the papers.  The office-papers we placed on one side,
and the private papers (which were not numerous) on the other.  We
were very grave; and when we came to a stray seal, or pencil-case,
or ring, or any little article of that kind which we associated
personally with him, we spoke very low.

We had sealed up several packets; and were still going on dustily
and quietly, when Mr. jorkins said to us, applying exactly the same
words to his late partner as his late partner had applied to him:

'Mr. Spenlow was very difficult to move from the beaten track.  You
know what he was!  I am disposed to think he had made no will.'

'Oh, I know he had!' said I.

They both stopped and looked at me.
'On the very day when I last saw him,' said I, 'he told me that he
had, and that his affairs were long since settled.'

Mr. jorkins and old Tiffey shook their heads with one accord.

'That looks unpromising,' said Tiffey.

'Very unpromising,' said Mr. jorkins.

'Surely you don't doubt -' I began.

'My good Mr. Copperfield!' said Tiffey, laying his hand upon my
arm, and shutting up both his eyes as he shook his head: 'if you
had been in the Commons as long as I have, you would know that
there is no subject on which men are so inconsistent, and so little
to be trusted.'

'Why, bless my soul, he made that very remark!' I replied
persistently.

'I should call that almost final,' observed Tiffey.  'My opinion is
- no will.'

It appeared a wonderful thing to me, but it turned out that there
was no will.  He had never so much as thought of making one, so far
as his papers afforded any evidence; for there was no kind of hint,
sketch, or memorandum, of any testamentary intention whatever. 
What was scarcely less astonishing to me, was, that his affairs
were in a most disordered state.  It was extremely difficult, I
heard, to make out what he owed, or what he had paid, or of what he
died possessed.  It was considered likely that for years he could
have had no clear opinion on these subjects himself.  By little and
little it came out, that, in the competition on all points of
appearance and gentility then running high in the Commons, he had
spent more than his professional income, which was not a very large
one, and had reduced his private means, if they ever had been great
(which was exceedingly doubtful), to a very low ebb indeed.  There
was a sale of the furniture and lease, at Norwood; and Tiffey told
me, little thinking how interested I was in the story, that, paying
all the just debts of the deceased, and deducting his share of
outstanding bad and doubtful debts due to the firm, he wouldn't
give a thousand pounds for all the assets remaining.

This was at the expiration of about six weeks.  I had suffered
tortures all the time; and thought I really must have laid violent
hands upon myself, when Miss Mills still reported to me, that my
broken-hearted little Dora would say nothing, when I was mentioned,
but 'Oh, poor papa!  Oh, dear papa!' Also, that she had no other
relations than two aunts, maiden sisters of Mr. Spenlow, who lived
at Putney, and who had not held any other than chance communication
with their brother for many years.  Not that they had ever
quarrelled (Miss Mills informed me); but that having been, on the
occasion of Dora's christening, invited to tea, when they
considered themselves privileged to be invited to dinner, they had
expressed their opinion in writing, that it was 'better for the
happiness of all parties' that they should stay away.  Since which
they had gone their road, and their brother had gone his.

These two ladies now emerged from their retirement, and proposed to
take Dora to live at Putney.  Dora, clinging to them both, and
weeping, exclaimed, 'O yes, aunts!  Please take Julia Mills and me
and Jip to Putney!' So they went, very soon after the funeral.

How I found time to haunt Putney, I am sure I don't know; but I
contrived, by some means or other, to prowl about the neighbourhood
pretty often.  Miss Mills, for the more exact discharge of the
duties of friendship, kept a journal; and she used to meet me
sometimes, on the Common, and read it, or (if she had not time to
do that) lend it to me.  How I treasured up the entries, of which
I subjoin a sample! -

'Monday.  My sweet D. still much depressed.  Headache.  Called
attention to J. as being beautifully sleek.  D. fondled J. 
Associations thus awakened, opened floodgates of sorrow.  Rush of
grief admitted.  (Are tears the dewdrops of the heart?  J. M.)

'Tuesday.  D. weak and nervous.  Beautiful in pallor.  (Do we not
remark this in moon likewise?  J. M.) D., J. M. and J. took airing
in carriage.  J. looking out of window, and barking violently at
dustman, occasioned smile to overspread features of D.  (Of such
slight links is chain of life composed! J. M.)

'Wednesday.  D. comparatively cheerful.  Sang to her, as congenial
melody, "Evening Bells".  Effect not soothing, but reverse.  D.
inexpressibly affected.  Found sobbing afterwards, in own room. 
Quoted verses respecting self and young Gazelle.  Ineffectually. 
Also referred to Patience on Monument.  (Qy.  Why on monument?  J.
M.)

'Thursday.  D. certainly improved.  Better night.  Slight tinge of
damask revisiting cheek.  Resolved to mention name of D. C. 
Introduced same, cautiously, in course of airing.  D. immediately
overcome.  "Oh, dear, dear Julia!  Oh, I have been a naughty and
undutiful child!" Soothed and caressed.  Drew ideal picture of D.
C. on verge of tomb.  D. again overcome.  "Oh, what shall I do,
what shall I do?  Oh, take me somewhere!" Much alarmed.  Fainting
of D. and glass of water from public-house.  (Poetical affinity. 
Chequered sign on door-post; chequered human life.  Alas!  J. M.)

'Friday.  Day of incident.  Man appears in kitchen, with blue bag,
"for lady's boots left out to heel".  Cook replies, "No such
orders." Man argues point.  Cook withdraws to inquire, leaving man
alone with J.  On Cook's return, man still argues point, but
ultimately goes.  J. missing.  D. distracted.  Information sent to
police.  Man to be identified by broad nose, and legs like
balustrades of bridge.  Search made in every direction.  No J.  D.
weeping bitterly, and inconsolable.  Renewed reference to young
Gazelle.  Appropriate, but unavailing.  Towards evening, strange
boy calls.  Brought into parlour.  Broad nose, but no balustrades. 
Says he wants a pound, and knows a dog.  Declines to explain
further, though much pressed.  Pound being produced by D. takes
Cook to little house, where J. alone tied up to leg of table.  joy
of D. who dances round J. while he eats his supper.  Emboldened by
this happy change, mention D. C. upstairs.  D. weeps afresh, cries
piteously, "Oh, don't, don't, don't!  It is so wicked to think of
anything but poor papa!" - embraces J.  and sobs herself to sleep. 
(Must not D. C. confine himself to the broad pinions of Time?  J.
M.)'

Miss Mills and her journal were my sole consolation at this period. 
To see her, who had seen Dora but a little while before - to trace
the initial letter of Dora's name through her sympathetic pages -
to be made more and more miserable by her - were my only comforts. 
I felt as if I had been living in a palace of cards, which had
tumbled down, leaving only Miss Mills and me among the ruins; I
felt as if some grim enchanter had drawn a magic circle round the
innocent goddess of my heart, which nothing indeed but those same
strong pinions, capable of carrying so many people over so much,
would enable me to enter!

CHAPTER 39
WICKFIELD AND HEEP

My aunt, beginning, I imagine, to be made seriously uncomfortable
by my prolonged dejection, made a pretence of being anxious that I
should go to Dover, to see that all was working well at the
cottage, which was let; and to conclude an agreement, with the same
tenant, for a longer term of occupation.  Janet was drafted into
the service of Mrs. Strong, where I saw her every day.  She had
been undecided, on leaving Dover, whether or no to give the
finishing touch to that renunciation of mankind in which she had
been educated, by marrying a pilot; but she decided against that
venture.  Not so much for the sake of principle, I believe, as
because she happened not to like him.

Although it required an effort to leave Miss Mills, I fell rather
willingly into my aunt's pretence, as a means of enabling me to
pass a few tranquil hours with Agnes.  I consulted the good Doctor
relative to an absence of three days; and the Doctor wishing me to
take that relaxation, - he wished me to take more; but my energy
could not bear that, - I made up my mind to go.

As to the Commons, I had no great occasion to be particular about
my duties in that quarter.  To say the truth, we were getting in no
very good odour among the tip-top proctors, and were rapidly
sliding down to but a doubtful position.  The business had been
indifferent under Mr. jorkins, before Mr. Spenlow's time; and
although it had been quickened by the infusion of new blood, and by
the display which Mr. Spenlow made, still it was not established on
a sufficiently strong basis to bear, without being shaken, such a
blow as the sudden loss of its active manager.  It fell off very
much.  Mr. jorkins, notwithstanding his reputation in the firm, was
an easy-going, incapable sort of man, whose reputation out of doors
was not calculated to back it up.  I was turned over to him now,
and when I saw him take his snuff and let the business go, I
regretted my aunt's thousand pounds more than ever.

But this was not the worst of it.  There were a number of
hangers-on and outsiders about the Commons, who, without being
proctors themselves, dabbled in common-form business, and got it
done by real proctors, who lent their names in consideration of a
share in the spoil; - and there were a good many of these too.  As
our house now wanted business on any terms, we joined this noble
band; and threw out lures to the hangers-on and outsiders, to bring
their business to us.  Marriage licences and small probates were
what we all looked for, and what paid us best; and the competition
for these ran very high indeed.  Kidnappers and inveiglers were
planted in all the avenues of entrance to the Commons, with
instructions to do their utmost to cut off all persons in mourning,
and all gentlemen with anything bashful in their appearance, and
entice them to the offices in which their respective employers were
interested; which instructions were so well observed, that I
myself, before I was known by sight, was twice hustled into the
premises of our principal opponent.  The conflicting interests of
these touting gentlemen being of a nature to irritate their
feelings, personal collisions took place; and the Commons was even
scandalized by our principal inveigler (who had formerly been in
the wine trade, and afterwards in the sworn brokery line) walking
about for some days with a black eye.  Any one of these scouts used
to think nothing of politely assisting an old lady in black out of
a vehicle, killing any proctor whom she inquired for, representing
his employer as the lawful successor and representative of that
proctor, and bearing the old lady off (sometimes greatly affected)
to his employer's office.  Many captives were brought to me in this
way.  As to marriage licences, the competition rose to such a
pitch, that a shy gentleman in want of one, had nothing to do but
submit himself to the first inveigler, or be fought for, and become
the prey of the strongest.  One of our clerks, who was an outsider,
used, in the height of this contest, to sit with his hat on, that
he might be ready to rush out and swear before a surrogate any
victim who was brought in.  The system of inveigling continues, I
believe, to this day.  The last time I was in the Commons, a civil
able-bodied person in a white apron pounced out upon me from a
doorway, and whispering the word 'Marriage-licence' in my ear, was
with great difficulty prevented from taking me up in his arms and
lifting me into a proctor's.  From this digression, let me proceed
to Dover.

I found everything in a satisfactory state at the cottage; and was
enabled to gratify my aunt exceedingly by reporting that the tenant
inherited her feud, and waged incessant war against donkeys. 
Having settled the little business I had to transact there, and
slept there one night, I walked on to Canterbury early in the
morning.  It was now winter again; and the fresh, cold windy day,
and the sweeping downland, brightened up my hopes a little.

Coming into Canterbury, I loitered through the old streets with a
sober pleasure that calmed my spirits, and eased my heart.  There
were the old signs, the old names over the shops, the old people
serving in them.  It appeared so long, since I had been a schoolboy
there, that I wondered the place was so little changed, until I
reflected how little I was changed myself.  Strange to say, that
quiet influence which was inseparable in my mind from Agnes, seemed
to pervade even the city where she dwelt.  The venerable cathedral
towers, and the old jackdaws and rooks whose airy voices made them
more retired than perfect silence would have done; the battered
gateways, one stuck full with statues, long thrown down, and
crumbled away, like the reverential pilgrims who had gazed upon
them; the still nooks, where the ivied growth of centuries crept
over gabled ends and ruined walls; the ancient houses, the pastoral
landscape of field, orchard, and garden; everywhere - on everything
- I felt the same serener air, the same calm, thoughtful, softening
spirit.

Arrived at Mr. Wickfield's house, I found, in the little lower room
on the ground floor, where Uriah Heep had been of old accustomed to
sit, Mr. Micawber plying his pen with great assiduity.  He was
dressed in a legal-looking suit of black, and loomed, burly and
large, in that small office.

Mr. Micawber was extremely glad to see me, but a little confused
too.  He would have conducted me immediately into the presence of
Uriah, but I declined.

'I know the house of old, you recollect,' said I, 'and will find my
way upstairs.  How do you like the law, Mr. Micawber?'

'My dear Copperfield,' he replied.  'To a man possessed of the
higher imaginative powers, the objection to legal studies is the
amount of detail which they involve.  Even in our professional
correspondence,' said Mr. Micawber, glancing at some letters he was
writing, 'the mind is not at liberty to soar to any exalted form of
expression.  Still, it is a great pursuit.  A great pursuit!'

He then told me that he had become the tenant of Uriah Heep's old
house; and that Mrs. Micawber would be delighted to receive me,
once more, under her own roof.

'It is humble,' said Mr. Micawber, '- to quote a favourite
expression of my friend Heep; but it may prove the stepping-stone
to more ambitious domiciliary accommodation.'

I asked him whether he had reason, so far, to be satisfied with his
friend Heep's treatment of him?  He got up to ascertain if the door
were close shut, before he replied, in a lower voice:

'My dear Copperfield, a man who labours under the pressure of
pecuniary embarrassments, is, with the generality of people, at a
disadvantage.  That disadvantage is not diminished, when that
pressure necessitates the drawing of stipendiary emoluments, before
those emoluments are strictly due and payable.  All I can say is,
that my friend Heep has responded to appeals to which I need not
more particularly refer, in a manner calculated to redound equally
to the honour of his head, and of his heart.'

'I should not have supposed him to be very free with his money
either,' I observed.

'Pardon me!' said Mr. Micawber, with an air of constraint, 'I speak
of my friend Heep as I have experience.'

'I am glad your experience is so favourable,' I returned.

'You are very obliging, my dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber;
and hummed a tune.

'Do you see much of Mr. Wickfield?' I asked, to change the subject.

'Not much,' said Mr. Micawber, slightingly.  'Mr. Wickfield is, I
dare say, a man of very excellent intentions; but he is - in short,
he is obsolete.'

'I am afraid his partner seeks to make him so,' said I.

'My dear Copperfield!' returned Mr. Micawber, after some uneasy
evolutions on his stool, 'allow me to offer a remark!  I am here,
in a capacity of confidence.  I am here, in a position of trust. 
The discussion of some topics, even with Mrs. Micawber herself (so
long the partner of my various vicissitudes, and a woman of a
remarkable lucidity of intellect), is, I am led to consider,
incompatible with the functions now devolving on me.  I would
therefore take the liberty of suggesting that in our friendly
intercourse - which I trust will never be disturbed! - we draw a
line.  On one side of this line,' said Mr. Micawber, representing
it on the desk with the office ruler, 'is the whole range of the
human intellect, with a trifling exception; on the other, IS that
exception; that is to say, the affairs of Messrs Wickfield and
Heep, with all belonging and appertaining thereunto.  I trust I
give no offence to the companion of my youth, in submitting this
proposition to his cooler judgement?'

Though I saw an uneasy change in Mr. Micawber, which sat tightly on
him, as if his new duties were a misfit, I felt I had no right to
be offended.  My telling him so, appeared to relieve him; and he
shook hands with me.

'I am charmed, Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'let me assure you,
with Miss Wickfield.  She is a very superior young lady, of very
remarkable attractions, graces, and virtues.  Upon my honour,' said
Mr. Micawber, indefinitely kissing his hand and bowing with his
genteelest air, 'I do Homage to Miss Wickfield!  Hem!'
'I am glad of that, at least,' said I.

'If you had not assured us, my dear Copperfield, on the occasion of
that agreeable afternoon we had the happiness of passing with you,
that D. was your favourite letter,' said Mr. Micawber, 'I should
unquestionably have supposed that A. had been so.'

We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us
occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and
done before, in a remote time - of our having been surrounded, dim
ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances - of our
knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly
remembered it!  I never had this mysterious impression more
strongly in my life, than before he uttered those words.

I took my leave of Mr. Micawber, for the time, charging him with my
best remembrances to all at home.  As I left him, resuming his
stool and his pen, and rolling his head in his stock, to get it
into easier writing order, I clearly perceived that there was
something interposed between him and me, since he had come into his
new functions, which prevented our getting at each other as we used
to do, and quite altered the character of our intercourse.

There was no one in the quaint old drawing-room, though it
presented tokens of Mrs. Heep's whereabouts.  I looked into the
room still belonging to Agnes, and saw her sitting by the fire, at
a pretty old-fashioned desk she had, writing.

My darkening the light made her look up.  What a pleasure to be the
cause of that bright change in her attentive face, and the object
of that sweet regard and welcome!

'Ah, Agnes!' said I, when we were sitting together, side by side;
'I have missed you so much, lately!'

'Indeed?' she replied.  'Again!  And so soon?'

I shook my head.

'I don't know how it is, Agnes; I seem to want some faculty of mind
that I ought to have.  You were so much in the habit of thinking
for me, in the happy old days here, and I came so naturally to you
for counsel and support, that I really think I have missed
acquiring it.'

'And what is it?' said Agnes, cheerfully.

'I don't know what to call it,' I replied.  'I think I am earnest
and persevering?'

'I am sure of it,' said Agnes.

'And patient, Agnes?' I inquired, with a little hesitation.

'Yes,' returned Agnes, laughing.  'Pretty well.'

'And yet,' said I, 'I get so miserable and worried, and am so
unsteady and irresolute in my power of assuring myself, that I know
I must want - shall I call it - reliance, of some kind?'

'Call it so, if you will,' said Agnes.

'Well!' I returned.  'See here!  You come to London, I rely on you,
and I have an object and a course at once.  I am driven out of it,
I come here, and in a moment I feel an altered person.  The
circumstances that distressed me are not changed, since I came into
this room; but an influence comes over me in that short interval
that alters me, oh, how much for the better!  What is it?  What is
your secret, Agnes?'

Her head was bent down, looking at the fire.

'It's the old story,' said I.  'Don't laugh, when I say it was
always the same in little things as it is in greater ones.  My old
troubles were nonsense, and now they are serious; but whenever I
have gone away from my adopted sister -'

Agnes looked up - with such a Heavenly face! - and gave me her
hand, which I kissed.

'Whenever I have not had you, Agnes, to advise and approve in the
beginning, I have seemed to go wild, and to get into all sorts of
difficulty.  When I have come to you, at last (as I have always
done), I have come to peace and happiness.  I come home, now, like
a tired traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest!'

I felt so deeply what I said, it affected me so sincerely, that my
voice failed, and I covered my face with my hand, and broke into
tears.  I write the truth.  Whatever contradictions and
inconsistencies there were within me, as there are within so many
of us; whatever might have been so different, and so much better;
whatever I had done, in which I had perversely wandered away from
the voice of my own heart; I knew nothing of.  I only knew that I
was fervently in earnest, when I felt the rest and peace of having
Agnes near me.

In her placid sisterly manner; with her beaming eyes; with her
tender voice; and with that sweet composure, which had long ago
made the house that held her quite a sacred place to me; she soon
won me from this weakness, and led me on to tell all that had
happened since our last meeting.

'And there is not another word to tell, Agnes,' said I, when I had
made an end of my confidence.  'Now, my reliance is on you.'

'But it must not be on me, Trotwood,' returned Agnes, with a
pleasant smile.  'It must be on someone else.'

'On Dora?' said I.

'Assuredly.'

'Why, I have not mentioned, Agnes,' said I, a little embarrassed,
'that Dora is rather difficult to - I would not, for the world,
say, to rely upon, because she is the soul of purity and truth -
but rather difficult to - I hardly know how to express it, really,
Agnes.  She is a timid little thing, and easily disturbed and
frightened.  Some time ago, before her father's death, when I
thought it right to mention to her - but I'll tell you, if you will
bear with me, how it was.'

Accordingly, I told Agnes about my declaration of poverty, about
the cookery-book, the housekeeping accounts, and all the rest of
it.

'Oh, Trotwood!' she remonstrated, with a smile.  'Just your old
headlong way!  You might have been in earnest in striving to get on
in the world, without being so very sudden with a timid, loving,
inexperienced girl.  Poor Dora!'

I never heard such sweet forbearing kindness expressed in a voice,
as she expressed in making this reply.  It was as if I had seen her
admiringly and tenderly embracing Dora, and tacitly reproving me,
by her considerate protection, for my hot haste in fluttering that
little heart.  It was as if I had seen Dora, in all her fascinating
artlessness, caressing Agnes, and thanking her, and coaxingly
appealing against me, and loving me with all her childish
innocence.

I felt so grateful to Agnes, and admired her so!  I saw those two
together, in a bright perspective, such well-associated friends,
each adorning the other so much!

'What ought I to do then, Agnes?' I inquired, after looking at the
fire a little while.  'What would it be right to do?'

'I think,' said Agnes, 'that the honourable course to take, would
be to write to those two ladies.  Don't you think that any secret
course is an unworthy one?'

'Yes.  If YOU think so,' said I.

'I am poorly qualified to judge of such matters,' replied Agnes,
with a modest hesitation, 'but I certainly feel - in short, I feel
that your being secret and clandestine, is not being like
yourself.'

'Like myself, in the too high opinion you have of me, Agnes, I am
afraid,' said I.

'Like yourself, in the candour of your nature,' she returned; 'and
therefore I would write to those two ladies.  I would relate, as
plainly and as openly as possible, all that has taken place; and I
would ask their permission to visit sometimes, at their house. 
Considering that you are young, and striving for a place in life,
I think it would be well to say that you would readily abide by any
conditions they might impose upon you.  I would entreat them not to
dismiss your request, without a reference to Dora; and to discuss
it with her when they should think the time suitable.  I would not
be too vehement,' said Agnes, gently, 'or propose too much.  I
would trust to my fidelity and perseverance - and to Dora.'

'But if they were to frighten Dora again, Agnes, by speaking to
her,' said I.  'And if Dora were to cry, and say nothing about me!'

'Is that likely?' inquired Agnes, with the same sweet consideration
in her face.

'God bless her, she is as easily scared as a bird,' said I.  'It
might be!  Or if the two Miss Spenlows (elderly ladies of that sort
are odd characters sometimes) should not be likely persons to
address in that way!'

'I don't think, Trotwood,' returned Agnes, raising her soft eyes to
mine, 'I would consider that.  Perhaps it would be better only to
consider whether it is right to do this; and, if it is, to do it.'

I had no longer any doubt on the subject.  With a lightened heart,
though with a profound sense of the weighty importance of my task,
I devoted the whole afternoon to the composition of the draft of
this letter; for which great purpose, Agnes relinquished her desk
to me.  But first I went downstairs to see Mr. Wickfield and Uriah
Heep.

I found Uriah in possession of a new, plaster-smelling office,
built out in the garden; looking extraordinarily mean, in the midst
of a quantity of books and papers.  He received me in his usual
fawning way, and pretended not to have heard of my arrival from Mr.
Micawber; a pretence I took the liberty of disbelieving.  He
accompanied me into Mr. Wickfield's room, which was the shadow of
its former self - having been divested of a variety of
conveniences, for the accommodation of the new partner - and stood
before the fire, warming his back, and shaving his chin with his
bony hand, while Mr. Wickfield and I exchanged greetings.

'You stay with us, Trotwood, while you remain in Canterbury?' said
Mr. Wickfield, not without a glance at Uriah for his approval.

'Is there room for me?' said I.

'I am sure, Master Copperfield - I should say Mister, but the other
comes so natural,' said Uriah, -'I would turn out of your old room
with pleasure, if it would be agreeable.'

'No, no,' said Mr. Wickfield.  'Why should you be inconvenienced? 
There's another room.  There's another room.'
'Oh, but you know,' returned Uriah, with a grin, 'I should really
be delighted!'

To cut the matter short, I said I would have the other room or none
at all; so it was settled that I should have the other room; and,
taking my leave of the firm until dinner, I went upstairs again.

I had hoped to have no other companion than Agnes.  But Mrs. Heep
had asked permission to bring herself and her knitting near the
fire, in that room; on pretence of its having an aspect more
favourable for her rheumatics, as the wind then was, than the
drawing-room or dining-parlour.  Though I could almost have
consigned her to the mercies of the wind on the topmost pinnacle of
the Cathedral, without remorse, I made a virtue of necessity, and
gave her a friendly salutation.

'I'm umbly thankful to you, sir,' said Mrs. Heep, in
acknowledgement of my inquiries concerning her health, 'but I'm
only pretty well.  I haven't much to boast of.  If I could see my
Uriah well settled in life, I couldn't expect much more I think. 
How do you think my Ury looking, sir?'

I thought him looking as villainous as ever, and I replied that I
saw no change in him.

'Oh, don't you think he's changed?' said Mrs. Heep.  'There I must
umbly beg leave to differ from you.  Don't you see a thinness in
him?'

'Not more than usual,' I replied.

'Don't you though!' said Mrs. Heep.  'But you don't take notice of
him with a mother's eye!'

His mother's eye was an evil eye to the rest of the world, I
thought as it met mine, howsoever affectionate to him; and I
believe she and her son were devoted to one another.  It passed me,
and went on to Agnes.

'Don't YOU see a wasting and a wearing in him, Miss Wickfield?'
inquired Mrs. Heep.

'No,' said Agnes, quietly pursuing the work on which she was
engaged.  'You are too solicitous about him.  He is very well.'

Mrs. Heep, with a prodigious sniff, resumed her knitting.

She never left off, or left us for a moment.  I had arrived early
in the day, and we had still three or four hours before dinner; but
she sat there, plying her knitting-needles as monotonously as an
hour-glass might have poured out its sands.  She sat on one side of
the fire; I sat at the desk in front of it; a little beyond me, on
the other side, sat Agnes.  Whensoever, slowly pondering over my
letter, I lifted up my eyes, and meeting the thoughtful face of
Agnes, saw it clear, and beam encouragement upon me, with its own
angelic expression, I was conscious presently of the evil eye
passing me, and going on to her, and coming back to me again, and
dropping furtively upon the knitting.  What the knitting was, I
don't know, not being learned in that art; but it looked like a
net; and as she worked away with those Chinese chopsticks of
knitting-needles, she showed in the firelight like an ill-looking
enchantress, baulked as yet by the radiant goodness opposite, but
getting ready for a cast of her net by and by.

At dinner she maintained her watch, with the same unwinking eyes. 
After dinner, her son took his turn; and when Mr. Wickfield,
himself, and I were left alone together, leered at me, and writhed
until I could hardly bear it.  In the drawing-room, there was the
mother knitting and watching again.  All the time that Agnes sang
and played, the mother sat at the piano.  Once she asked for a
particular ballad, which she said her Ury (who was yawning in a
great chair) doted on; and at intervals she looked round at him,
and reported to Agnes that he was in raptures with the music.  But
she hardly ever spoke - I question if she ever did - without making
some mention of him.  It was evident to me that this was the duty
assigned to her.

This lasted until bedtime.  To have seen the mother and son, like
two great bats hanging over the whole house, and darkening it with
their ugly forms, made me so uncomfortable, that I would rather
have remained downstairs, knitting and all, than gone to bed.  I
hardly got any sleep.  Next day the knitting and watching began
again, and lasted all day.

I had not an opportunity of speaking to Agnes, for ten minutes.  I
could barely show her my letter.  I proposed to her to walk out
with me; but Mrs. Heep repeatedly complaining that she was worse,
Agnes charitably remained within, to bear her company.  Towards the
twilight I went out by myself, musing on what I ought to do, and
whether I was justified in withholding from Agnes, any longer, what
Uriah Heep had told me in London; for that began to trouble me
again, very much.

I had not walked out far enough to be quite clear of the town, upon
the Ramsgate road, where there was a good path, when I was hailed,
through the dust, by somebody behind me.  The shambling figure, and
the scanty great-coat, were not to be mistaken.  I stopped, and
Uriah Heep came up.

'Well?' said I.

'How fast you walk!' said he.  'My legs are pretty long, but you've
given 'em quite a job.'

'Where are you going?' said I.

'I am going with you, Master Copperfield, if you'll allow me the
pleasure of a walk with an old acquaintance.'  Saying this, with a
jerk of his body, which might have been either propitiatory or
derisive, he fell into step beside me.

'Uriah!' said I, as civilly as I could, after a silence.

'Master Copperfield!' said Uriah.

'To tell you the truth (at which you will not be offended), I came
Out to walk alone, because I have had so much company.'

He looked at me sideways, and said with his hardest grin, 'You mean
mother.'

'Why yes, I do,' said I.

'Ah!  But you know we're so very umble,' he returned.  'And having
such a knowledge of our own umbleness, we must really take care
that we're not pushed to the wall by them as isn't umble.  All
stratagems are fair in love, sir.'

Raising his great hands until they touched his chin, he rubbed them
softly, and softly chuckled; looking as like a malevolent baboon,
I thought, as anything human could look.

'You see,' he said, still hugging himself in that unpleasant way,
and shaking his head at me, 'you're quite a dangerous rival, Master
Copperfield.  You always was, you know.'

'Do you set a watch upon Miss Wickfield, and make her home no home,
because of me?' said I.

'Oh! Master Copperfield!  Those are very arsh words,' he replied.

'Put my meaning into any words you like,' said I.  'You know what
it is, Uriah, as well as I do.'

'Oh no!  You must put it into words,' he said.  'Oh, really!  I
couldn't myself.'

'Do you suppose,' said I, constraining myself to be very temperate
and quiet with him, on account of Agnes, 'that I regard Miss
Wickfield otherwise than as a very dear sister?'

'Well, Master Copperfield,' he replied, 'you perceive I am not
bound to answer that question.  You may not, you know.  But then,
you see, you may!'

Anything to equal the low cunning of his visage, and of his
shadowless eyes without the ghost of an eyelash, I never saw.

'Come then!' said I.  'For the sake of Miss Wickfield -'

'My Agnes!' he exclaimed, with a sickly, angular contortion of
himself.  'Would you be so good as call her Agnes, Master
Copperfield!'

'For the sake of Agnes Wickfield - Heaven bless her!'

'Thank you for that blessing, Master Copperfield!'he interposed.

'I will tell you what I should, under any other circumstances, as
soon have thought of telling to - Jack Ketch.'

'To who, sir?' said Uriah, stretching out his neck, and shading his
ear with his hand.

'To the hangman,' I returned.  'The most unlikely person I could
think of,' - though his own face had suggested the allusion quite
as a natural sequence.  'I am engaged to another young lady.  I
hope that contents you.'

'Upon your soul?' said Uriah.

I was about indignantly to give my assertion the confirmation he
required, when he caught hold of my hand, and gave it a squeeze.

'Oh, Master Copperfield!' he said.  'If you had only had the
condescension to return my confidence when I poured out the fulness
of my art, the night I put you so much out of the way by sleeping
before your sitting-room fire, I never should have doubted you.  As
it is, I'm sure I'll take off mother directly, and only too appy. 
I know you'll excuse the precautions of affection, won't you?  What
a pity, Master Copperfield, that you didn't condescend to return my
confidence!  I'm sure I gave you every opportunity.  But you never
have condescended to me, as much as I could have wished.  I know
you have never liked me, as I have liked you!'

All this time he was squeezing my hand with his damp fishy fingers,
while I made every effort I decently could to get it away.  But I
was quite unsuccessful.  He drew it under the sleeve of his
mulberry-coloured great-coat, and I walked on, almost upon
compulsion, arm-in-arm with him.

'Shall we turn?' said Uriah, by and by wheeling me face about
towards the town, on which the early moon was now shining,
silvering the distant windows.

'Before we leave the subject, you ought to understand,' said I,
breaking a pretty long silence, 'that I believe Agnes Wickfield to
be as far above you, and as far removed from all your aspirations,
as that moon herself!'

'Peaceful!  Ain't she!' said Uriah.  'Very!  Now confess, Master
Copperfield, that you haven't liked me quite as I have liked you. 
All along you've thought me too umble now, I shouldn't wonder?'

'I am not fond of professions of humility,' I returned, 'or
professions of anything else.'
'There now!' said Uriah, looking flabby and lead-coloured in the
moonlight.  'Didn't I know it!  But how little you think of the
rightful umbleness of a person in my station, Master Copperfield!
Father and me was both brought up at a foundation school for boys;
and mother, she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of
charitable, establishment.  They taught us all a deal of umbleness
- not much else that I know of, from morning to night.  We was to
be umble to this person, and umble to that; and to pull off our
caps here, and to make bows there; and always to know our place,
and abase ourselves before our betters.  And we had such a lot of
betters!  Father got the monitor-medal by being umble.  So did I. 
Father got made a sexton by being umble.  He had the character,
among the gentlefolks, of being such a well-behaved man, that they
were determined to bring him in.  "Be umble, Uriah," says father to
me, "and you'll get on.  It was what was always being dinned into
you and me at school; it's what goes down best.  Be umble," says
father," and you'll do!" And really it ain't done bad!'

It was the first time it had ever occurred to me, that this
detestable cant of false humility might have originated out of the
Heep family.  I had seen the harvest, but had never thought of the
seed.

'When I was quite a young boy,' said Uriah, 'I got to know what
umbleness did, and I took to it.  I ate umble pie with an appetite. 
I stopped at the umble point of my learning, and says I, "Hold
hard!" When you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better.  "People
like to be above you," says father, "keep yourself down." I am very
umble to the present moment, Master Copperfield, but I've got a
little power!'

And he said all this - I knew, as I saw his face in the moonlight
- that I might understand he was resolved to recompense himself by
using his power.  I had never doubted his meanness, his craft and
malice; but I fully comprehended now, for the first time, what a
base, unrelenting, and revengeful spirit, must have been engendered
by this early, and this long, suppression.

His account of himself was so far attended with an agreeable
result, that it led to his withdrawing his hand in order that he
might have another hug of himself under the chin.  Once apart from
him, I was determined to keep apart; and we walked back, side by
side, saying very little more by the way.  Whether his spirits were
elevated by the communication I had made to him, or by his having
indulged in this retrospect, I don't know; but they were raised by
some influence.  He talked more at dinner than was usual with him;
asked his mother (off duty, from the moment of our re-entering the
house) whether he was not growing too old for a bachelor; and once
looked at Agnes so, that I would have given all I had, for leave to
knock him down.

When we three males were left alone after dinner, he got into a
more adventurous state.  He had taken little or no wine; and I
presume it was the mere insolence of triumph that was upon him,
flushed perhaps by the temptation my presence furnished to its
exhibition.

I had observed yesterday, that he tried to entice Mr. Wickfield to
drink; and, interpreting the look which Agnes had given me as she
went out, had limited myself to one glass, and then proposed that
we should follow her.  I would have done so again today; but Uriah
was too quick for me.

'We seldom see our present visitor, sir,' he said, addressing Mr.
Wickfield, sitting, such a contrast to him, at the end of the
table, 'and I should propose to give him welcome in another glass
or two of wine, if you have no objections.  Mr. Copperfield, your
elth and appiness!'

I was obliged to make a show of taking the hand he stretched across
to me; and then, with very different emotions, I took the hand of
the broken gentleman, his partner.

'Come, fellow-partner,' said Uriah, 'if I may take the liberty, -
now, suppose you give us something or another appropriate to
Copperfield!'

I pass over Mr. Wickfield's proposing my aunt, his proposing Mr.
Dick, his proposing Doctors' Commons, his proposing Uriah, his
drinking everything twice; his consciousness of his own weakness,
the ineffectual effort that he made against it; the struggle
between his shame in Uriah's deportment, and his desire to
conciliate him; the manifest exultation with which Uriah twisted
and turned, and held him up before me.  It made me sick at heart to
see, and my hand recoils from writing it.

'Come, fellow-partner!' said Uriah, at last, 'I'll give you another
one, and I umbly ask for bumpers, seeing I intend to make it the
divinest of her sex.'

Her father had his empty glass in his hand.  I saw him set it down,
look at the picture she was so like, put his hand to his forehead,
and shrink back in his elbow-chair.

'I'm an umble individual to give you her elth,' proceeded Uriah,
'but I admire - adore her.'

No physical pain that her father's grey head could have borne, I
think, could have been more terrible to me, than the mental
endurance I saw compressed now within both his hands.

'Agnes,' said Uriah, either not regarding him, or not knowing what
the nature of his action was, 'Agnes Wickfield is, I am safe to
say, the divinest of her sex.  May I speak out, among friends?  To
be her father is a proud distinction, but to be her usband -'

Spare me from ever again hearing such a cry, as that with which her
father rose up from the table!
'What's the matter?' said Uriah, turning of a deadly colour.  'You
are not gone mad, after all, Mr. Wickfield, I hope?  If I say I've
an ambition to make your Agnes my Agnes, I have as good a right to
it as another man.  I have a better right to it than any other
man!'

I had my arms round Mr. Wickfield, imploring him by everything that
I could think of, oftenest of all by his love for Agnes, to calm
himself a little.  He was mad for the moment; tearing out his hair,
beating his head, trying to force me from him, and to force himself
from me, not answering a word, not looking at or seeing anyone;
blindly striving for he knew not what, his face all staring and
distorted - a frightful spectacle.

I conjured him, incoherently, but in the most impassioned manner,
not to abandon himself to this wildness, but to hear me.  I
besought him to think of Agnes, to connect me with Agnes, to
recollect how Agnes and I had grown up together, how I honoured her
and loved her, how she was his pride and joy.  I tried to bring her
idea before him in any form; I even reproached him with not having
firmness to spare her the knowledge of such a scene as this.  I may
have effected something, or his wildness may have spent itself; but
by degrees he struggled less, and began to look at me - strangely
at first, then with recognition in his eyes.  At length he said, 'I
know, Trotwood!  My darling child and you - I know!  But look at
him!'

He pointed to Uriah, pale and glowering in a corner, evidently very
much out in his calculations, and taken by surprise.

'Look at my torturer,' he replied.  'Before him I have step by step
abandoned name and reputation, peace and quiet, house and home.'

'I have kept your name and reputation for you, and your peace and
quiet, and your house and home too,' said Uriah, with a sulky,
hurried, defeated air of compromise.  'Don't be foolish, Mr.
Wickfield.  If I have gone a little beyond what you were prepared
for, I can go back, I suppose?  There's no harm done.'

'I looked for single motives in everyone,' said Mr. Wickfield, and
I was satisfied I had bound him to me by motives of interest.  But
see what he is - oh, see what he is!'

'You had better stop him, Copperfield, if you can,' cried Uriah,
with his long forefinger pointing towards me.  'He'll say something
presently - mind you! - he'll be sorry to have said afterwards, and
you'll be sorry to have heard!'

'I'll say anything!' cried Mr. Wickfield, with a desperate air. 
'Why should I not be in all the world's power if I am in yours?'

'Mind! I tell you!' said Uriah, continuing to warn me.  'If you
don't stop his mouth, you're not his friend!  Why shouldn't you be
in all the world's power, Mr. Wickfield?  Because you have got a
daughter.  You and me know what we know, don't we?  Let sleeping
dogs lie - who wants to rouse 'em?  I don't.  Can't you see I am as
umble as I can be?  I tell you, if I've gone too far, I'm sorry. 
What would you have, sir?'

'Oh, Trotwood, Trotwood!'exclaimed Mr. Wickfield, wringing his
hands.  'What I have come down to be, since I first saw you in this
house!  I was on my downward way then, but the dreary, dreary road
I have traversed since!  Weak indulgence has ruined me.  Indulgence
in remembrance, and indulgence in forgetfulness.  My natural grief
for my child's mother turned to disease; my natural love for my
child turned to disease.  I have infected everything I touched.  I
have brought misery on what I dearly love, I know -you know!  I
thought it possible that I could truly love one creature in the
world, and not love the rest; I thought it possible that I could
truly mourn for one creature gone out of the world, and not have
some part in the grief of all who mourned.  Thus the lessons of my
life have been perverted!  I have preyed on my own morbid coward
heart, and it has preyed on me.  Sordid in my grief, sordid in my
love, sordid in my miserable escape from the darker side of both,
oh see the ruin I am, and hate me, shun me!'

He dropped into a chair, and weakly sobbed.  The excitement into
which he had been roused was leaving him.  Uriah came out of his
corner.

'I don't know all I have done, in my fatuity,' said Mr. Wickfield,
putting out his hands, as if to deprecate my condemnation.  'He
knows best,' meaning Uriah Heep, 'for he has always been at my
elbow, whispering me.  You see the millstone that he is about my
neck.  You find him in my house, you find him in my business.  You
heard him, but a little time ago.  What need have I to say more!'

'You haven't need to say so much, nor half so much, nor anything at
all,' observed Uriah, half defiant, and half fawning.  'You
wouldn't have took it up so, if it hadn't been for the wine. 
You'll think better of it tomorrow, sir.  If I have said too much,
or more than I meant, what of it?  I haven't stood by it!'

The door opened, and Agnes, gliding in, without a vestige of colour
in her face, put her arm round his neck, and steadily said, 'Papa,
you are not well.  Come with me!'

He laid his head upon her shoulder, as if he were oppressed with
heavy shame, and went out with her.  Her eyes met mine for but an
instant, yet I saw how much she knew of what had passed.

'I didn't expect he'd cut up so rough, Master Copperfield,' said
Uriah.  'But it's nothing.  I'll be friends with him tomorrow. 
It's for his good.  I'm umbly anxious for his good.'

I gave him no answer, and went upstairs into the quiet room where
Agnes had so often sat beside me at my books.  Nobody came near me
until late at night.  I took up a book, and tried to read.  I heard
the clocks strike twelve, and was still reading, without knowing
what I read, when Agnes touched me.

'You will be going early in the morning, Trotwood!  Let us say
good-bye, now!'

She had been weeping, but her face then was so calm and beautiful!

'Heaven bless you!' she said, giving me her hand.

'Dearest Agnes!' I returned, 'I see you ask me not to speak of
tonight - but is there nothing to be done?'

'There is God to trust in!' she replied.

'Can I do nothing- I, who come to you with my poor sorrows?'

'And make mine so much lighter,' she replied.  'Dear Trotwood, no!'

'Dear Agnes,' I said, 'it is presumptuous for me, who am so poor in
all in which you are so rich - goodness, resolution, all noble
qualities - to doubt or direct you; but you know how much I love
you, and how much I owe you.  You will never sacrifice yourself to
a mistaken sense of duty, Agnes?'

More agitated for a moment than I had ever seen her, she took her
hands from me, and moved a step back.

'Say you have no such thought, dear Agnes!  Much more than sister!
Think of the priceless gift of such a heart as yours, of such a
love as yours!'

Oh! long, long afterwards, I saw that face rise up before me, with
its momentary look, not wondering, not accusing, not regretting. 
Oh, long, long afterwards, I saw that look subside, as it did now,
into the lovely smile, with which she told me she had no fear for
herself - I need have none for her - and parted from me by the name
of Brother, and was gone!

It was dark in the morning, when I got upon the coach at the inn
door.  The day was just breaking when we were about to start, and
then, as I sat thinking of her, came struggling up the coach side,
through the mingled day and night, Uriah's head.

'Copperfield!' said he, in a croaking whisper, as he hung by the
iron on the roof, 'I thought you'd be glad to hear before you went
off, that there are no squares broke between us.  I've been into
his room already, and we've made it all smooth.  Why, though I'm
umble, I'm useful to him, you know; and he understands his interest
when he isn't in liquor!  What an agreeable man he is, after all,
Master Copperfield!'

I obliged myself to say that I was glad he had made his apology.

'Oh, to be sure!' said Uriah.  'When a person's umble, you know,
what's an apology?  So easy!  I say!  I suppose,' with a jerk, 'you
have sometimes plucked a pear before it was ripe, Master
Copperfield?'

'I suppose I have,' I replied.

'I did that last night,' said Uriah; 'but it'll ripen yet!  It only
wants attending to.  I can wait!'

Profuse in his farewells, he got down again as the coachman got up. 
For anything I know, he was eating something to keep the raw
morning air out; but he made motions with his mouth as if the pear
were ripe already, and he were smacking his lips over it.

CHAPTER 40
THE WANDERER

We had a very serious conversation in Buckingham Street that night,
about the domestic occurrences I have detailed in the last chapter. 
My aunt was deeply interested in them, and walked up and down the
room with her arms folded, for more than two hours afterwards. 
Whenever she was particularly discomposed, she always performed one
of these pedestrian feats; and the amount of her discomposure might
always be estimated by the duration of her walk.  On this occasion
she was so much disturbed in mind as to find it necessary to open
the bedroom door, and make a course for herself, comprising the
full extent of the bedrooms from wall to wall; and while Mr. Dick
and I sat quietly by the fire, she kept passing in and out, along
this measured track, at an unchanging pace, with the regularity of
a clock-pendulum.

When my aunt and I were left to ourselves by Mr. Dick's going out
to bed, I sat down to write my letter to the two old ladies.  By
that time she was tired of walking, and sat by the fire with her
dress tucked up as usual.  But instead of sitting in her usual
manner, holding her glass upon her knee, she suffered it to stand
neglected on the chimney-piece; and, resting her left elbow on her
right arm, and her chin on her left hand, looked thoughtfully at
me.  As often as I raised my eyes from what I was about, I met
hers.  'I am in the lovingest of tempers, my dear,' she would
assure me with a nod, 'but I am fidgeted and sorry!'

I had been too busy to observe, until after she was gone to bed,
that she had left her night-mixture, as she always called it,
untasted on the chimney-piece.  She came to her door, with even
more than her usual affection of manner, when I knocked to acquaint
her with this discovery; but only said, 'I have not the heart to
take it, Trot, tonight,' and shook her head, and went in again.

She read my letter to the two old ladies, in the morning, and
approved of it.  I posted it, and had nothing to do then, but wait,
as patiently as I could, for the reply.  I was still in this state
of expectation, and had been, for nearly a week; when I left the
Doctor's one snowy night, to walk home.

It had been a bitter day, and a cutting north-east wind had blown
for some time.  The wind had gone down with the light, and so the
snow had come on.  It was a heavy, settled fall, I recollect, in
great flakes; and it lay thick.  The noise of wheels and tread of
people were as hushed, as if the streets had been strewn that depth
with feathers.

My shortest way home, - and I naturally took the shortest way on
such a night - was through St. Martin's Lane.  Now, the church
which gives its name to the lane, stood in a less free situation at
that time; there being no open space before it, and the lane
winding down to the Strand.  As I passed the steps of the portico,
I encountered, at the corner, a woman's face.  It looked in mine,
passed across the narrow lane, and disappeared.  I knew it.  I had
seen it somewhere.  But I could not remember where.  I had some
association with it, that struck upon my heart directly; but I was
thinking of anything else when it came upon me, and was confused.

On the steps of the church, there was the stooping figure of a man,
who had put down some burden on the smooth snow, to adjust it; my
seeing the face, and my seeing him, were simultaneous.  I don't
think I had stopped in my surprise; but, in any case, as I went on,
he rose, turned, and came down towards me.  I stood face to face
with Mr. Peggotty!

Then I remembered the woman.  It was Martha, to whom Emily had
given the money that night in the kitchen.  Martha Endell - side by
side with whom, he would not have seen his dear niece, Ham had told
me, for all the treasures wrecked in the sea.

We shook hands heartily.  At first, neither of us could speak a
word.

'Mas'r Davy!' he said, gripping me tight, 'it do my art good to see
you, sir.  Well met, well met!'

'Well met, my dear old friend!' said I.

'I had my thowts o' coming to make inquiration for you, sir,
tonight,' he said, 'but knowing as your aunt was living along wi'
you - fur I've been down yonder - Yarmouth way - I was afeerd it
was too late.  I should have come early in the morning, sir, afore
going away.'

'Again?' said I.

'Yes, sir,' he replied, patiently shaking his head, 'I'm away
tomorrow.'

'Where were you going now?' I asked.

'Well!' he replied, shaking the snow out of his long hair, 'I was
a-going to turn in somewheers.'

In those days there was a side-entrance to the stable-yard of the
Golden Cross, the inn so memorable to me in connexion with his
misfortune, nearly opposite to where we stood.  I pointed out the
gateway, put my arm through his, and we went across.  Two or three
public-rooms opened out of the stable-yard; and looking into one of
them, and finding it empty, and a good fire burning, I took him in
there.

When I saw him in the light, I observed, not only that his hair was
long and ragged, but that his face was burnt dark by the sun.  He
was greyer, the lines in his face and forehead were deeper, and he
had every appearance of having toiled and wandered through all
varieties of weather; but he looked very strong, and like a man
upheld by steadfastness of purpose, whom nothing could tire out. 
He shook the snow from his hat and clothes, and brushed it away
from his face, while I was inwardly making these remarks.  As he
sat down opposite to me at a table, with his back to the door by
which we had entered, he put out his rough hand again, and grasped
mine warmly.

'I'll tell you, Mas'r Davy,' he said, - 'wheer all I've been, and
what-all we've heerd.  I've been fur, and we've heerd little; but
I'll tell you!'

I rang the bell for something hot to drink.  He would have nothing
stronger than ale; and while it was being brought, and being warmed
at the fire, he sat thinking.  There was a fine, massive gravity in
his face, I did not venture to disturb.

'When she was a child,' he said, lifting up his head soon after we
were left alone, 'she used to talk to me a deal about the sea, and
about them coasts where the sea got to be dark blue, and to lay
a-shining and a-shining in the sun.  I thowt, odd times, as her
father being drownded made her think on it so much.  I doen't know,
you see, but maybe she believed - or hoped - he had drifted out to
them parts, where the flowers is always a-blowing, and the country
bright.'

'It is likely to have been a childish fancy,' I replied.

'When she was - lost,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'I know'd in my mind, as
he would take her to them countries.  I know'd in my mind, as he'd
have told her wonders of 'em, and how she was to be a lady theer,
and how he got her to listen to him fust, along o' sech like.  When
we see his mother, I know'd quite well as I was right.  I went
across-channel to France, and landed theer, as if I'd fell down
from the sky.'

I saw the door move, and the snow drift in.  I saw it move a little
more, and a hand softly interpose to keep it open.

'I found out an English gen'leman as was in authority,' said Mr.
Peggotty, 'and told him I was a-going to seek my niece.  He got me
them papers as I wanted fur to carry me through - I doen't rightly
know how they're called - and he would have give me money, but that
I was thankful to have no need on.  I thank him kind, for all he
done, I'm sure!  "I've wrote afore you," he says to me, "and I
shall speak to many as will come that way, and many will know you,
fur distant from here, when you're a-travelling alone." I told him,
best as I was able, what my gratitoode was, and went away through
France.'

'Alone, and on foot?' said I.

'Mostly a-foot,' he rejoined; 'sometimes in carts along with people
going to market; sometimes in empty coaches.  Many mile a day
a-foot, and often with some poor soldier or another, travelling to
see his friends.  I couldn't talk to him,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'nor
he to me; but we was company for one another, too, along the dusty
roads.'

I should have known that by his friendly tone.

'When I come to any town,' he pursued, 'I found the inn, and waited
about the yard till someone turned up (someone mostly did) as
know'd English.  Then I told how that I was on my way to seek my
niece, and they told me what manner of gentlefolks was in the
house, and I waited to see any as seemed like her, going in or out. 
When it warn't Em'ly, I went on agen.  By little and little, when
I come to a new village or that, among the poor people, I found
they know'd about me.  They would set me down at their cottage
doors, and give me what-not fur to eat and drink, and show me where
to sleep; and many a woman, Mas'r Davy, as has had a daughter of
about Em'ly's age, I've found a-waiting fur me, at Our Saviour's
Cross outside the village, fur to do me sim'lar kindnesses.  Some
has had daughters as was dead.  And God only knows how good them
mothers was to me!'

It was Martha at the door.  I saw her haggard, listening face
distinctly.  My dread was lest he should turn his head, and see her
too.

'They would often put their children - particular their little
girls,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'upon my knee; and many a time you might
have seen me sitting at their doors, when night was coming in,
a'most as if they'd been my Darling's children.  Oh, my Darling!'

Overpowered by sudden grief, he sobbed aloud.  I laid my trembling
hand upon the hand he put before his face.  'Thankee, sir,' he
said, 'doen't take no notice.'

In a very little while he took his hand away and put it on his
breast, and went on with his story.
'They often walked with me,' he said, 'in the morning, maybe a mile
or two upon my road; and when we parted, and I said, "I'm very
thankful to you!  God bless you!" they always seemed to understand,
and answered pleasant.  At last I come to the sea.  It warn't hard,
you may suppose, for a seafaring man like me to work his way over
to Italy.  When I got theer, I wandered on as I had done afore. 
The people was just as good to me, and I should have gone from town
to town, maybe the country through, but that I got news of her
being seen among them Swiss mountains yonder.  One as know'd his
servant see 'em there, all three, and told me how they travelled,
and where they was.  I made fur them mountains, Mas'r Davy, day and
night.  Ever so fur as I went, ever so fur the mountains seemed to
shift away from me.  But I come up with 'em, and I crossed 'em. 
When I got nigh the place as I had been told of, I began to think
within my own self, "What shall I do when I see her?"'

The listening face, insensible to the inclement night, still
drooped at the door, and the hands begged me - prayed me - not to
cast it forth.

'I never doubted her,' said Mr. Peggotty.  'No!  Not a bit!  On'y
let her see my face - on'y let her beer my voice - on'y let my
stanning still afore her bring to her thoughts the home she had
fled away from, and the child she had been - and if she had growed
to be a royal lady, she'd have fell down at my feet!  I know'd it
well!  Many a time in my sleep had I heerd her cry out, "Uncle!"
and seen her fall like death afore me.  Many a time in my sleep had
I raised her up, and whispered to her, "Em'ly, my dear, I am come
fur to bring forgiveness, and to take you home!"'

He stopped and shook his head, and went on with a sigh.

'He was nowt to me now.  Em'ly was all.  I bought a country dress
to put upon her; and I know'd that, once found, she would walk
beside me over them stony roads, go where I would, and never,
never, leave me more.  To put that dress upon her, and to cast off
what she wore - to take her on my arm again, and wander towards
home - to stop sometimes upon the road, and heal her bruised feet
and her worse-bruised heart - was all that I thowt of now.  I
doen't believe I should have done so much as look at him.  But,
Mas'r Davy, it warn't to be - not yet!  I was too late, and they
was gone.  Wheer, I couldn't learn.  Some said beer, some said
theer.  I travelled beer, and I travelled theer, but I found no
Em'ly, and I travelled home.'

'How long ago?' I asked.

'A matter o' fower days,' said Mr. Peggotty.  'I sighted the old
boat arter dark, and the light a-shining in the winder.  When I
come nigh and looked in through the glass, I see the faithful
creetur Missis Gummidge sittin' by the fire, as we had fixed upon,
alone.  I called out, "Doen't be afeerd!  It's Dan'l!" and I went
in.  I never could have thowt the old boat would have been so
strange!'
From some pocket in his breast, he took out, with a very careful
hand a small paper bundle containing two or three letters or little
packets, which he laid upon the table.

'This fust one come,' he said, selecting it from the rest, 'afore
I had been gone a week.  A fifty pound Bank note, in a sheet of
paper, directed to me, and put underneath the door in the night. 
She tried to hide her writing, but she couldn't hide it from Me!'

He folded up the note again, with great patience and care, in
exactly the same form, and laid it on one side.

'This come to Missis Gummidge,' he said, opening another, 'two or
three months ago.'After looking at it for some moments, he gave it
to me, and added in a low voice, 'Be so good as read it, sir.'

I read as follows:

'Oh what will you feel when you see this writing, and know it comes
from my wicked hand!  But try, try - not for my sake, but for
uncle's goodness, try to let your heart soften to me, only for a
little little time!  Try, pray do, to relent towards a miserable
girl, and write down on a bit of paper whether he is well, and what
he said about me before you left off ever naming me among
yourselves - and whether, of a night, when it is my old time of
coming home, you ever see him look as if he thought of one he used
to love so dear.  Oh, my heart is breaking when I think about it!
I am kneeling down to you, begging and praying you not to be as
hard with me as I deserve - as I well, well, know I deserve - but
to be so gentle and so good, as to write down something of him, and
to send it to me.  You need not call me Little, you need not call
me by the name I have disgraced; but oh, listen to my agony, and
have mercy on me so far as to write me some word of uncle, never,
never to be seen in this world by my eyes again!

'Dear, if your heart is hard towards me - justly hard, I know -
but, listen, if it is hard, dear, ask him I have wronged the most
- him whose wife I was to have been - before you quite decide
against my poor poor prayer!  If he should be so compassionate as
to say that you might write something for me to read - I think he
would, oh, I think he would, if you would only ask him, for he
always was so brave and so forgiving - tell him then (but not
else), that when I hear the wind blowing at night, I feel as if it
was passing angrily from seeing him and uncle, and was going up to
God against me.  Tell him that if I was to die tomorrow (and oh, if
I was fit, I would be so glad to die!) I would bless him and uncle
with my last words, and pray for his happy home with my last
breath!'

Some money was enclosed in this letter also.  Five pounds.  It was
untouched like the previous sum, and he refolded it in the same
way.  Detailed instructions were added relative to the address of
a reply, which, although they betrayed the intervention of several
hands, and made it difficult to arrive at any very probable
conclusion in reference to her place of concealment, made it at
least not unlikely that she had written from that spot where she
was stated to have been seen.

'What answer was sent?' I inquired of Mr. Peggotty.

'Missis Gummidge,' he returned, 'not being a good scholar, sir, Ham
kindly drawed it out, and she made a copy on it.  They told her I
was gone to seek her, and what my parting words was.'

'Is that another letter in your hand?' said I.

'It's money, sir,' said Mr. Peggotty, unfolding it a little way. 
'Ten pound, you see.  And wrote inside, "From a true friend," like
the fust.  But the fust was put underneath the door, and this come
by the post, day afore yesterday.  I'm a-going to seek her at the
post-mark.'

He showed it to me.  It was a town on the Upper Rhine.  He had
found out, at Yarmouth, some foreign dealers who knew that country,
and they had drawn him a rude map on paper, which he could very
well understand.  He laid it between us on the table; and, with his
chin resting on one hand, tracked his course upon it with the
other.

I asked him how Ham was?  He shook his head.

'He works,' he said, 'as bold as a man can.  His name's as good, in
all that part, as any man's is, anywheres in the wureld.  Anyone's
hand is ready to help him, you understand, and his is ready to help
them.  He's never been heerd fur to complain.  But my sister's
belief is ('twixt ourselves) as it has cut him deep.'

'Poor fellow, I can believe it!'

'He ain't no care, Mas'r Davy,' said Mr. Peggotty in a solemn
whisper - 'kinder no care no-how for his life.  When a man's wanted
for rough sarvice in rough weather, he's theer.  When there's hard
duty to be done with danger in it, he steps for'ard afore all his
mates.  And yet he's as gentle as any child.  There ain't a child
in Yarmouth that doen't know him.'

He gathered up the letters thoughtfully, smoothing them with his
hand; put them into their little bundle; and placed it tenderly in
his breast again.  The face was gone from the door.  I still saw
the snow drifting in; but nothing else was there.

'Well!' he said, looking to his bag, 'having seen you tonight,
Mas'r Davy (and that doos me good!), I shall away betimes tomorrow
morning.  You have seen what I've got heer'; putting his hand on
where the little packet lay; 'all that troubles me is, to think
that any harm might come to me, afore that money was give back.  If
I was to die, and it was lost, or stole, or elseways made away
with, and it was never know'd by him but what I'd took it, I
believe the t'other wureld wouldn't hold me!  I believe I must come
back!'

He rose, and I rose too; we grasped each other by the hand again,
before going out.

'I'd go ten thousand mile,' he said, 'I'd go till I dropped dead,
to lay that money down afore him.  If I do that, and find my Em'ly,
I'm content.  If I doen't find her, maybe she'll come to hear,
sometime, as her loving uncle only ended his search for her when he
ended his life; and if I know her, even that will turn her home at
last!'

As he went out into the rigorous night, I saw the lonely figure
flit away before us.  I turned him hastily on some pretence, and
held him in conversation until it was gone.

He spoke of a traveller's house on the Dover Road, where he knew he
could find a clean, plain lodging for the night.  I went with him
over Westminster Bridge, and parted from him on the Surrey shore. 
Everything seemed, to my imagination, to be hushed in reverence for
him, as he resumed his solitary journey through the snow.

I returned to the inn yard, and, impressed by my remembrance of the
face, looked awfully around for it.  It was not there.  The snow
had covered our late footprints; my new track was the only one to
be seen; and even that began to die away (it snowed so fast) as I
looked back over my shoulder.

CHAPTER 41
DORA'S AUNTS

At last, an answer came from the two old ladies.  They presented
their compliments to Mr. Copperfield, and informed him that they
had given his letter their best consideration, 'with a view to the
happiness of both parties' - which I thought rather an alarming
expression, not only because of the use they had made of it in
relation to the family difference before-mentioned, but because I
had (and have all my life) observed that conventional phrases are
a sort of fireworks, easily let off, and liable to take a great
variety of shapes and colours not at all suggested by their
original form.  The Misses Spenlow added that they begged to
forbear expressing, 'through the medium of correspondence', an
opinion on the subject of Mr. Copperfield's communication; but that
if Mr. Copperfield would do them the favour to call, upon a certain
day (accompanied, if he thought proper, by a confidential friend),
they would be happy to hold some conversation on the subject.

To this favour, Mr. Copperfield immediately replied, with his
respectful compliments, that he would have the honour of waiting on
the Misses Spenlow, at the time appointed; accompanied, in
accordance with their kind permission, by his friend Mr. Thomas
Traddles of the Inner Temple.  Having dispatched which missive, Mr.
Copperfield fell into a condition of strong nervous agitation; and
so remained until the day arrived.

It was a great augmentation of my uneasiness to be bereaved, at
this eventful crisis, of the inestimable services of Miss Mills. 
But Mr. Mills, who was always doing something or other to annoy me
- or I felt as if he were, which was the same thing - had brought
his conduct to a climax, by taking it into his head that he would
go to India.  Why should he go to India, except to harass me?  To
be sure he had nothing to do with any other part of the world, and
had a good deal to do with that part; being entirely in the India
trade, whatever that was (I had floating dreams myself concerning
golden shawls and elephants' teeth); having been at Calcutta in his
youth; and designing now to go out there again, in the capacity of
resident partner.  But this was nothing to me.  However, it was so
much to him that for India he was bound, and Julia with him; and
Julia went into the country to take leave of her relations; and the
house was put into a perfect suit of bills, announcing that it was
to be let or sold, and that the furniture (Mangle and all) was to
be taken at a valuation.  So, here was another earthquake of which
I became the sport, before I had recovered from the shock of its
predecessor!

I was in several minds how to dress myself on the important day;
being divided between my desire to appear to advantage, and my
apprehensions of putting on anything that might impair my severely
practical character in the eyes of the Misses Spenlow.  I
endeavoured to hit a happy medium between these two extremes; my
aunt approved the result; and Mr. Dick threw one of his shoes after
Traddles and me, for luck, as we went downstairs.

Excellent fellow as I knew Traddles to be, and warmly attached to
him as I was, I could not help wishing, on that delicate occasion,
that he had never contracted the habit of brushing his hair so very
upright.  It gave him a surprised look - not to say a hearth-broomy
kind of expression - which, my apprehensions whispered, might be
fatal to us.

I took the liberty of mentioning it to Traddles, as we were walking
to Putney; and saying that if he WOULD smooth it down a little -

'My dear Copperfield,' said Traddles, lifting off his hat, and
rubbing his hair all kinds of ways, 'nothing would give me greater
pleasure.  But it won't.'

'Won't be smoothed down?' said I.

'No,' said Traddles.  'Nothing will induce it.  If I was to carry
a half-hundred-weight upon it, all the way to Putney, it would be
up again the moment the weight was taken off.  You have no idea
what obstinate hair mine is, Copperfield.  I am quite a fretful
porcupine.'

I was a little disappointed, I must confess, but thoroughly charmed
by his good-nature too.  I told him how I esteemed his good-nature;
and said that his hair must have taken all the obstinacy out of his
character, for he had none.

'Oh!' returned Traddles, laughing.  'I assure you, it's quite an
old story, my unfortunate hair.  My uncle's wife couldn't bear it. 
She said it exasperated her.  It stood very much in my way, too,
when I first fell in love with Sophy.  Very much!'

'Did she object to it?'

'SHE didn't,' rejoined Traddles; 'but her eldest sister - the one
that's the Beauty - quite made game of it, I understand.  In fact,
all the sisters laugh at it.'

'Agreeable!' said I.

'Yes,' returned Traddles with perfect innocence, 'it's a joke for
us.  They pretend that Sophy has a lock of it in her desk, and is
obliged to shut it in a clasped book, to keep it down.  We laugh
about it.'

'By the by, my dear Traddles,' said I, 'your experience may suggest
something to me.  When you became engaged to the young lady whom
you have just mentioned, did you make a regular proposal to her
family?  Was there anything like - what we are going through today,
for instance?' I added, nervously.

'Why,' replied Traddles, on whose attentive face a thoughtful shade
had stolen, 'it was rather a painful transaction, Copperfield, in
my case.  You see, Sophy being of so much use in the family, none
of them could endure the thought of her ever being married. 
Indeed, they had quite settled among themselves that she never was
to be married, and they called her the old maid.  Accordingly, when
I mentioned it, with the greatest precaution, to Mrs. Crewler -'

'The mama?' said I.

'The mama,' said Traddles - 'Reverend Horace Crewler - when I
mentioned it with every possible precaution to Mrs. Crewler, the
effect upon her was such that she gave a scream and became
insensible.  I couldn't approach the subject again, for months.'

'You did at last?' said I.

'Well, the Reverend Horace did,' said Traddles.  'He is an
excellent man, most exemplary in every way; and he pointed out to
her that she ought, as a Christian, to reconcile herself to the
sacrifice (especially as it was so uncertain), and to bear no
uncharitable feeling towards me.  As to myself, Copperfield, I give
you my word, I felt a perfect bird of prey towards the family.'

'The sisters took your part, I hope, Traddles?'

'Why, I can't say they did,' he returned.  'When we had
comparatively reconciled Mrs. Crewler to it, we had to break it to
Sarah.  You recollect my mentioning Sarah, as the one that has
something the matter with her spine?'

'Perfectly!'

'She clenched both her hands,' said Traddles, looking at me in
dismay; 'shut her eyes; turned lead-colour; became perfectly stiff;
and took nothing for two days but toast-and-water, administered
with a tea-spoon.'

'What a very unpleasant girl, Traddles!' I remarked.

'Oh, I beg your pardon, Copperfield!' said Traddles.  'She is a
very charming girl, but she has a great deal of feeling.  In fact,
they all have.  Sophy told me afterwards, that the self-reproach
she underwent while she was in attendance upon Sarah, no words
could describe.  I know it must have been severe, by my own
feelings, Copperfield; which were like a criminal's.  After Sarah
was restored, we still had to break it to the other eight; and it
produced various effects upon them of a most pathetic nature.  The
two little ones, whom Sophy educates, have only just left off
de-testing me.'

'At any rate, they are all reconciled to it now, I hope?' said I.

'Ye-yes, I should say they were, on the whole, resigned to it,'
said Traddles, doubtfully.  'The fact is, we avoid mentioning the
subject; and my unsettled prospects and indifferent circumstances
are a great consolation to them.  There will be a deplorable scene,
whenever we are married.  It will be much more like a funeral, than
a wedding.  And they'll all hate me for taking her away!'

His honest face, as he looked at me with a serio-comic shake of his
head, impresses me more in the remembrance than it did in the
reality, for I was by this time in a state of such excessive
trepidation and wandering of mind, as to be quite unable to fix my
attention on anything.  On our approaching the house where the
Misses Spenlow lived, I was at such a discount in respect of my
personal looks and presence of mind, that Traddles proposed a
gentle stimulant in the form of a glass of ale.  This having been
administered at a neighbouring public-house, he conducted me, with
tottering steps, to the Misses Spenlow's door.

I had a vague sensation of being, as it were, on view, when the
maid opened it; and of wavering, somehow, across a hall with a
weather-glass in it, into a quiet little drawing-room on the
ground-floor, commanding a neat garden.  Also of sitting down here,
on a sofa, and seeing Traddles's hair start up, now his hat was
removed, like one of those obtrusive little figures made of
springs, that fly out of fictitious snuff-boxes when the lid is
taken off.  Also of hearing an old-fashioned clock ticking away on
the chimney-piece, and trying to make it keep time to the jerking
of my heart, - which it wouldn't.  Also of looking round the room
for any sign of Dora, and seeing none.  Also of thinking that Jip
once barked in the distance, and was instantly choked by somebody. 
Ultimately I found myself backing Traddles into the fireplace, and
bowing in great confusion to two dry little elderly ladies, dressed
in black, and each looking wonderfully like a preparation in chip
or tan of the late Mr. Spenlow.

'Pray,' said one of the two little ladies, 'be seated.'

When I had done tumbling over Traddles, and had sat upon something
which was not a cat - my first seat was - I so far recovered my
sight, as to perceive that Mr. Spenlow had evidently been the
youngest of the family; that there was a disparity of six or eight
years between the two sisters; and that the younger appeared to be
the manager of the conference, inasmuch as she had my letter in her
hand - so familiar as it looked to me, and yet so odd! - and was
referring to it through an eye-glass.  They were dressed alike, but
this sister wore her dress with a more youthful air than the other;
and perhaps had a trifle more frill, or tucker, or brooch, or
bracelet, or some little thing of that kind, which made her look
more lively.  They were both upright in their carriage, formal,
precise, composed, and quiet.  The sister who had not my letter,
had her arms crossed on her breast, and resting on each other, like
an Idol.

'Mr. Copperfield, I believe,' said the sister who had got my
letter, addressing herself to Traddles.

This was a frightful beginning.  Traddles had to indicate that I
was Mr. Copperfield, and I had to lay claim to myself, and they had
to divest themselves of a preconceived opinion that Traddles was
Mr. Copperfield, and altogether we were in a nice condition.  To
improve it, we all distinctly heard Jip give two short barks, and
receive another choke.

'Mr. Copperfield!' said the sister with the letter.

I did something - bowed, I suppose - and was all attention, when
the other sister struck in.

'My sister Lavinia,' said she 'being conversant with matters of
this nature, will state what we consider most calculated to promote
the happiness of both parties.'

I discovered afterwards that Miss Lavinia was an authority in
affairs of the heart, by reason of there having anciently existed
a certain Mr. Pidger, who played short whist, and was supposed to
have been enamoured of her.  My private opinion is, that this was
entirely a gratuitous assumption, and that Pidger was altogether
innocent of any such sentiments - to which he had never given any
sort of expression that I could ever hear of.  Both Miss Lavinia
and Miss Clarissa had a superstition, however, that he would have
declared his passion, if he had not been cut short in his youth (at
about sixty) by over-drinking his constitution, and over-doing an
attempt to set it right again by swilling Bath water.  They had a
lurking suspicion even, that he died of secret love; though I must
say there was a picture of him in the house with a damask nose,
which concealment did not appear to have ever preyed upon.

'We will not,' said Miss Lavinia, 'enter on the past history of
this matter.  Our poor brother Francis's death has cancelled that.'

'We had not,' said Miss Clarissa, 'been in the habit of frequent
association with our brother Francis; but there was no decided
division or disunion between us.  Francis took his road; we took
ours.  We considered it conducive to the happiness of all parties
that it should be so.  And it was so.'

Each of the sisters leaned a little forward to speak, shook her
head after speaking, and became upright again when silent.  Miss
Clarissa never moved her arms.  She sometimes played tunes upon
them with her fingers - minuets and marches I should think - but
never moved them.

'Our niece's position, or supposed position, is much changed by our
brother Francis's death,' said Miss Lavinia; 'and therefore we
consider our brother's opinions as regarded her position as being
changed too.  We have no reason to doubt, Mr. Copperfield, that you
are a young gentleman possessed of good qualities and honourable
character; or that you have an affection - or are fully persuaded
that you have an affection - for our niece.'

I replied, as I usually did whenever I had a chance, that nobody
had ever loved anybody else as I loved Dora.  Traddles came to my
assistance with a confirmatory murmur.

Miss Lavinia was going on to make some rejoinder, when Miss
Clarissa, who appeared to be incessantly beset by a desire to refer
to her brother Francis, struck in again:

'If Dora's mama,' she said, 'when she married our brother Francis,
had at once said that there was not room for the family at the
dinner-table, it would have been better for the happiness of all
parties.'

'Sister Clarissa,' said Miss Lavinia.  'Perhaps we needn't mind
that now.'

'Sister Lavinia,' said Miss Clarissa, 'it belongs to the subject. 
With your branch of the subject, on which alone you are competent
to speak, I should not think of interfering.  On this branch of the
subject I have a voice and an opinion.  It would have been better
for the happiness of all parties, if Dora's mama, when she married
our brother Francis, had mentioned plainly what her intentions
were.  We should then have known what we had to expect.  We should
have said "Pray do not invite us, at any time"; and all possibility
of misunderstanding would have been avoided.'

When Miss Clarissa had shaken her head, Miss Lavinia resumed: again
referring to my letter through her eye-glass.  They both had little
bright round twinkling eyes, by the way, which were like birds'
eyes.  They were not unlike birds, altogether; having a sharp,
brisk, sudden manner, and a little short, spruce way of adjusting
themselves, like canaries.

Miss Lavinia, as I have said, resumed:

'You ask permission of my sister Clarissa and myself, Mr.
Copperfield, to visit here, as the accepted suitor of our niece.'

'If our brother Francis,' said Miss Clarissa, breaking out again,
if I may call anything so calm a breaking out, 'wished to surround
himself with an atmosphere of Doctors' Commons, and of Doctors'
Commons only, what right or desire had we to object?  None, I am
sure.  We have ever been far from wishing to obtrude ourselves on
anyone.  But why not say so?  Let our brother Francis and his wife
have their society.  Let my sister Lavinia and myself have our
society.  We can find it for ourselves, I hope.'

As this appeared to be addressed to Traddles and me, both Traddles
and I made some sort of reply.  Traddles was inaudible.  I think I
observed, myself, that it was highly creditable to all concerned. 
I don't in the least know what I meant.

'Sister Lavinia,' said Miss Clarissa, having now relieved her mind,
'you can go on, my dear.'

Miss Lavinia proceeded:

'Mr. Copperfield, my sister Clarissa and I have been very careful
indeed in considering this letter; and we have not considered it
without finally showing it to our niece, and discussing it with our
niece.  We have no doubt that you think you like her very much.'

'Think, ma'am,' I rapturously began, 'oh! -'

But Miss Clarissa giving me a look (just like a sharp canary), as
requesting that I would not interrupt the oracle, I begged pardon.

'Affection,' said Miss Lavinia, glancing at her sister for
corroboration, which she gave in the form of a little nod to every
clause, 'mature affection, homage, devotion, does not easily
express itself.  Its voice is low.  It is modest and retiring, it
lies in ambush, waits and waits.  Such is the mature fruit. 
Sometimes a life glides away, and finds it still ripening in the
shade.'

Of course I did not understand then that this was an allusion to
her supposed experience of the stricken Pidger; but I saw, from the
gravity with which Miss Clarissa nodded her head, that great weight
was attached to these words.

'The light - for I call them, in comparison with such sentiments,
the light - inclinations of very young people,' pursued Miss
Lavinia, 'are dust, compared to rocks.  It is owing to the
difficulty of knowing whether they are likely to endure or have any
real foundation, that my sister Clarissa and myself have been very
undecided how to act, Mr. Copperfield, and Mr. -'

'Traddles,' said my friend, finding himself looked at.

'I beg pardon.  Of the Inner Temple, I believe?' said Miss
Clarissa, again glancing at my letter.

Traddles said 'Exactly so,' and became pretty red in the face.

Now, although I had not received any express encouragement as yet,
I fancied that I saw in the two little sisters, and particularly in
Miss Lavinia, an intensified enjoyment of this new and fruitful
subject of domestic interest, a settling down to make the most of
it, a disposition to pet it, in which there was a good bright ray
of hope.  I thought I perceived that Miss Lavinia would have
uncommon satisfaction in superintending two young lovers, like Dora
and me; and that Miss Clarissa would have hardly less satisfaction
in seeing her superintend us, and in chiming in with her own
particular department of the subject whenever that impulse was
strong upon her.  This gave me courage to protest most vehemently
that I loved Dora better than I could tell, or anyone believe; that
all my friends knew how I loved her; that my aunt, Agnes, Traddles,
everyone who knew me, knew how I loved her, and how earnest my love
had made me.  For the truth of this, I appealed to Traddles.  And
Traddles, firing up as if he were plunging into a Parliamentary
Debate, really did come out nobly: confirming me in good round
terms, and in a plain sensible practical manner, that evidently
made a favourable impression.

'I speak, if I may presume to say so, as one who has some little
experience of such things,' said Traddles, 'being myself engaged to
a young lady - one of ten, down in Devonshire - and seeing no
probability, at present, of our engagement coming to a
termination.'

'You may be able to confirm what I have said, Mr. Traddles,'
observed Miss Lavinia, evidently taking a new interest in him, 'of
the affection that is modest and retiring; that waits and waits?'

'Entirely, ma'am,' said Traddles.

Miss Clarissa looked at Miss Lavinia, and shook her head gravely. 
Miss Lavinia looked consciously at Miss Clarissa, and heaved a
little sigh.
'Sister Lavinia,' said Miss Clarissa, 'take my smelling-bottle.'

Miss Lavinia revived herself with a few whiffs of aromatic vinegar
- Traddles and I looking on with great solicitude the while; and
then went on to say, rather faintly:

'My sister and myself have been in great doubt, Mr. Traddles, what
course we ought to take in reference to the likings, or imaginary
likings, of such very young people as your friend Mr. Copperfield
and our niece.'

'Our brother Francis's child,' remarked Miss Clarissa.  'If our
brother Francis's wife had found it convenient in her lifetime
(though she had an unquestionable right to act as she thought best)
to invite the family to her dinner-table, we might have known our
brother Francis's child better at the present moment.  Sister
Lavinia, proceed.'

Miss Lavinia turned my letter, so as to bring the superscription
towards herself, and referred through her eye-glass to some
orderly-looking notes she had made on that part of it.

'It seems to us,' said she, 'prudent, Mr. Traddles, to bring these
feelings to the test of our own observation.  At present we know
nothing of them, and are not in a situation to judge how much
reality there may be in them.  Therefore we are inclined so far to
accede to Mr. Copperfield's proposal, as to admit his visits here.'

'I shall never, dear ladies,' I exclaimed, relieved of an immense
load of apprehension, 'forget your kindness!'

'But,' pursued Miss Lavinia, - 'but, we would prefer to regard
those visits, Mr. Traddles, as made, at present, to us.  We must
guard ourselves from recognizing any positive engagement between
Mr. Copperfield and our niece, until we have had an opportunity -'

'Until YOU have had an opportunity, sister Lavinia,' said Miss
Clarissa.

'Be it so,' assented Miss Lavinia, with a sigh - 'until I have had
an opportunity of observing them.'

'Copperfield,' said Traddles, turning to me, 'you feel, I am sure,
that nothing could be more reasonable or considerate.'

'Nothing!' cried I.  'I am deeply sensible of it.'

'In this position of affairs,' said Miss Lavinia, again referring
to her notes, 'and admitting his visits on this understanding only,
we must require from Mr. Copperfield a distinct assurance, on his
word of honour, that no communication of any kind shall take place
between him and our niece without our knowledge.  That no project
whatever shall be entertained with regard to our niece, without
being first submitted to us -'
'To you, sister Lavinia,' Miss Clarissa interposed.

'Be it so, Clarissa!' assented Miss Lavinia resignedly - 'to me -
and receiving our concurrence.  We must make this a most express
and serious stipulation, not to be broken on any account.  We
wished Mr. Copperfield to be accompanied by some confidential
friend today,' with an inclination of her head towards Traddles,
who bowed, 'in order that there might be no doubt or misconception
on this subject.  If Mr. Copperfield, or if you, Mr. Traddles, feel
the least scruple, in giving this promise, I beg you to take time
to consider it.'

I exclaimed, in a state of high ecstatic fervour, that not a
moment's consideration could be necessary.  I bound myself by the
required promise, in a most impassioned manner; called upon
Traddles to witness it; and denounced myself as the most atrocious
of characters if I ever swerved from it in the least degree.

'Stay!' said Miss Lavinia, holding up her hand; 'we resolved,
before we had the pleasure of receiving you two gentlemen, to leave
you alone for a quarter of an hour, to consider this point.  You
will allow us to retire.'

It was in vain for me to say that no consideration was necessary. 
They persisted in withdrawing for the specified time.  Accordingly,
these little birds hopped out with great dignity; leaving me to
receive the congratulations of Traddles, and to feel as if I were
translated to regions of exquisite happiness.  Exactly at the
expiration of the quarter of an hour, they reappeared with no less
dignity than they had disappeared.  They had gone rustling away as
if their little dresses were made of autumn-leaves: and they came
rustling back, in like manner.

I then bound myself once more to the prescribed conditions.

'Sister Clarissa,' said Miss Lavinia, 'the rest is with you.'

Miss Clarissa, unfolding her arms for the first time, took the
notes and glanced at them.

'We shall be happy,' said Miss Clarissa, 'to see Mr. Copperfield to
dinner, every Sunday, if it should suit his convenience.  Our hour
is three.'

I bowed.

'In the course of the week,' said Miss Clarissa, 'we shall be happy
to see Mr. Copperfield to tea.  Our hour is half-past six.'

I bowed again.

'Twice in the week,' said Miss Clarissa, 'but, as a rule, not
oftener.'

I bowed again.

'Miss Trotwood,' said Miss Clarissa, 'mentioned in Mr.
Copperfield's letter, will perhaps call upon us.  When visiting is
better for the happiness of all parties, we are glad to receive
visits, and return them.  When it is better for the happiness of
all parties that no visiting should take place, (as in the case of
our brother Francis, and his establishment) that is quite
different.'

I intimated that my aunt would be proud and delighted to make their
acquaintance; though I must say I was not quite sure of their
getting on very satisfactorily together.  The conditions being now
closed, I expressed my acknowledgements in the warmest manner; and,
taking the hand, first of Miss Clarissa, and then of Miss Lavinia,
pressed it, in each case, to my lips.

Miss Lavinia then arose, and begging Mr. Traddles to excuse us for
a minute, requested me to follow her.  I obeyed, all in a tremble,
and was conducted into another room.  There I found my blessed
darling stopping her ears behind the door, with her dear little
face against the wall; and Jip in the plate-warmer with his head
tied up in a towel.

Oh!  How beautiful she was in her black frock, and how she sobbed
and cried at first, and wouldn't come out from behind the door! 
How fond we were of one another, when she did come out at last; and
what a state of bliss I was in, when we took Jip out of the
plate-warmer, and restored him to the light, sneezing very much,
and were all three reunited!

'My dearest Dora!  Now, indeed, my own for ever!'

'Oh, DON'T!' pleaded Dora.  'Please!'

'Are you not my own for ever, Dora?'

'Oh yes, of course I am!' cried Dora, 'but I am so frightened!'

'Frightened, my own?'

'Oh yes!  I don't like him,' said Dora.  'Why don't he go?'

'Who, my life?'

'Your friend,' said Dora.  'It isn't any business of his.  What a
stupid he must be!'

'My love!' (There never was anything so coaxing as her childish
ways.) 'He is the best creature!'

'Oh, but we don't want any best creatures!' pouted Dora.

'My dear,' I argued, 'you will soon know him well, and like him of
all things.  And here is my aunt coming soon; and you'll like her
of all things too, when you know her.'

'No, please don't bring her!' said Dora, giving me a horrified
little kiss, and folding her hands.  'Don't.  I know she's a
naughty, mischief-making old thing!  Don't let her come here,
Doady!' which was a corruption of David.

Remonstrance was of no use, then; so I laughed, and admired, and
was very much in love and very happy; and she showed me Jip's new
trick of standing on his hind legs in a corner - which he did for
about the space of a flash of lightning, and then fell down - and
I don't know how long I should have stayed there, oblivious of
Traddles, if Miss Lavinia had not come in to take me away.  Miss
Lavinia was very fond of Dora (she told me Dora was exactly like
what she had been herself at her age - she must have altered a good
deal), and she treated Dora just as if she had been a toy.  I
wanted to persuade Dora to come and see Traddles, but on my
proposing it she ran off to her own room and locked herself in; so
I went to Traddles without her, and walked away with him on air.

'Nothing could be more satisfactory,' said Traddles; 'and they are
very agreeable old ladies, I am sure.  I shouldn't be at all
surprised if you were to be married years before me, Copperfield.'

'Does your Sophy play on any instrument, Traddles?' I inquired, in
the pride of my heart.

'She knows enough of the piano to teach it to her little sisters,'
said Traddles.

'Does she sing at all?' I asked.

'Why, she sings ballads, sometimes, to freshen up the others a
little when they're out of spirits,' said Traddles.  'Nothing
scientific.'

'She doesn't sing to the guitar?' said I.

'Oh dear no!' said Traddles.

'Paint at all?'

'Not at all,' said Traddles.

I promised Traddles that he should hear Dora sing, and see some of
her flower-painting.  He said he should like it very much, and we
went home arm in arm in great good humour and delight.  I
encouraged him to talk about Sophy, on the way; which he did with
a loving reliance on her that I very much admired.  I compared her
in my mind with Dora, with considerable inward satisfaction; but I
candidly admitted to myself that she seemed to be an excellent kind
of girl for Traddles, too.

Of course my aunt was immediately made acquainted with the
successful issue of the conference, and with all that had been said
and done in the course of it.  She was happy to see me so happy,
and promised to call on Dora's aunts without loss of time.  But she
took such a long walk up and down our rooms that night, while I was
writing to Agnes, that I began to think she meant to walk till
morning.

My letter to Agnes was a fervent and grateful one, narrating all
the good effects that had resulted from my following her advice. 
She wrote, by return of post, to me.  Her letter was hopeful,
earnest, and cheerful.  She was always cheerful from that time.

I had my hands more full than ever, now.  My daily journeys to
Highgate considered, Putney was a long way off; and I naturally
wanted to go there as often as I could.  The proposed tea-drinkings
being quite impracticable, I compounded with Miss Lavinia for
permission to visit every Saturday afternoon, without detriment to
my privileged Sundays.  So, the close of every week was a delicious
time for me; and I got through the rest of the week by looking
forward to it.

I was wonderfully relieved to find that my aunt and Dora's aunts
rubbed on, all things considered, much more smoothly than I could
have expected.  My aunt made her promised visit within a few days
of the conference; and within a few more days, Dora's aunts called
upon her, in due state and form.  Similar but more friendly
exchanges took place afterwards, usually at intervals of three or
four weeks.  I know that my aunt distressed Dora's aunts very much,
by utterly setting at naught the dignity of fly-conveyance, and
walking out to Putney at extraordinary times, as shortly after
breakfast or just before tea; likewise by wearing her bonnet in any
manner that happened to be comfortable to her head, without at all
deferring to the prejudices of civilization on that subject.  But
Dora's aunts soon agreed to regard my aunt as an eccentric and
somewhat masculine lady, with a strong understanding; and although
my aunt occasionally ruffled the feathers of Dora's aunts, by
expressing heretical opinions on various points of ceremony, she
loved me too well not to sacrifice some of her little peculiarities
to the general harmony.

The only member of our small society who positively refused to
adapt himself to circumstances, was Jip.  He never saw my aunt
without immediately displaying every tooth in his head, retiring
under a chair, and growling incessantly: with now and then a
doleful howl, as if she really were too much for his feelings.  All
kinds of treatment were tried with him, coaxing, scolding,
slapping, bringing him to Buckingham Street (where he instantly
dashed at the two cats, to the terror of all beholders); but he
never could prevail upon himself to bear my aunt's society.  He
would sometimes think he had got the better of his objection, and
be amiable for a few minutes; and then would put up his snub nose,
and howl to that extent, that there was nothing for it but to blind
him and put him in the plate-warmer.  At length, Dora regularly
muffled him in a towel and shut him up there, whenever my aunt was
reported at the door.

One thing troubled me much, after we had fallen into this quiet
train.  It was, that Dora seemed by one consent to be regarded like
a pretty toy or plaything.  My aunt, with whom she gradually became
familiar, always called her Little Blossom; and the pleasure of
Miss Lavinia's life was to wait upon her, curl her hair, make
ornaments for her, and treat her like a pet child.  What Miss
Lavinia did, her sister did as a matter of course.  It was very odd
to me; but they all seemed to treat Dora, in her degree, much as
Dora treated Jip in his.

I made up my mind to speak to Dora about this; and one day when we
were out walking (for we were licensed by Miss Lavinia, after a
while, to go out walking by ourselves), I said to her that I wished
she could get them to behave towards her differently.

'Because you know, my darling,' I remonstrated, 'you are not a
child.'

'There!' said Dora.  'Now you're going to be cross!'

'Cross, my love?'

'I am sure they're very kind to me,' said Dora, 'and I am very
happy -'

'Well!  But my dearest life!' said I, 'you might be very happy, and
yet be treated rationally.'

Dora gave me a reproachful look - the prettiest look! - and then
began to sob, saying, if I didn't like her, why had I ever wanted
so much to be engaged to her?  And why didn't I go away, now, if I
couldn't bear her?

What could I do, but kiss away her tears, and tell her how I doted
on her, after that!

'I am sure I am very affectionate,' said Dora; 'you oughtn't to be
cruel to me, Doady!'

'Cruel, my precious love!  As if I would - or could - be cruel to
you, for the world!'

'Then don't find fault with me,' said Dora, making a rosebud of her
mouth; 'and I'll be good.'

I was charmed by her presently asking me, of her own accord, to
give her that cookery-book I had once spoken of, and to show her
how to keep accounts as I had once promised I would.  I brought the
volume with me on my next visit (I got it prettily bound, first, to
make it look less dry and more inviting); and as we strolled about
the Common, I showed her an old housekeeping-book of my aunt's, and
gave her a set of tablets, and a pretty little pencil-case and box
of leads, to practise housekeeping with.

But the cookery-book made Dora's head ache, and the figures made
her cry.  They wouldn't add up, she said.  So she rubbed them out,
and drew little nosegays and likenesses of me and Jip, all over the
tablets.

Then I playfully tried verbal instruction in domestic matters, as
we walked about on a Saturday afternoon.  Sometimes, for example,
when we passed a butcher's shop, I would say:

'Now suppose, my pet, that we were married, and you were going to
buy a shoulder of mutton for dinner, would you know how to buy it?'

My pretty little Dora's face would fall, and she would make her
mouth into a bud again, as if she would very much prefer to shut
mine with a kiss.

'Would you know how to buy it, my darling?' I would repeat,
perhaps, if I were very inflexible.

Dora would think a little, and then reply, perhaps, with great
triumph:

'Why, the butcher would know how to sell it, and what need I know? 
Oh, you silly boy!'

So, when I once asked Dora, with an eye to the cookery-book, what
she would do, if we were married, and I were to say I should like
a nice Irish stew, she replied that she would tell the servant to
make it; and then clapped her little hands together across my arm,
and laughed in such a charming manner that she was more delightful
than ever.

Consequently, the principal use to which the cookery-book was
devoted, was being put down in the corner for Jip to stand upon. 
But Dora was so pleased, when she had trained him to stand upon it
without offering to come off, and at the same time to hold the
pencil-case in his mouth, that I was very glad I had bought it.

And we fell back on the guitar-case, and the flower-painting, and
the songs about never leaving off dancing, Ta ra la! and were as
happy as the week was long.  I occasionally wished I could venture
to hint to Miss Lavinia, that she treated the darling of my heart
a little too much like a plaything; and I sometimes awoke, as it
were, wondering to find that I had fallen into the general fault,
and treated her like a plaything too - but not often.

CHAPTER 42
MISCHIEF

I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this
manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked at
that tremendous short-hand, and all improvement appertaining to it,
in my sense of responsibility to Dora and her aunts.  I will only
add, to what I have already written of my perseverance at this time
of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began
to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong part of
my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on
looking back, I find the source of my success.  I have been very
fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and
not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have
done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence,
without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a
time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its
heels, which I then formed.  Heaven knows I write this, in no
spirit of self-laudation.  The man who reviews his own life, as I
do mine, in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been
a good man indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of
many talents neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and
perverted feelings constantly at war within his breast, and
defeating him.  I do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I
have not abused.  My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried
to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that
whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to
completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been
thoroughly in earnest.  I have never believed it possible that any
natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the
companionship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and
hope to gain its end.  There is no such thing as such fulfilment on
this earth.  Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may
form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the
rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear;
and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere
earnestness.  Never to put one hand to anything, on which I could
throw my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of my work,
whatever it was; I find, now, to have been my golden rules.

How much of the practice I have just reduced to precept, I owe to
Agnes, I will not repeat here.  My narrative proceeds to Agnes,
with a thankful love.

She came on a visit of a fortnight to the Doctor's.  Mr. Wickfield
was the Doctor's old friend, and the Doctor wished to talk with
him, and do him good.  It had been matter of conversation with
Agnes when she was last in town, and this visit was the result. 
She and her father came together.  I was not much surprised to hear
from her that she had engaged to find a lodging in the
neighbourhood for Mrs. Heep, whose rheumatic complaint required
change of air, and who would be charmed to have it in such company. 
Neither was I surprised when, on the very next day, Uriah, like a
dutiful son, brought his worthy mother to take possession.

'You see, Master Copperfield,' said he, as he forced himself upon
my company for a turn in the Doctor's garden, 'where a person
loves, a person is a little jealous - leastways, anxious to keep an
eye on the beloved one.'

'Of whom are you jealous, now?' said I.

'Thanks to you, Master Copperfield,' he returned, 'of no one in
particular just at present - no male person, at least.'

'Do you mean that you are jealous of a female person?'

He gave me a sidelong glance out of his sinister red eyes, and
laughed.

'Really, Master Copperfield,' he said, '- I should say Mister, but
I know you'll excuse the abit I've got into - you're so
insinuating, that you draw me like a corkscrew!  Well, I don't mind
telling you,' putting his fish-like hand on mine, 'I'm not a lady's
man in general, sir, and I never was, with Mrs. Strong.'

His eyes looked green now, as they watched mine with a rascally
cunning.

'What do you mean?' said I.

'Why, though I am a lawyer, Master Copperfield,' he replied, with
a dry grin, 'I mean, just at present, what I say.'

'And what do you mean by your look?' I retorted, quietly.

'By my look?  Dear me, Copperfield, that's sharp practice!  What do
I mean by my look?'

'Yes,' said I.  'By your look.'

He seemed very much amused, and laughed as heartily as it was in
his nature to laugh.  After some scraping of his chin with his
hand, he went on to say, with his eyes cast downward - still
scraping, very slowly:

'When I was but an umble clerk, she always looked down upon me. 
She was for ever having my Agnes backwards and forwards at her
ouse, and she was for ever being a friend to you, Master
Copperfield; but I was too far beneath her, myself, to be noticed.'

'Well?' said I; 'suppose you were!'

'- And beneath him too,' pursued Uriah, very distinctly, and in a
meditative tone of voice, as he continued to scrape his chin.

'Don't you know the Doctor better,' said I, 'than to suppose him
conscious of your existence, when you were not before him?'

He directed his eyes at me in that sidelong glance again, and he
made his face very lantern-jawed, for the greater convenience of
scraping, as he answered:

'Oh dear, I am not referring to the Doctor!  Oh no, poor man!  I
mean Mr. Maldon!'

My heart quite died within me.  All my old doubts and apprehensions
on that subject, all the Doctor's happiness and peace, all the
mingled possibilities of innocence and compromise, that I could not
unravel, I saw, in a moment, at the mercy of this fellow's
twisting.

'He never could come into the office, without ordering and shoving
me about,' said Uriah.  'One of your fine gentlemen he was!  I was
very meek and umble - and I am.  But I didn't like that sort of
thing - and I don't!'

He left off scraping his chin, and sucked in his cheeks until they
seemed to meet inside; keeping his sidelong glance upon me all the
while.

'She is one of your lovely women, she is,' he pursued, when he had
slowly restored his face to its natural form; 'and ready to be no
friend to such as me, I know.  She's just the person as would put
my Agnes up to higher sort of game.  Now, I ain't one of your
lady's men, Master Copperfield; but I've had eyes in my ed, a
pretty long time back.  We umble ones have got eyes, mostly
speaking - and we look out of 'em.'

I endeavoured to appear unconscious and not disquieted, but, I saw
in his face, with poor success.

'Now, I'm not a-going to let myself be run down, Copperfield,' he
continued, raising that part of his countenance, where his red
eyebrows would have been if he had had any, with malignant triumph,
'and I shall do what I can to put a stop to this friendship.  I
don't approve of it.  I don't mind acknowledging to you that I've
got rather a grudging disposition, and want to keep off all
intruders.  I ain't a-going, if I know it, to run the risk of being
plotted against.'

'You are always plotting, and delude yourself into the belief that
everybody else is doing the like, I think,' said I.

'Perhaps so, Master Copperfield,' he replied.  'But I've got a
motive, as my fellow-partner used to say; and I go at it tooth and
nail.  I mustn't be put upon, as a numble person, too much.  I
can't allow people in my way.  Really they must come out of the
cart, Master Copperfield!'

'I don't understand you,' said I.

'Don't you, though?' he returned, with one of his jerks.  'I'm
astonished at that, Master Copperfield, you being usually so quick! 
I'll try to be plainer, another time.  - Is that Mr. Maldon
a-norseback, ringing at the gate, sir?'

'It looks like him,' I replied, as carelessly as I could.

Uriah stopped short, put his hands between his great knobs of
knees, and doubled himself up with laughter.  With perfectly silent
laughter.  Not a sound escaped from him.  I was so repelled by his
odious behaviour, particularly by this concluding instance, that I
turned away without any ceremony; and left him doubled up in the
middle of the garden, like a scarecrow in want of support.

It was not on that evening; but, as I well remember, on the next
evening but one, which was a Sunday; that I took Agnes to see Dora. 
I had arranged the visit, beforehand, with Miss Lavinia; and Agnes
was expected to tea.

I was in a flutter of pride and anxiety; pride in my dear little
betrothed, and anxiety that Agnes should like her.  All the way to
Putney, Agnes being inside the stage-coach, and I outside, I
pictured Dora to myself in every one of the pretty looks I knew so
well; now making up my mind that I should like her to look exactly
as she looked at such a time, and then doubting whether I should
not prefer her looking as she looked at such another time; and
almost worrying myself into a fever about it.

I was troubled by no doubt of her being very pretty, in any case;
but it fell out that I had never seen her look so well.  She was
not in the drawing-room when I presented Agnes to her little aunts,
but was shyly keeping out of the way.  I knew where to look for
her, now; and sure enough I found her stopping her ears again,
behind the same dull old door.

At first she wouldn't come at all; and then she pleaded for five
minutes by my watch.  When at length she put her arm through mine,
to be taken to the drawing-room, her charming little face was
flushed, and had never been so pretty.  But, when we went into the
room, and it turned pale, she was ten thousand times prettier yet.

Dora was afraid of Agnes.  She had told me that she knew Agnes was
'too clever'.  But when she saw her looking at once so cheerful and
so earnest, and so thoughtful, and so good, she gave a faint little
cry of pleased surprise, and just put her affectionate arms round
Agnes's neck, and laid her innocent cheek against her face.

I never was so happy.  I never was so pleased as when I saw those
two sit down together, side by side.  As when I saw my little
darling looking up so naturally to those cordial eyes.  As when I
saw the tender, beautiful regard which Agnes cast upon her.

Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa partook, in their way, of my joy. 
It was the pleasantest tea-table in the world.  Miss Clarissa
presided.  I cut and handed the sweet seed-cake - the little
sisters had a bird-like fondness for picking up seeds and pecking
at sugar; Miss Lavinia looked on with benignant patronage, as if
our happy love were all her work; and we were perfectly contented
with ourselves and one another.

The gentle cheerfulness of Agnes went to all their hearts.  Her
quiet interest in everything that interested Dora; her manner of
making acquaintance with Jip (who responded instantly); her
pleasant way, when Dora was ashamed to come over to her usual seat
by me; her modest grace and ease, eliciting a crowd of blushing
little marks of confidence from Dora; seemed to make our circle
quite complete.

'I am so glad,' said Dora, after tea, 'that you like me.  I didn't
think you would; and I want, more than ever, to be liked, now Julia
Mills is gone.'

I have omitted to mention it, by the by.  Miss Mills had sailed,
and Dora and I had gone aboard a great East Indiaman at Gravesend
to see her; and we had had preserved ginger, and guava, and other
delicacies of that sort for lunch; and we had left Miss Mills
weeping on a camp-stool on the quarter-deck, with a large new diary
under her arm, in which the original reflections awakened by the
contemplation of Ocean were to be recorded under lock and key.

Agnes said she was afraid I must have given her an unpromising
character; but Dora corrected that directly.

'Oh no!' she said, shaking her curls at me; 'it was all praise.  He
thinks so much of your opinion, that I was quite afraid of it.'

'My good opinion cannot strengthen his attachment to some people
whom he knows,' said Agnes, with a smile; 'it is not worth their
having.'

'But please let me have it,' said Dora, in her coaxing way, 'if you
can!'

We made merry about Dora's wanting to be liked, and Dora said I was
a goose, and she didn't like me at any rate, and the short evening
flew away on gossamer-wings.  The time was at hand when the coach
was to call for us.  I was standing alone before the fire, when
Dora came stealing softly in, to give me that usual precious little
kiss before I went.

'Don't you think, if I had had her for a friend a long time ago,
Doady,' said Dora, her bright eyes shining very brightly, and her
little right hand idly busying itself with one of the buttons of my
coat, 'I might have been more clever perhaps?'

'My love!' said I, 'what nonsense!'

'Do you think it is nonsense?' returned Dora, without looking at
me.  'Are you sure it is?'

'Of course I am!'
'I have forgotten,' said Dora, still turning the button round and
round, 'what relation Agnes is to you, you dear bad boy.'

'No blood-relation,' I replied; 'but we were brought up together,
like brother and sister.'

'I wonder why you ever fell in love with me?' said Dora, beginning
on another button of my coat.

'Perhaps because I couldn't see you, and not love you, Dora!'

'Suppose you had never seen me at all,' said Dora, going to another
button.

'Suppose we had never been born!' said I, gaily.

I wondered what she was thinking about, as I glanced in admiring
silence at the little soft hand travelling up the row of buttons on
my coat, and at the clustering hair that lay against my breast, and
at the lashes of her downcast eyes, slightly rising as they
followed her idle fingers.  At length her eyes were lifted up to
mine, and she stood on tiptoe to give me, more thoughtfully than
usual, that precious little kiss - once, twice, three times - and
went out of the room.

They all came back together within five minutes afterwards, and
Dora's unusual thoughtfulness was quite gone then.  She was
laughingly resolved to put Jip through the whole of his
performances, before the coach came.  They took some time (not so
much on account of their variety, as Jip's reluctance), and were
still unfinished when it was heard at the door.  There was a
hurried but affectionate parting between Agnes and herself; and
Dora was to write to Agnes (who was not to mind her letters being
foolish, she said), and Agnes was to write to Dora; and they had a
second parting at the coach door, and a third when Dora, in spite
of the remonstrances of Miss Lavinia, would come running out once
more to remind Agnes at the coach window about writing, and to
shake her curls at me on the box.

The stage-coach was to put us down near Covent Garden, where we
were to take another stage-coach for Highgate.  I was impatient for
the short walk in the interval, that Agnes might praise Dora to me. 
Ah! what praise it was!  How lovingly and fervently did it commend
the pretty creature I had won, with all her artless graces best
displayed, to my most gentle care!  How thoughtfully remind me, yet
with no pretence of doing so, of the trust in which I held the
orphan child!

Never, never, had I loved Dora so deeply and truly, as I loved her
that night.  When we had again alighted, and were walking in the
starlight along the quiet road that led to the Doctor's house, I
told Agnes it was her doing.

'When you were sitting by her,' said I, 'you seemed to be no less
her guardian angel than mine; and you seem so now, Agnes.'

'A poor angel,' she returned, 'but faithful.'

The clear tone of her voice, going straight to my heart, made it
natural to me to say:

'The cheerfulness that belongs to you, Agnes (and to no one else
that ever I have seen), is so restored, I have observed today, that
I have begun to hope you are happier at home?'

'I am happier in myself,' she said; 'I am quite cheerful and
light-hearted.'

I glanced at the serene face looking upward, and thought it was the
stars that made it seem so noble.

'There has been no change at home,' said Agnes, after a few
moments.

'No fresh reference,' said I, 'to - I wouldn't distress you, Agnes,
but I cannot help asking - to what we spoke of, when we parted
last?'

'No, none,' she answered.

'I have thought so much about it.'

'You must think less about it.  Remember that I confide in simple
love and truth at last.  Have no apprehensions for me, Trotwood,'
she added, after a moment; 'the step you dread my taking, I shall
never take.'

Although I think I had never really feared it, in any season of
cool reflection, it was an unspeakable relief to me to have this
assurance from her own truthful lips.  I told her so, earnestly.

'And when this visit is over,' said I, - 'for we may not be alone
another time, - how long is it likely to be, my dear Agnes, before
you come to London again?'

'Probably a long time,' she replied; 'I think it will be best - for
papa's sake - to remain at home.  We are not likely to meet often,
for some time to come; but I shall be a good correspondent of
Dora's, and we shall frequently hear of one another that way.'

We were now within the little courtyard of the Doctor's cottage. 
It was growing late.  There was a light in the window of Mrs.
Strong's chamber, and Agnes, pointing to it, bade me good night.

'Do not be troubled,' she said, giving me her hand, 'by our
misfortunes and anxieties.  I can be happier in nothing than in
your happiness.  If you can ever give me help, rely upon it I will
ask you for it.  God bless you always!'
In her beaming smile, and in these last tones of her cheerful
voice, I seemed again to see and hear my little Dora in her
company.  I stood awhile, looking through the porch at the stars,
with a heart full of love and gratitude, and then walked slowly
forth.  I had engaged a bed at a decent alehouse close by, and was
going out at the gate, when, happening to turn my head, I saw a
light in the Doctor's study.  A half-reproachful fancy came into my
mind, that he had been working at the Dictionary without my help. 
With the view of seeing if this were so, and, in any case, of
bidding him good night, if he were yet sitting among his books, I
turned back, and going softly across the hall, and gently opening
the door, looked in.

The first person whom I saw, to my surprise, by the sober light of
the shaded lamp, was Uriah.  He was standing close beside it, with
one of his skeleton hands over his mouth, and the other resting on
the Doctor's table.  The Doctor sat in his study chair, covering
his face with his hands.  Mr. Wickfield, sorely troubled and
distressed, was leaning forward, irresolutely touching the Doctor's
arm.

For an instant, I supposed that the Doctor was ill.  I hastily
advanced a step under that impression, when I met Uriah's eye, and
saw what was the matter.  I would have withdrawn, but the Doctor
made a gesture to detain me, and I remained.

'At any rate,' observed Uriah, with a writhe of his ungainly
person, 'we may keep the door shut.  We needn't make it known to
ALL the town.'

Saying which, he went on his toes to the door, which I had left
open, and carefully closed it.  He then came back, and took up his
former position.  There was an obtrusive show of compassionate zeal
in his voice and manner, more intolerable - at least to me - than
any demeanour he could have assumed.

'I have felt it incumbent upon me, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah,
'to point out to Doctor Strong what you and me have already talked
about.  You didn't exactly understand me, though?'

I gave him a look, but no other answer; and, going to my good old
master, said a few words that I meant to be words of comfort and
encouragement.  He put his hand upon my shoulder, as it had been
his custom to do when I was quite a little fellow, but did not lift
his grey head.

'As you didn't understand me, Master Copperfield,' resumed Uriah in
the same officious manner, 'I may take the liberty of umbly
mentioning, being among friends, that I have called Doctor Strong's
attention to the goings-on of Mrs. Strong.  It's much against the
grain with me, I assure you, Copperfield, to be concerned in
anything so unpleasant; but really, as it is, we're all mixing
ourselves up with what oughtn't to be.  That was what my meaning
was, sir, when you didn't understand me.'
I wonder now, when I recall his leer, that I did not collar him,
and try to shake the breath out of his body.

'I dare say I didn't make myself very clear,' he went on, 'nor you
neither.  Naturally, we was both of us inclined to give such a
subject a wide berth.  Hows'ever, at last I have made up my mind to
speak plain; and I have mentioned to Doctor Strong that - did you
speak, sir?'

This was to the Doctor, who had moaned.  The sound might have
touched any heart, I thought, but it had no effect upon Uriah's.

'- mentioned to Doctor Strong,' he proceeded, 'that anyone may see
that Mr. Maldon, and the lovely and agreeable lady as is Doctor
Strong's wife, are too sweet on one another.  Really the time is
come (we being at present all mixing ourselves up with what
oughtn't to be), when Doctor Strong must be told that this was full
as plain to everybody as the sun, before Mr. Maldon went to India;
that Mr. Maldon made excuses to come back, for nothing else; and
that he's always here, for nothing else.  When you come in, sir, I
was just putting it to my fellow-partner,' towards whom he turned,
'to say to Doctor Strong upon his word and honour, whether he'd
ever been of this opinion long ago, or not.  Come, Mr. Wickfield,
sir!  Would you be so good as tell us?  Yes or no, sir?  Come,
partner!'

'For God's sake, my dear Doctor,' said Mr. Wickfield again laying
his irresolute hand upon the Doctor's arm, 'don't attach too much
weight to any suspicions I may have entertained.'

'There!' cried Uriah, shaking his head.  'What a melancholy
confirmation: ain't it?  Him!  Such an old friend!  Bless your
soul, when I was nothing but a clerk in his office, Copperfield,
I've seen him twenty times, if I've seen him once, quite in a
taking about it - quite put out, you know (and very proper in him
as a father; I'm sure I can't blame him), to think that Miss Agnes
was mixing herself up with what oughtn't to be.'

'My dear Strong,' said Mr. Wickfield in a tremulous voice, 'my good
friend, I needn't tell you that it has been my vice to look for
some one master motive in everybody, and to try all actions by one
narrow test.  I may have fallen into such doubts as I have had,
through this mistake.'

'You have had doubts, Wickfield,' said the Doctor, without lifting
up his head.  'You have had doubts.'

'Speak up, fellow-partner,' urged Uriah.

'I had, at one time, certainly,' said Mr. Wickfield.  'I - God
forgive me - I thought YOU had.'

'No, no, no!' returned the Doctor, in a tone of most pathetic
grief.
'I thought, at one time,' said Mr. Wickfield, 'that you wished to
send Maldon abroad to effect a desirable separation.'

'No, no, no!' returned the Doctor.  'To give Annie pleasure, by
making some provision for the companion of her childhood.  Nothing
else.'

'So I found,' said Mr. Wickfield.  'I couldn't doubt it, when you
told me so.  But I thought - I implore you to remember the narrow
construction which has been my besetting sin - that, in a case
where there was so much disparity in point of years -'

'That's the way to put it, you see, Master Copperfield!' observed
Uriah, with fawning and offensive pity.

'- a lady of such youth, and such attractions, however real her
respect for you, might have been influenced in marrying, by worldly
considerations only.  I make no allowance for innumerable feelings
and circumstances that may have all tended to good.  For Heaven's
sake remember that!'

'How kind he puts it!' said Uriah, shaking his head.

'Always observing her from one point of view,' said Mr. Wickfield;
'but by all that is dear to you, my old friend, I entreat you to
consider what it was; I am forced to confess now, having no escape
-'

'No!  There's no way out of it, Mr. Wickfield, sir,' observed
Uriah, 'when it's got to this.'

'- that I did,' said Mr. Wickfield, glancing helplessly and
distractedly at his partner, 'that I did doubt her, and think her
wanting in her duty to you; and that I did sometimes, if I must say
all, feel averse to Agnes being in such a familiar relation towards
her, as to see what I saw, or in my diseased theory fancied that I
saw.  I never mentioned this to anyone.  I never meant it to be
known to anyone.  And though it is terrible to you to hear,' said
Mr. Wickfield, quite subdued, 'if you knew how terrible it is for
me to tell, you would feel compassion for me!'

The Doctor, in the perfect goodness of his nature, put out his
hand.  Mr. Wickfield held it for a little while in his, with his
head bowed down.

'I am sure,' said Uriah, writhing himself into the silence like a
Conger-eel, 'that this is a subject full of unpleasantness to
everybody.  But since we have got so far, I ought to take the
liberty of mentioning that Copperfield has noticed it too.'

I turned upon him, and asked him how he dared refer to me!

'Oh! it's very kind of you, Copperfield,' returned Uriah,
undulating all over, 'and we all know what an amiable character
yours is; but you know that the moment I spoke to you the other
night, you knew what I meant.  You know you knew what I meant,
Copperfield.  Don't deny it!  You deny it with the best intentions;
but don't do it, Copperfield.'

I saw the mild eye of the good old Doctor turned upon me for a
moment, and I felt that the confession of my old misgivings and
remembrances was too plainly written in my face to be overlooked. 
It was of no use raging.  I could not undo that.  Say what I would,
I could not unsay it.

We were silent again, and remained so, until the Doctor rose and
walked twice or thrice across the room.  Presently he returned to
where his chair stood; and, leaning on the back of it, and
occasionally putting his handkerchief to his eyes, with a simple
honesty that did him more honour, to my thinking, than any disguise
he could have effected, said:

'I have been much to blame.  I believe I have been very much to
blame.  I have exposed one whom I hold in my heart, to trials and
aspersions - I call them aspersions, even to have been conceived in
anybody's inmost mind - of which she never, but for me, could have
been the object.'

Uriah Heep gave a kind of snivel.  I think to express sympathy.

'Of which my Annie,' said the Doctor, 'never, but for me, could
have been the object.  Gentlemen, I am old now, as you know; I do
not feel, tonight, that I have much to live for.  But my life - my
Life - upon the truth and honour of the dear lady who has been the
subject of this conversation!'

I do not think that the best embodiment of chivalry, the
realization of the handsomest and most romantic figure ever
imagined by painter, could have said this, with a more impressive
and affecting dignity than the plain old Doctor did.

'But I am not prepared,' he went on, 'to deny - perhaps I may have
been, without knowing it, in some degree prepared to admit - that
I may have unwittingly ensnared that lady into an unhappy marriage. 
I am a man quite unaccustomed to observe; and I cannot but believe
that the observation of several people, of different ages and
positions, all too plainly tending in one direction (and that so
natural), is better than mine.'

I had often admired, as I have elsewhere described, his benignant
manner towards his youthful wife; but the respectful tenderness he
manifested in every reference to her on this occasion, and the
almost reverential manner in which he put away from him the
lightest doubt of her integrity, exalted him, in my eyes, beyond
description.

'I married that lady,' said the Doctor, 'when she was extremely
young.  I took her to myself when her character was scarcely
formed.  So far as it was developed, it had been my happiness to
form it.  I knew her father well.  I knew her well.  I had taught
her what I could, for the love of all her beautiful and virtuous
qualities.  If I did her wrong; as I fear I did, in taking
advantage (but I never meant it) of her gratitude and her
affection; I ask pardon of that lady, in my heart!'

He walked across the room, and came back to the same place; holding
the chair with a grasp that trembled, like his subdued voice, in
its earnestness.

'I regarded myself as a refuge, for her, from the dangers and
vicissitudes of life.  I persuaded myself that, unequal though we
were in years, she would live tranquilly and contentedly with me. 
I did not shut out of my consideration the time when I should leave
her free, and still young and still beautiful, but with her
judgement more matured - no, gentlemen - upon my truth!'

His homely figure seemed to be lightened up by his fidelity and
generosity.  Every word he uttered had a force that no other grace
could have imparted to it.

'My life with this lady has been very happy.  Until tonight, I have
had uninterrupted occasion to bless the day on which I did her
great injustice.'

His voice, more and more faltering in the utterance of these words,
stopped for a few moments; then he went on:

'Once awakened from my dream - I have been a poor dreamer, in one
way or other, all my life - I see how natural it is that she should
have some regretful feeling towards her old companion and her
equal.  That she does regard him with some innocent regret, with
some blameless thoughts of what might have been, but for me, is, I
fear, too true.  Much that I have seen, but not noted, has come
back upon me with new meaning, during this last trying hour.  But,
beyond this, gentlemen, the dear lady's name never must be coupled
with a word, a breath, of doubt.'

For a little while, his eye kindled and his voice was firm; for a
little while he was again silent.  Presently, he proceeded as
before:

'It only remains for me, to bear the knowledge of the unhappiness
I have occasioned, as submissively as I can.  It is she who should
reproach; not I.  To save her from misconstruction, cruel
misconstruction, that even my friends have not been able to avoid,
becomes my duty.  The more retired we live, the better I shall
discharge it.  And when the time comes - may it come soon, if it be
His merciful pleasure! - when my death shall release her from
constraint, I shall close my eyes upon her honoured face, with
unbounded confidence and love; and leave her, with no sorrow then,
to happier and brighter days.'

I could not see him for the tears which his earnestness and
goodness, so adorned by, and so adorning, the perfect simplicity of
his manner, brought into my eyes.  He had moved to the door, when
he added:

'Gentlemen, I have shown you my heart.  I am sure you will respect
it.  What we have said tonight is never to be said more. 
Wickfield, give me an old friend's arm upstairs!'

Mr. Wickfield hastened to him.  Without interchanging a word they
went slowly out of the room together, Uriah looking after them.

'Well, Master Copperfield!' said Uriah, meekly turning to me.  'The
thing hasn't took quite the turn that might have been expected, for
the old Scholar - what an excellent man! - is as blind as a
brickbat; but this family's out of the cart, I think!'

I needed but the sound of his voice to be so madly enraged as I
never was before, and never have been since.

'You villain,' said I, 'what do you mean by entrapping me into your
schemes?  How dare you appeal to me just now, you false rascal, as
if we had been in discussion together?'

As we stood, front to front, I saw so plainly, in the stealthy
exultation of his face, what I already so plainly knew; I mean that
he forced his confidence upon me, expressly to make me miserable,
and had set a deliberate trap for me in this very matter; that I
couldn't bear it.  The whole of his lank cheek was invitingly
before me, and I struck it with my open hand with that force that
my fingers tingled as if I had burnt them.

He caught the hand in his, and we stood in that connexion, looking
at each other.  We stood so, a long time; long enough for me to see
the white marks of my fingers die out of the deep red of his cheek,
and leave it a deeper red.

'Copperfield,' he said at length, in a breathless voice, 'have you
taken leave of your senses?'

'I have taken leave of you,' said I, wresting my hand away.  'You
dog, I'll know no more of you.'

'Won't you?' said he, constrained by the pain of his cheek to put
his hand there.  'Perhaps you won't be able to help it.  Isn't this
ungrateful of you, now?'

'I have shown you often enough,' said I, 'that I despise you.  I
have shown you now, more plainly, that I do.  Why should I dread
your doing your worst to all about you?  What else do you ever do?'

He perfectly understood this allusion to the considerations that
had hitherto restrained me in my communications with him.  I rather
think that neither the blow, nor the allusion, would have escaped
me, but for the assurance I had had from Agnes that night.  It is
no matter.

There was another long pause.  His eyes, as he looked at me, seemed
to take every shade of colour that could make eyes ugly.

'Copperfield,' he said, removing his hand from his cheek, 'you have
always gone against me.  I know you always used to be against me at
Mr. Wickfield's.'

'You may think what you like,' said I, still in a towering rage. 
'If it is not true, so much the worthier you.'

'And yet I always liked you, Copperfield!' he rejoined.

I deigned to make him no reply; and, taking up my hat, was going
out to bed, when he came between me and the door.

'Copperfield,' he said, 'there must be two parties to a quarrel. 
I won't be one.'

'You may go to the devil!' said I.

'Don't say that!' he replied.  'I know you'll be sorry afterwards. 
How can you make yourself so inferior to me, as to show such a bad
spirit?  But I forgive you.'

'You forgive me!' I repeated disdainfully.

'I do, and you can't help yourself,' replied Uriah.  'To think of
your going and attacking me, that have always been a friend to you!
But there can't be a quarrel without two parties, and I won't be
one.  I will be a friend to you, in spite of you.  So now you know
what you've got to expect.'

The necessity of carrying on this dialogue (his part in which was
very slow; mine very quick) in a low tone, that the house might not
be disturbed at an unseasonable hour, did not improve my temper;
though my passion was cooling down.  Merely telling him that I
should expect from him what I always had expected, and had never
yet been disappointed in, I opened the door upon him, as if he had
been a great walnut put there to be cracked, and went out of the
house.  But he slept out of the house too, at his mother's lodging;
and before I had gone many hundred yards, came up with me.

'You know, Copperfield,' he said, in my ear (I did not turn my
head), 'you're in quite a wrong position'; which I felt to be true,
and that made me chafe the more; 'you can't make this a brave
thing, and you can't help being forgiven.  I don't intend to
mention it to mother, nor to any living soul.  I'm determined to
forgive you.  But I do wonder that you should lift your hand
against a person that you knew to be so umble!'

I felt only less mean than he.  He knew me better than I knew
myself.  If he had retorted or openly exasperated me, it would have
been a relief and a justification; but he had put me on a slow
fire, on which I lay tormented half the night.

In the morning, when I came out, the early church-bell was ringing,
and he was walking up and down with his mother.  He addressed me as
if nothing had happened, and I could do no less than reply.  I had
struck him hard enough to give him the toothache, I suppose.  At
all events his face was tied up in a black silk handkerchief,
which, with his hat perched on the top of it, was far from
improving his appearance.  I heard that he went to a dentist's in
London on the Monday morning, and had a tooth out.  I hope it was
a double one.

The Doctor gave out that he was not quite well; and remained alone,
for a considerable part of every day, during the remainder of the
visit.  Agnes and her father had been gone a week, before we
resumed our usual work.  On the day preceding its resumption, the
Doctor gave me with his own hands a folded note not sealed.  It was
addressed to myself; and laid an injunction on me, in a few
affectionate words, never to refer to the subject of that evening. 
I had confided it to my aunt, but to no one else.  It was not a
subject I could discuss with Agnes, and Agnes certainly had not the
least suspicion of what had passed.

Neither, I felt convinced, had Mrs. Strong then.  Several weeks
elapsed before I saw the least change in her.  It came on slowly,
like a cloud when there is no wind.  At first, she seemed to wonder
at the gentle compassion with which the Doctor spoke to her, and at
his wish that she should have her mother with her, to relieve the
dull monotony of her life.  Often, when we were at work, and she
was sitting by, I would see her pausing and looking at him with
that memorable face.  Afterwards, I sometimes observed her rise,
with her eyes full of tears, and go out of the room.  Gradually, an
unhappy shadow fell upon her beauty, and deepened every day.  Mrs.
Markleham was a regular inmate of the cottage then; but she talked
and talked, and saw nothing.

As this change stole on Annie, once like sunshine in the Doctor's
house, the Doctor became older in appearance, and more grave; but
the sweetness of his temper, the placid kindness of his manner, and
his benevolent solicitude for her, if they were capable of any
increase, were increased.  I saw him once, early on the morning of
her birthday, when she came to sit in the window while we were at
work (which she had always done, but now began to do with a timid
and uncertain air that I thought very touching), take her forehead
between his hands, kiss it, and go hurriedly away, too much moved
to remain.  I saw her stand where he had left her, like a statue;
and then bend down her head, and clasp her hands, and weep, I
cannot say how sorrowfully.

Sometimes, after that, I fancied that she tried to speak even to
me, in intervals when we were left alone.  But she never uttered a
word.  The Doctor always had some new project for her participating
in amusements away from home, with her mother; and Mrs. Markleham,
who was very fond of amusements, and very easily dissatisfied with
anything else, entered into them with great good-will, and was loud
in her commendations.  But Annie, in a spiritless unhappy way, only
went whither she was led, and seemed to have no care for anything.

I did not know what to think.  Neither did my aunt; who must have
walked, at various times, a hundred miles in her uncertainty.  What
was strangest of all was, that the only real relief which seemed to
make its way into the secret region of this domestic unhappiness,
made its way there in the person of Mr. Dick.

What his thoughts were on the subject, or what his observation was,
I am as unable to explain, as I dare say he would have been to
assist me in the task.  But, as I have recorded in the narrative of
my school days, his veneration for the Doctor was unbounded; and
there is a subtlety of perception in real attachment, even when it
is borne towards man by one of the lower animals, which leaves the
highest intellect behind.  To this mind of the heart, if I may call
it so, in Mr. Dick, some bright ray of the truth shot straight.

He had proudly resumed his privilege, in many of his spare hours,
of walking up and down the garden with the Doctor; as he had been
accustomed to pace up and down The Doctor's Walk at Canterbury. 
But matters were no sooner in this state, than he devoted all his
spare time (and got up earlier to make it more) to these
perambulations.  If he had never been so happy as when the Doctor
read that marvellous performance, the Dictionary, to him; he was
now quite miserable unless the Doctor pulled it out of his pocket,
and began.  When the Doctor and I were engaged, he now fell into
the custom of walking up and down with Mrs. Strong, and helping her
to trim her favourite flowers, or weed the beds.  I dare say he
rarely spoke a dozen words in an hour: but his quiet interest, and
his wistful face, found immediate response in both their breasts;
each knew that the other liked him, and that he loved both; and he
became what no one else could be - a link between them.

When I think of him, with his impenetrably wise face, walking up
and down with the Doctor, delighted to be battered by the hard
words in the Dictionary; when I think of him carrying huge
watering-pots after Annie; kneeling down, in very paws of gloves,
at patient microscopic work among the little leaves; expressing as
no philosopher could have expressed, in everything he did, a
delicate desire to be her friend; showering sympathy, trustfulness,
and affection, out of every hole in the watering-pot; when I think
of him never wandering in that better mind of his to which
unhappiness addressed itself, never bringing the unfortunate King
Charles into the garden, never wavering in his grateful service,
never diverted from his knowledge that there was something wrong,
or from his wish to set it right- I really feel almost ashamed of
having known that he was not quite in his wits, taking account of
the utmost I have done with mine.

'Nobody but myself, Trot, knows what that man is!' my aunt would
proudly remark, when we conversed about it.  'Dick will distinguish
himself yet!'

I must refer to one other topic before I close this chapter.  While
the visit at the Doctor's was still in progress, I observed that
the postman brought two or three letters every morning for Uriah
Heep, who remained at Highgate until the rest went back, it being
a leisure time; and that these were always directed in a
business-like manner by Mr. Micawber, who now assumed a round legal
hand.  I was glad to infer, from these slight premises, that Mr.
Micawber was doing well; and consequently was much surprised to
receive, about this time, the following letter from his amiable
wife.

                         'CANTERBURY, Monday Evening.

'You will doubtless be surprised, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to
receive this communication.  Still more so, by its contents.  Still
more so, by the stipulation of implicit confidence which I beg to
impose.  But my feelings as a wife and mother require relief; and
as I do not wish to consult my family (already obnoxious to the
feelings of Mr. Micawber), I know no one of whom I can better ask
advice than my friend and former lodger.

'You may be aware, my dear Mr. Copperfield, that between myself and
Mr. Micawber (whom I will never desert), there has always been
preserved a spirit of mutual confidence.  Mr. Micawber may have
occasionally given a bill without consulting me, or he may have
misled me as to the period when that obligation would become due. 
This has actually happened.  But, in general, Mr. Micawber has had
no secrets from the bosom of affection - I allude to his wife - and
has invariably, on our retirement to rest, recalled the events of
the day.

'You will picture to yourself, my dear Mr. Copperfield, what the
poignancy of my feelings must be, when I inform you that Mr.
Micawber is entirely changed.  He is reserved.  He is secret.  His
life is a mystery to the partner of his joys and sorrows - I again
allude to his wife - and if I should assure you that beyond knowing
that it is passed from morning to night at the office, I now know
less of it than I do of the man in the south, connected with whose
mouth the thoughtless children repeat an idle tale respecting cold
plum porridge, I should adopt a popular fallacy to express an
actual fact.

'But this is not all.  Mr. Micawber is morose.  He is severe.  He
is estranged from our eldest son and daughter, he has no pride in
his twins, he looks with an eye of coldness even on the unoffending
stranger who last became a member of our circle.  The pecuniary
means of meeting our expenses, kept down to the utmost farthing,
are obtained from him with great difficulty, and even under fearful
threats that he will Settle himself (the exact expression); and he
inexorably refuses to give any explanation whatever of this
distracting policy.

'This is hard to bear.  This is heart-breaking.  If you will advise
me, knowing my feeble powers such as they are, how you think it
will be best to exert them in a dilemma so unwonted, you will add
another friendly obligation to the many you have already rendered
me.  With loves from the children, and a smile from the
happily-unconscious stranger, I remain, dear Mr. Copperfield,

                              Your afflicted,

                                   'EMMA MICAWBER.'

I did not feel justified in giving a wife of Mrs. Micawber's
experience any other recommendation, than that she should try to
reclaim Mr. Micawber by patience and kindness (as I knew she would
in any case); but the letter set me thinking about him very much.

CHAPTER 43
ANOTHER RETROSPECT

Once again, let me pause upon a memorable period of my life.  Let
me stand aside, to see the phantoms of those days go by me,
accompanying the shadow of myself, in dim procession.

Weeks, months, seasons, pass along.  They seem little more than a
summer day and a winter evening.  Now, the Common where I walk with
Dora is all in bloom, a field of bright gold; and now the unseen
heather lies in mounds and bunches underneath a covering of snow. 
In a breath, the river that flows through our Sunday walks is
sparkling in the summer sun, is ruffled by the winter wind, or
thickened with drifting heaps of ice.  Faster than ever river ran
towards the sea, it flashes, darkens, and rolls away.

Not a thread changes, in the house of the two little bird-like
ladies.  The clock ticks over the fireplace, the weather-glass
hangs in the hall.  Neither clock nor weather-glass is ever right;
but we believe in both, devoutly.

I have come legally to man's estate.  I have attained the dignity
of twenty-one.  But this is a sort of dignity that may be thrust
upon one.  Let me think what I have achieved.

I have tamed that savage stenographic mystery.  I make a
respectable income by it.  I am in high repute for my
accomplishment in all pertaining to the art, and am joined with
eleven others in reporting the debates in Parliament for a Morning
Newspaper.  Night after night, I record predictions that never come
to pass, professions that are never fulfilled, explanations that
are only meant to mystify.  I wallow in words.  Britannia, that
unfortunate female, is always before me, like a trussed fowl:
skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and
foot with red tape.  I am sufficiently behind the scenes to know
the worth of political life.  I am quite an Infidel about it, and
shall never be converted.

My dear old Traddles has tried his hand at the same pursuit, but it
is not in Traddles's way.  He is perfectly good-humoured respecting
his failure, and reminds me that he always did consider himself
slow.  He has occasional employment on the same newspaper, in
getting up the facts of dry subjects, to be written about and
embellished by more fertile minds.  He is called to the bar; and
with admirable industry and self-denial has scraped another hundred
pounds together, to fee a Conveyancer whose chambers he attends. 
A great deal of very hot port wine was consumed at his call; and,
considering the figure, I should think the Inner Temple must have
made a profit by it.

I have come out in another way.  I have taken with fear and
trembling to authorship.  I wrote a little something, in secret,
and sent it to a magazine, and it was published in the magazine. 
Since then, I have taken heart to write a good many trifling
pieces.  Now, I am regularly paid for them.  Altogether, I am well
off, when I tell my income on the fingers of my left hand, I pass
the third finger and take in the fourth to the middle joint.

We have removed, from Buckingham Street, to a pleasant little
cottage very near the one I looked at, when my enthusiasm first
came on.  My aunt, however (who has sold the house at Dover, to
good advantage), is not going to remain here, but intends removing
herself to a still more tiny cottage close at hand.  What does this
portend?  My marriage?  Yes!

Yes!  I am going to be married to Dora!  Miss Lavinia and Miss
Clarissa have given their consent; and if ever canary birds were in
a flutter, they are.  Miss Lavinia, self-charged with the
superintendence of my darling's wardrobe, is constantly cutting out
brown-paper cuirasses, and differing in opinion from a highly
respectable young man, with a long bundle, and a yard measure under
his arm.  A dressmaker, always stabbed in the breast with a needle
and thread, boards and lodges in the house; and seems to me,
eating, drinking, or sleeping, never to take her thimble off.  They
make a lay-figure of my dear.  They are always sending for her to
come and try something on.  We can't be happy together for five
minutes in the evening, but some intrusive female knocks at the
door, and says, 'Oh, if you please, Miss Dora, would you step
upstairs!'

Miss Clarissa and my aunt roam all over London, to find out
articles of furniture for Dora and me to look at.  It would be
better for them to buy the goods at once, without this ceremony of
inspection; for, when we go to see a kitchen fender and
meat-screen, Dora sees a Chinese house for Jip, with little bells
on the top, and prefers that.  And it takes a long time to accustom
Jip to his new residence, after we have bought it; whenever he goes
in or out, he makes all the little bells ring, and is horribly
frightened.

Peggotty comes up to make herself useful, and falls to work
immediately.  Her department appears to be, to clean everything
over and over again.  She rubs everything that can be rubbed, until
it shines, like her own honest forehead, with perpetual friction. 
And now it is, that I begin to see her solitary brother passing
through the dark streets at night, and looking, as he goes, among
the wandering faces.  I never speak to him at such an hour.  I know
too well, as his grave figure passes onward, what he seeks, and
what he dreads.

Why does Traddles look so important when he calls upon me this
afternoon in the Commons - where I still occasionally attend, for
form's sake, when I have time?  The realization of my boyish
day-dreams is at hand.  I am going to take out the licence.

It is a little document to do so much; and Traddles contemplates
it, as it lies upon my desk, half in admiration, half in awe. 
There are the names, in the sweet old visionary connexion, David
Copperfield and Dora Spenlow; and there, in the corner, is that
Parental Institution, the Stamp Office, which is so benignantly
interested in the various transactions of human life, looking down
upon our Union; and there is the Archbishop of Canterbury invoking
a blessing on us in print, and doing it as cheap as could possibly
be expected.

Nevertheless, I am in a dream, a flustered, happy, hurried dream. 
I can't believe that it is going to be; and yet I can't believe but
that everyone I pass in the street, must have some kind of
perception, that I am to be married the day after tomorrow.  The
Surrogate knows me, when I go down to be sworn; and disposes of me
easily, as if there were a Masonic understanding between us. 
Traddles is not at all wanted, but is in attendance as my general
backer.

'I hope the next time you come here, my dear fellow,' I say to
Traddles, 'it will be on the same errand for yourself.  And I hope
it will be soon.'

'Thank you for your good wishes, my dear Copperfield,' he replies. 
'I hope so too.  It's a satisfaction to know that she'll wait for
me any length of time, and that she really is the dearest girl -'

'When are you to meet her at the coach?' I ask.

'At seven,' says Traddles, looking at his plain old silver watch -
the very watch he once took a wheel out of, at school, to make a
water-mill.  'That is about Miss Wickfield's time, is it not?'

'A little earlier.  Her time is half past eight.'
'I assure you, my dear boy,' says Traddles, 'I am almost as pleased
as if I were going to be married myself, to think that this event
is coming to such a happy termination.  And really the great
friendship and consideration of personally associating Sophy with
the joyful occasion, and inviting her to be a bridesmaid in
conjunction with Miss Wickfield, demands my warmest thanks.  I am
extremely sensible of it.'

I hear him, and shake hands with him; and we talk, and walk, and
dine, and so on; but I don't believe it.  Nothing is real.

Sophy arrives at the house of Dora's aunts, in due course.  She has
the most agreeable of faces, - not absolutely beautiful, but
extraordinarily pleasant, - and is one of the most genial,
unaffected, frank, engaging creatures I have ever seen.  Traddles
presents her to us with great pride; and rubs his hands for ten
minutes by the clock, with every individual hair upon his head
standing on tiptoe, when I congratulate him in a corner on his
choice.

I have brought Agnes from the Canterbury coach, and her cheerful
and beautiful face is among us for the second time.  Agnes has a
great liking for Traddles, and it is capital to see them meet, and
to observe the glory of Traddles as he commends the dearest girl in
the world to her acquaintance.

Still I don't believe it.  We have a delightful evening, and are
supremely happy; but I don't believe it yet.  I can't collect
myself.  I can't check off my happiness as it takes place.  I feel
in a misty and unsettled kind of state; as if I had got up very
early in the morning a week or two ago, and had never been to bed
since.  I can't make out when yesterday was.  I seem to have been
carrying the licence about, in my pocket, many months.

Next day, too, when we all go in a flock to see the house - our
house - Dora's and mine - I am quite unable to regard myself as its
master.  I seem to be there, by permission of somebody else.  I
half expect the real master to come home presently, and say he is
glad to see me.  Such a beautiful little house as it is, with
everything so bright and new; with the flowers on the carpets
looking as if freshly gathered, and the green leaves on the paper
as if they had just come out; with the spotless muslin curtains,
and the blushing rose-coloured furniture, and Dora's garden hat
with the blue ribbon - do I remember, now, how I loved her in such
another hat when I first knew her! - already hanging on its little
peg; the guitar-case quite at home on its heels in a corner; and
everybody tumbling over Jip's pagoda, which is much too big for the
establishment.  Another happy evening, quite as unreal as all the
rest of it, and I steal into the usual room before going away. 
Dora is not there.  I suppose they have not done trying on yet. 
Miss Lavinia peeps in, and tells me mysteriously that she will not
be long.  She is rather long, notwithstanding; but by and by I hear
a rustling at the door, and someone taps.

I say, 'Come in!' but someone taps again.

I go to the door, wondering who it is; there, I meet a pair of
bright eyes, and a blushing face; they are Dora's eyes and face,
and Miss Lavinia has dressed her in tomorrow's dress, bonnet and
all, for me to see.  I take my little wife to my heart; and Miss
Lavinia gives a little scream because I tumble the bonnet, and Dora
laughs and cries at once, because I am so pleased; and I believe it
less than ever.

'Do you think it pretty, Doady?' says Dora.

Pretty!  I should rather think I did.

'And are you sure you like me very much?' says Dora.

The topic is fraught with such danger to the bonnet, that Miss
Lavinia gives another little scream, and begs me to understand that
Dora is only to be looked at, and on no account to be touched.  So
Dora stands in a delightful state of confusion for a minute or two,
to be admired; and then takes off her bonnet - looking so natural
without it! - and runs away with it in her hand; and comes dancing
down again in her own familiar dress, and asks Jip if I have got a
beautiful little wife, and whether he'll forgive her for being
married, and kneels down to make him stand upon the cookery-book,
for the last time in her single life.

I go home, more incredulous than ever, to a lodging that I have
hard by; and get up very early in the morning, to ride to the
Highgate road and fetch my aunt.

I have never seen my aunt in such state.  She is dressed in
lavender-coloured silk, and has a white bonnet on, and is amazing. 
Janet has dressed her, and is there to look at me.  Peggotty is
ready to go to church, intending to behold the ceremony from the
gallery.  Mr. Dick, who is to give my darling to me at the altar,
has had his hair curled.  Traddles, whom I have taken up by
appointment at the turnpike, presents a dazzling combination of
cream colour and light blue; and both he and Mr. Dick have a
general effect about them of being all gloves.

No doubt I see this, because I know it is so; but I am astray, and
seem to see nothing.  Nor do I believe anything whatever.  Still,
as we drive along in an open carriage, this fairy marriage is real
enough to fill me with a sort of wondering pity for the unfortunate
people who have no part in it, but are sweeping out the shops, and
going to their daily occupations.

My aunt sits with my hand in hers all the way.  When we stop a
little way short of the church, to put down Peggotty, whom we have
brought on the box, she gives it a squeeze, and me a kiss.

'God bless you, Trot!  My own boy never could be dearer.  I think
of poor dear Baby this morning.'
'So do I.  And of all I owe to you, dear aunt.'

'Tut, child!' says my aunt; and gives her hand in overflowing
cordiality to Traddles, who then gives his to Mr. Dick, who then
gives his to me, who then gives mine to Traddles, and then we come
to the church door.

The church is calm enough, I am sure; but it might be a steam-power
loom in full action, for any sedative effect it has on me.  I am
too far gone for that.

The rest is all a more or less incoherent dream.

A dream of their coming in with Dora; of the pew-opener arranging
us, like a drill-sergeant, before the altar rails; of my wondering,
even then, why pew-openers must always be the most disagreeable
females procurable, and whether there is any religious dread of a
disastrous infection of good-humour which renders it indispensable
to set those vessels of vinegar upon the road to Heaven.

Of the clergyman and clerk appearing; of a few boatmen and some
other people strolling in; of an ancient mariner behind me,
strongly flavouring the church with rum; of the service beginning
in a deep voice, and our all being very attentive.

Of Miss Lavinia, who acts as a semi-auxiliary bridesmaid, being the
first to cry, and of her doing homage (as I take it) to the memory
of Pidger, in sobs; of Miss Clarissa applying a smelling-bottle; of
Agnes taking care of Dora; of my aunt endeavouring to represent
herself as a model of sternness, with tears rolling down her face;
of little Dora trembling very much, and making her responses in
faint whispers.

Of our kneeling down together, side by side; of Dora's trembling
less and less, but always clasping Agnes by the hand; of the
service being got through, quietly and gravely; of our all looking
at each other in an April state of smiles and tears, when it is
over; of my young wife being hysterical in the vestry, and crying
for her poor papa, her dear papa.

Of her soon cheering up again, and our signing the register all
round.  Of my going into the gallery for Peggotty to bring her to
sign it; of Peggotty's hugging me in a corner, and telling me she
saw my own dear mother married; of its being over, and our going
away.

Of my walking so proudly and lovingly down the aisle with my sweet
wife upon my arm, through a mist of half-seen people, pulpits,
monuments, pews, fonts, organs, and church windows, in which there
flutter faint airs of association with my childish church at home,
so long ago.

Of their whispering, as we pass, what a youthful couple we are, and
what a pretty little wife she is.  Of our all being so merry and
talkative in the carriage going back.  Of Sophy telling us that
when she saw Traddles (whom I had entrusted with the licence) asked
for it, she almost fainted, having been convinced that he would
contrive to lose it, or to have his pocket picked.  Of Agnes
laughing gaily; and of Dora being so fond of Agnes that she will
not be separated from her, but still keeps her hand.

Of there being a breakfast, with abundance of things, pretty and
substantial, to eat and drink, whereof I partake, as I should do in
any other dream, without the least perception of their flavour;
eating and drinking, as I may say, nothing but love and marriage,
and no more believing in the viands than in anything else.

Of my making a speech in the same dreamy fashion, without having an
idea of what I want to say, beyond such as may be comprehended in
the full conviction that I haven't said it.  Of our being very
sociably and simply happy (always in a dream though); and of Jip's
having wedding cake, and its not agreeing with him afterwards.

Of the pair of hired post-horses being ready, and of Dora's going
away to change her dress.  Of my aunt and Miss Clarissa remaining
with us; and our walking in the garden; and my aunt, who has made
quite a speech at breakfast touching Dora's aunts, being mightily
amused with herself, but a little proud of it too.

Of Dora's being ready, and of Miss Lavinia's hovering about her,
loth to lose the pretty toy that has given her so much pleasant
occupation.  Of Dora's making a long series of surprised
discoveries that she has forgotten all sorts of little things; and
of everybody's running everywhere to fetch them.

Of their all closing about Dora, when at last she begins to say
good-bye, looking, with their bright colours and ribbons, like a
bed of flowers.  Of my darling being almost smothered among the
flowers, and coming out, laughing and crying both together, to my
jealous arms.

Of my wanting to carry Jip (who is to go along with us), and Dora's
saying no, that she must carry him, or else he'll think she don't
like him any more, now she is married, and will break his heart. 
Of our going, arm in arm, and Dora stopping and looking back, and
saying, 'If I have ever been cross or ungrateful to anybody, don't
remember it!' and bursting into tears.

Of her waving her little hand, and our going away once more.  Of
her once more stopping, and looking back, and hurrying to Agnes,
and giving Agnes, above all the others, her last kisses and
farewells.

We drive away together, and I awake from the dream.  I believe it
at last.  It is my dear, dear, little wife beside me, whom I love
so well!

'Are you happy now, you foolish boy?' says Dora, 'and sure you
don't repent?'

I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me. 
They are gone, and I resume the journey of my story.

CHAPTER 44
OUR HOUSEKEEPING

It was a strange condition of things, the honeymoon being over, and
the bridesmaids gone home, when I found myself sitting down in my
own small house with Dora; quite thrown out of employment, as I may
say, in respect of the delicious old occupation of making love.

It seemed such an extraordinary thing to have Dora always there. 
It was so unaccountable not to be obliged to go out to see her, not
to have any occasion to be tormenting myself about her, not to have
to write to her, not to be scheming and devising opportunities of
being alone with her.  Sometimes of an evening, when I looked up
from my writing, and saw her seated opposite, I would lean back in
my chair, and think how queer it was that there we were, alone
together as a matter of course - nobody's business any more - all
the romance of our engagement put away upon a shelf, to rust - no
one to please but one another - one another to please, for life.

When there was a debate, and I was kept out very late, it seemed so
strange to me, as I was walking home, to think that Dora was at
home!  It was such a wonderful thing, at first, to have her coming
softly down to talk to me as I ate my supper.  It was such a
stupendous thing to know for certain that she put her hair in
papers.  It was altogether such an astonishing event to see her do
it!

I doubt whether two young birds could have known less about keeping
house, than I and my pretty Dora did.  We had a servant, of course. 
She kept house for us.  I have still a latent belief that she must
have been Mrs. Crupp's daughter in disguise, we had such an awful
time of it with Mary Anne.

Her name was Paragon.  Her nature was represented to us, when we
engaged her, as being feebly expressed in her name.  She had a
written character, as large as a proclamation; and, according to
this document, could do everything of a domestic nature that ever
I heard of, and a great many things that I never did hear of.  She
was a woman in the prime of life; of a severe countenance; and
subject (particularly in the arms) to a sort of perpetual measles
or fiery rash.  She had a cousin in the Life-Guards, with such long
legs that he looked like the afternoon shadow of somebody else. 
His shell-jacket was as much too little for him as he was too big
for the premises.  He made the cottage smaller than it need have
been, by being so very much out of proportion to it.  Besides
which, the walls were not thick, and, whenever he passed the
evening at our house, we always knew of it by hearing one continual
growl in the kitchen.

Our treasure was warranted sober and honest.  I am therefore
willing to believe that she was in a fit when we found her under
the boiler; and that the deficient tea-spoons were attributable to
the dustman.

But she preyed upon our minds dreadfully.  We felt our
inexperience, and were unable to help ourselves.  We should have
been at her mercy, if she had had any; but she was a remorseless
woman, and had none.  She was the cause of our first little
quarrel.

'My dearest life,' I said one day to Dora, 'do you think Mary Anne
has any idea of time?'

'Why, Doady?' inquired Dora, looking up, innocently, from her
drawing.

'My love, because it's five, and we were to have dined at four.'

Dora glanced wistfully at the clock, and hinted that she thought it
was too fast.

'On the contrary, my love,' said I, referring to my watch, 'it's a
few minutes too slow.'

My little wife came and sat upon my knee, to coax me to be quiet,
and drew a line with her pencil down the middle of my nose; but I
couldn't dine off that, though it was very agreeable.

'Don't you think, my dear,' said I, 'it would be better for you to
remonstrate with Mary Anne?'

'Oh no, please!  I couldn't, Doady!' said Dora.

'Why not, my love?' I gently asked.

'Oh, because I am such a little goose,' said Dora, 'and she knows
I am!'

I thought this sentiment so incompatible with the establishment of
any system of check on Mary Anne, that I frowned a little.

'Oh, what ugly wrinkles in my bad boy's forehead!' said Dora, and
still being on my knee, she traced them with her pencil; putting it
to her rosy lips to make it mark blacker, and working at my
forehead with a quaint little mockery of being industrious, that
quite delighted me in spite of myself.

'There's a good child,' said Dora, 'it makes its face so much
prettier to laugh.'
'But, my love,' said I.

'No, no! please!' cried Dora, with a kiss, 'don't be a naughty Blue
Beard!  Don't be serious!'

'my precious wife,' said I, 'we must be serious sometimes.  Come!
Sit down on this chair, close beside me!  Give me the pencil! 
There!  Now let us talk sensibly.  You know, dear'; what a little
hand it was to hold, and what a tiny wedding-ring it was to see!
'You know, my love, it is not exactly comfortable to have to go out
without one's dinner.  Now, is it?'

'N-n-no!' replied Dora, faintly.

'My love, how you tremble!'

'Because I KNOW you're going to scold me,' exclaimed Dora, in a
piteous voice.

'My sweet, I am only going to reason.'

'Oh, but reasoning is worse than scolding!' exclaimed Dora, in
despair.  'I didn't marry to be reasoned with.  If you meant to
reason with such a poor little thing as I am, you ought to have
told me so, you cruel boy!'

I tried to pacify Dora, but she turned away her face, and shook her
curls from side to side, and said, 'You cruel, cruel boy!' so many
times, that I really did not exactly know what to do: so I took a
few turns up and down the room in my uncertainty, and came back
again.

'Dora, my darling!'

'No, I am not your darling.  Because you must be sorry that you
married me, or else you wouldn't reason with me!' returned Dora.

I felt so injured by the inconsequential nature of this charge,
that it gave me courage to be grave.

'Now, my own Dora,' said I, 'you are very childish, and are talking
nonsense.  You must remember, I am sure, that I was obliged to go
out yesterday when dinner was half over; and that, the day before,
I was made quite unwell by being obliged to eat underdone veal in
a hurry; today, I don't dine at all - and I am afraid to say how
long we waited for breakfast - and then the water didn't boil.  I
don't mean to reproach you, my dear, but this is not comfortable.'

'Oh, you cruel, cruel boy, to say I am a disagreeable wife!' cried
Dora.

'Now, my dear Dora, you must know that I never said that!'

'You said, I wasn't comfortable!' cried Dora.
'I said the housekeeping was not comfortable!'

'It's exactly the same thing!' cried Dora.  And she evidently
thought so, for she wept most grievously.

I took another turn across the room, full of love for my pretty
wife, and distracted by self-accusatory inclinations to knock my
head against the door.  I sat down again, and said:

'I am not blaming you, Dora.  We have both a great deal to learn. 
I am only trying to show you, my dear, that you must - you really
must' (I was resolved not to give this up) - 'accustom yourself to
look after Mary Anne.  Likewise to act a little for yourself, and
me.'

'I wonder, I do, at your making such ungrateful speeches,' sobbed
Dora.  'When you know that the other day, when you said you would
like a little bit of fish, I went out myself, miles and miles, and
ordered it, to surprise you.'

'And it was very kind of you, my own darling,' said I.  'I felt it
so much that I wouldn't on any account have even mentioned that you
bought a Salmon - which was too much for two.  Or that it cost one
pound six - which was more than we can afford.'

'You enjoyed it very much,' sobbed Dora.  'And you said I was a
Mouse.'

'And I'll say so again, my love,' I returned, 'a thousand times!'

But I had wounded Dora's soft little heart, and she was not to be
comforted.  She was so pathetic in her sobbing and bewailing, that
I felt as if I had said I don't know what to hurt her.  I was
obliged to hurry away; I was kept out late; and I felt all night
such pangs of remorse as made me miserable.  I had the conscience
of an assassin, and was haunted by a vague sense of enormous
wickedness.

It was two or three hours past midnight when I got home.  I found
my aunt, in our house, sitting up for me.

'Is anything the matter, aunt?' said I, alarmed.

'Nothing, Trot,' she replied.  'Sit down, sit down.  Little Blossom
has been rather out of spirits, and I have been keeping her
company.  That's all.'

I leaned my head upon my hand; and felt more sorry and downcast, as
I sat looking at the fire, than I could have supposed possible so
soon after the fulfilment of my brightest hopes.  As I sat
thinking, I happened to meet my aunt's eyes, which were resting on
my face.  There was an anxious expression in them, but it cleared
directly.

'I assure you, aunt,' said I, 'I have been quite unhappy myself all
night, to think of Dora's being so.  But I had no other intention
than to speak to her tenderly and lovingly about our home-affairs.'

MY aunt nodded encouragement.

'You must have patience, Trot,' said she.

'Of course.  Heaven knows I don't mean to be unreasonable, aunt!'

'No, no,' said my aunt.  'But Little Blossom is a very tender
little blossom, and the wind must be gentle with her.'

I thanked my good aunt, in my heart, for her tenderness towards my
wife; and I was sure that she knew I did.

'Don't you think, aunt,' said I, after some further contemplation
of the fire, 'that you could advise and counsel Dora a little, for
our mutual advantage, now and then?'

'Trot,' returned my aunt, with some emotion, 'no!  Don't ask me
such a thing.'

Her tone was so very earnest that I raised my eyes in surprise.

'I look back on my life, child,' said my aunt, 'and I think of some
who are in their graves, with whom I might have been on kinder
terms.  If I judged harshly of other people's mistakes in marriage,
it may have been because I had bitter reason to judge harshly of my
own.  Let that pass.  I have been a grumpy, frumpy, wayward sort of
a woman, a good many years.  I am still, and I always shall be. 
But you and I have done one another some good, Trot, - at all
events, you have done me good, my dear; and division must not come
between us, at this time of day.'

'Division between us!' cried I.

'Child, child!' said my aunt, smoothing her dress, 'how soon it
might come between us, or how unhappy I might make our Little
Blossom, if I meddled in anything, a prophet couldn't say.  I want
our pet to like me, and be as gay as a butterfly.  Remember your
own home, in that second marriage; and never do both me and her the
injury you have hinted at!'

I comprehended, at once, that my aunt was right; and I comprehended
the full extent of her generous feeling towards my dear wife.

'These are early days, Trot,' she pursued, 'and Rome was not built
in a day, nor in a year.  You have chosen freely for yourself'; a
cloud passed over her face for a moment, I thought; 'and you have
chosen a very pretty and a very affectionate creature.  It will be
your duty, and it will be your pleasure too - of course I know
that; I am not delivering a lecture - to estimate her (as you chose
her) by the qualities she has, and not by the qualities she may not
have.  The latter you must develop in her, if you can.  And if you
cannot, child,' here my aunt rubbed her nose, 'you must just
accustom yourself to do without 'em.  But remember, my dear, your
future is between you two.  No one can assist you; you are to work
it out for yourselves.  This is marriage, Trot; and Heaven bless
you both, in it, for a pair of babes in the wood as you are!'

My aunt said this in a sprightly way, and gave me a kiss to ratify
the blessing.

'Now,' said she, 'light my little lantern, and see me into my
bandbox by the garden path'; for there was a communication between
our cottages in that direction.  'Give Betsey Trotwood's love to
Blossom, when you come back; and whatever you do, Trot, never dream
of setting Betsey up as a scarecrow, for if I ever saw her in the
glass, she's quite grim enough and gaunt enough in her private
capacity!'

With this my aunt tied her head up in a handkerchief, with which
she was accustomed to make a bundle of it on such occasions; and I
escorted her home.  As she stood in her garden, holding up her
little lantern to light me back, I thought her observation of me
had an anxious air again; but I was too much occupied in pondering
on what she had said, and too much impressed - for the first time,
in reality - by the conviction that Dora and I had indeed to work
out our future for ourselves, and that no one could assist us, to
take much notice of it.

Dora came stealing down in her little slippers, to meet me, now
that I was alone; and cried upon my shoulder, and said I had been
hard-hearted and she had been naughty; and I said much the same
thing in effect, I believe; and we made it up, and agreed that our
first little difference was to be our last, and that we were never
to have another if we lived a hundred years.

The next domestic trial we went through, was the Ordeal of
Servants.  Mary Anne's cousin deserted into our coal-hole, and was
brought out, to our great amazement, by a piquet of his companions
in arms, who took him away handcuffed in a procession that covered
our front-garden with ignominy.  This nerved me to get rid of Mary
Anne, who went so mildly, on receipt of wages, that I was
surprised, until I found out about the tea-spoons, and also about
the little sums she had borrowed in my name of the tradespeople
without authority.  After an interval of Mrs. Kidgerbury - the
oldest inhabitant of Kentish Town, I believe, who went out charing,
but was too feeble to execute her conceptions of that art - we
found another treasure, who was one of the most amiable of women,
but who generally made a point of falling either up or down the
kitchen stairs with the tray, and almost plunged into the parlour,
as into a bath, with the tea-things.  The ravages committed by this
unfortunate, rendering her dismissal necessary, she was succeeded
(with intervals of Mrs. Kidgerbury) by a long line of Incapables;
terminating in a young person of genteel appearance, who went to
Greenwich Fair in Dora's bonnet.  After whom I remember nothing but
an average equality of failure.

Everybody we had anything to do with seemed to cheat us.  Our
appearance in a shop was a signal for the damaged goods to be
brought out immediately.  If we bought a lobster, it was full of
water.  All our meat turned out to be tough, and there was hardly
any crust to our loaves.  In search of the principle on which
joints ought to be roasted, to be roasted enough, and not too much,
I myself referred to the Cookery Book, and found it there
established as the allowance of a quarter of an hour to every
pound, and say a quarter over.  But the principle always failed us
by some curious fatality, and we never could hit any medium between
redness and cinders.

I had reason to believe that in accomplishing these failures we
incurred a far greater expense than if we had achieved a series of
triumphs.  It appeared to me, on looking over the tradesmen's
books, as if we might have kept the basement storey paved with
butter, such was the extensive scale of our consumption of that
article.  I don't know whether the Excise returns of the period may
have exhibited any increase in the demand for pepper; but if our
performances did not affect the market, I should say several
families must have left off using it.  And the most wonderful fact
of all was, that we never had anything in the house.

As to the washerwoman pawning the clothes, and coming in a state of
penitent intoxication to apologize, I suppose that might have
happened several times to anybody.  Also the chimney on fire, the
parish engine, and perjury on the part of the Beadle.  But I
apprehend that we were personally fortunate in engaging a servant
with a taste for cordials, who swelled our running account for
porter at the public-house by such inexplicable items as 'quartern
rum shrub (Mrs. C.)'; 'Half-quartern gin and cloves (Mrs. C.)';
'Glass rum and peppermint (Mrs. C.)' - the parentheses always
referring to Dora, who was supposed, it appeared on explanation, to
have imbibed the whole of these refreshments.

One of our first feats in the housekeeping way was a little dinner
to Traddles.  I met him in town, and asked him to walk out with me
that afternoon.  He readily consenting, I wrote to Dora, saying I
would bring him home.  It was pleasant weather, and on the road we
made my domestic happiness the theme of conversation.  Traddles was
very full of it; and said, that, picturing himself with such a
home, and Sophy waiting and preparing for him, he could think of
nothing wanting to complete his bliss.

I could not have wished for a prettier little wife at the opposite
end of the table, but I certainly could have wished, when we sat
down, for a little more room.  I did not know how it was, but
though there were only two of us, we were at once always cramped
for room, and yet had always room enough to lose everything in.  I
suspect it may have been because nothing had a place of its own,
except Jip's pagoda, which invariably blocked up the main
thoroughfare.  On the present occasion, Traddles was so hemmed in
by the pagoda and the guitar-case, and Dora's flower-painting, and
my writing-table, that I had serious doubts of the possibility of
his using his knife and fork; but he protested, with his own
good-humour, 'Oceans of room, Copperfield!  I assure you, Oceans!'

There was another thing I could have wished, namely, that Jip had
never been encouraged to walk about the tablecloth during dinner. 
I began to think there was something disorderly in his being there
at all, even if he had not been in the habit of putting his foot in
the salt or the melted butter.  On this occasion he seemed to think
he was introduced expressly to keep Traddles at bay; and he barked
at my old friend, and made short runs at his plate, with such
undaunted pertinacity, that he may be said to have engrossed the
conversation.

However, as I knew how tender-hearted my dear Dora was, and how
sensitive she would be to any slight upon her favourite, I hinted
no objection.  For similar reasons I made no allusion to the
skirmishing plates upon the floor; or to the disreputable
appearance of the castors, which were all at sixes and sevens, and
looked drunk; or to the further blockade of Traddles by wandering
vegetable dishes and jugs.  I could not help wondering in my own
mind, as I contemplated the boiled leg of mutton before me,
previous to carving it, how it came to pass that our joints of meat
were of such extraordinary shapes - and whether our butcher
contracted for all the deformed sheep that came into the world; but
I kept my reflections to myself.

'My love,' said I to Dora, 'what have you got in that dish?'

I could not imagine why Dora had been making tempting little faces
at me, as if she wanted to kiss me.

'Oysters, dear,' said Dora, timidly.

'Was that YOUR thought?' said I, delighted.

'Ye-yes, Doady,' said Dora.

'There never was a happier one!' I exclaimed, laying down the
carving-knife and fork.  'There is nothing Traddles likes so much!'

'Ye-yes, Doady,' said Dora, 'and so I bought a beautiful little
barrel of them, and the man said they were very good.  But I - I am
afraid there's something the matter with them.  They don't seem
right.'  Here Dora shook her head, and diamonds twinkled in her
eyes.

'They are only opened in both shells,' said I.  'Take the top one
off, my love.'

'But it won't come off!' said Dora, trying very hard, and looking
very much distressed.

'Do you know, Copperfield,' said Traddles, cheerfully examining the
dish, 'I think it is in consequence - they are capital oysters, but
I think it is in consequence - of their never having been opened.'

They never had been opened; and we had no oyster-knives - and
couldn't have used them if we had; so we looked at the oysters and
ate the mutton.  At least we ate as much of it as was done, and
made up with capers.  If I had permitted him, I am satisfied that
Traddles would have made a perfect savage of himself, and eaten a
plateful of raw meat, to express enjoyment of the repast; but I
would hear of no such immolation on the altar of friendship, and we
had a course of bacon instead; there happening, by good fortune, to
be cold bacon in the larder.

My poor little wife was in such affliction when she thought I
should be annoyed, and in such a state of joy when she found I was
not, that the discomfiture I had subdued, very soon vanished, and
we passed a happy evening; Dora sitting with her arm on my chair
while Traddles and I discussed a glass of wine, and taking every
opportunity of whispering in my ear that it was so good of me not
to be a cruel, cross old boy.  By and by she made tea for us; which
it was so pretty to see her do, as if she was busying herself with
a set of doll's tea-things, that I was not particular about the
quality of the beverage.  Then Traddles and I played a game or two
at cribbage; and Dora singing to the guitar the while, it seemed to
me as if our courtship and marriage were a tender dream of mine,
and the night when I first listened to her voice were not yet over.

When Traddles went away, and I came back into the parlour from
seeing him out, my wife planted her chair close to mine, and sat
down by my side.  'I am very sorry,' she said.  'Will you try to
teach me, Doady?'

'I must teach myself first, Dora,' said I.  'I am as bad as you,
love.'

'Ah!  But you can learn,' she returned; 'and you are a clever,
clever man!'

'Nonsense, mouse!' said I.

'I wish,' resumed my wife, after a long silence, 'that I could have
gone down into the country for a whole year, and lived with Agnes!'

Her hands were clasped upon my shoulder, and her chin rested on
them, and her blue eyes looked quietly into mine.

'Why so?' I asked.

'I think she might have improved me, and I think I might have
learned from her,' said Dora.

'All in good time, my love.  Agnes has had her father to take care
of for these many years, you should remember.  Even when she was
quite a child, she was the Agnes whom we know,' said I.

'Will you call me a name I want you to call me?' inquired Dora,
without moving.

'What is it?' I asked with a smile.

'It's a stupid name,' she said, shaking her curls for a moment. 
'Child-wife.'

I laughingly asked my child-wife what her fancy was in desiring to
be so called.  She answered without moving, otherwise than as the
arm I twined about her may have brought her blue eyes nearer to me:

'I don't mean, you silly fellow, that you should use the name
instead of Dora.  I only mean that you should think of me that way. 
When you are going to be angry with me, say to yourself, "it's only
my child-wife!" When I am very disappointing, say, "I knew, a long
time ago, that she would make but a child-wife!" When you miss what
I should like to be, and I think can never be, say, "still my
foolish child-wife loves me!" For indeed I do.'

I had not been serious with her; having no idea until now, that she
was serious herself.  But her affectionate nature was so happy in
what I now said to her with my whole heart, that her face became a
laughing one before her glittering eyes were dry.  She was soon my
child-wife indeed; sitting down on the floor outside the Chinese
House, ringing all the little bells one after another, to punish
Jip for his recent bad behaviour; while Jip lay blinking in the
doorway with his head out, even too lazy to be teased.

This appeal of Dora's made a strong impression on me.  I look back
on the time I write of; I invoke the innocent figure that I dearly
loved, to come out from the mists and shadows of the past, and turn
its gentle head towards me once again; and I can still declare that
this one little speech was constantly in my memory.  I may not have
used it to the best account; I was young and inexperienced; but I
never turned a deaf ear to its artless pleading.

Dora told me, shortly afterwards, that she was going to be a
wonderful housekeeper.  Accordingly, she polished the tablets,
pointed the pencil, bought an immense account-book, carefully
stitched up with a needle and thread all the leaves of the Cookery
Book which Jip had torn, and made quite a desperate little attempt
'to be good', as she called it.  But the figures had the old
obstinate propensity - they WOULD NOT add up.  When she had entered
two or three laborious items in the account-book, Jip would walk
over the page, wagging his tail, and smear them all out.  Her own
little right-hand middle finger got steeped to the very bone in
ink; and I think that was the only decided result obtained.

Sometimes, of an evening, when I was at home and at work - for I
wrote a good deal now, and was beginning in a small way to be known
as a writer - I would lay down my pen, and watch my child-wife
trying to be good.  First of all, she would bring out the immense
account-book, and lay it down upon the table, with a deep sigh. 
Then she would open it at the place where Jip had made it illegible
last night, and call Jip up, to look at his misdeeds.  This would
occasion a diversion in Jip's favour, and some inking of his nose,
perhaps, as a penalty.  Then she would tell Jip to lie down on the
table instantly, 'like a lion' - which was one of his tricks,
though I cannot say the likeness was striking - and, if he were in
an obedient humour, he would obey.  Then she would take up a pen,
and begin to write, and find a hair in it.  Then she would take up
another pen, and begin to write, and find that it spluttered.  Then
she would take up another pen, and begin to write, and say in a low
voice, 'Oh, it's a talking pen, and will disturb Doady!' And then
she would give it up as a bad job, and put the account-book away,
after pretending to crush the lion with it.

Or, if she were in a very sedate and serious state of mind, she
would sit down with the tablets, and a little basket of bills and
other documents, which looked more like curl-papers than anything
else, and endeavour to get some result out of them.  After severely
comparing one with another, and making entries on the tablets, and
blotting them out, and counting all the fingers of her left hand
over and over again, backwards and forwards, she would be so vexed
and discouraged, and would look so unhappy, that it gave me pain to
see her bright face clouded - and for me! - and I would go softly
to her, and say:

'What's the matter, Dora?'

Dora would look up hopelessly, and reply, 'They won't come right. 
They make my head ache so.  And they won't do anything I want!'

Then I would say, 'Now let us try together.  Let me show you,
Dora.'

Then I would commence a practical demonstration, to which Dora
would pay profound attention, perhaps for five minutes; when she
would begin to be dreadfully tired, and would lighten the subject
by curling my hair, or trying the effect of my face with my
shirt-collar turned down.  If I tacitly checked this playfulness,
and persisted, she would look so scared and disconsolate, as she
became more and more bewildered, that the remembrance of her
natural gaiety when I first strayed into her path, and of her being
my child-wife, would come reproachfully upon me; and I would lay
the pencil down, and call for the guitar.

I had a great deal of work to do, and had many anxieties, but the
same considerations made me keep them to myself.  I am far from
sure, now, that it was right to do this, but I did it for my
child-wife's sake.  I search my breast, and I commit its secrets,
if I know them, without any reservation to this paper.  The old
unhappy loss or want of something had, I am conscious, some place
in my heart; but not to the embitterment of my life.  When I walked
alone in the fine weather, and thought of the summer days when all
the air had been filled with my boyish enchantment, I did miss
something of the realization of my dreams; but I thought it was a
softened glory of the Past, which nothing could have thrown upon
the present time.  I did feel, sometimes, for a little while, that
I could have wished my wife had been my counsellor; had had more
character and purpose, to sustain me and improve me by; had been
endowed with power to fill up the void which somewhere seemed to be
about me; but I felt as if this were an unearthly consummation of
my happiness, that never had been meant to be, and never could have
been.

I was a boyish husband as to years.  I had known the softening
influence of no other sorrows or experiences than those recorded in
these leaves.  If I did any wrong, as I may have done much, I did
it in mistaken love, and in my want of wisdom.  I write the exact
truth.  It would avail me nothing to extenuate it now.

Thus it was that I took upon myself the toils and cares of our
life, and had no partner in them.  We lived much as before, in
reference to our scrambling household arrangements; but I had got
used to those, and Dora I was pleased to see was seldom vexed now. 
She was bright and cheerful in the old childish way, loved me
dearly, and was happy with her old trifles.

When the debates were heavy - I mean as to length, not quality, for
in the last respect they were not often otherwise - and I went home
late, Dora would never rest when she heard my footsteps, but would
always come downstairs to meet me.  When my evenings were
unoccupied by the pursuit for which I had qualified myself with so
much pains, and I was engaged in writing at home, she would sit
quietly near me, however late the hour, and be so mute, that I
would often think she had dropped asleep.  But generally, when I
raised my head, I saw her blue eyes looking at me with the quiet
attention of which I have already spoken.

'Oh, what a weary boy!' said Dora one night, when I met her eyes as
I was shutting up my desk.

'What a weary girl!' said I.  'That's more to the purpose.  You
must go to bed another time, my love.  It's far too late for you.'

'No, don't send me to bed!' pleaded Dora, coming to my side. 
'Pray, don't do that!'

'Dora!' To my amazement she was sobbing on my neck.  'Not well, my
dear! not happy!'

'Yes! quite well, and very happy!' said Dora.  'But say you'll let
me stop, and see you write.'

'Why, what a sight for such bright eyes at midnight!' I replied.

'Are they bright, though?' returned Dora, laughing.  'I'm so glad
they're bright.'
'Little Vanity!' said I.

But it was not vanity; it was only harmless delight in my
admiration.  I knew that very well, before she told me so.

'If you think them pretty, say I may always stop, and see you
write!' said Dora.  'Do you think them pretty?'

'Very pretty.'

'Then let me always stop and see you write.'

'I am afraid that won't improve their brightness, Dora.'

'Yes, it will!  Because, you clever boy, you'll not forget me then,
while you are full of silent fancies.  Will you mind it, if I say
something very, very silly?  - more than usual?' inquired Dora,
peeping over my shoulder into my face.

'What wonderful thing is that?' said I.

'Please let me hold the pens,' said Dora.  'I want to have
something to do with all those many hours when you are so
industrious.  May I hold the pens?'

The remembrance of her pretty joy when I said yes, brings tears
into my eyes.  The next time I sat down to write, and regularly
afterwards, she sat in her old place, with a spare bundle of pens
at her side.  Her triumph in this connexion with my work, and her
delight when I wanted a new pen - which I very often feigned to do
- suggested to me a new way of pleasing my child-wife.  I
occasionally made a pretence of wanting a page or two of manuscript
copied.  Then Dora was in her glory.  The preparations she made for
this great work, the aprons she put on, the bibs she borrowed from
the kitchen to keep off the ink, the time she took, the innumerable
stoppages she made to have a laugh with Jip as if he understood it
all, her conviction that her work was incomplete unless she signed
her name at the end, and the way in which she would bring it to me,
like a school-copy, and then, when I praised it, clasp me round the
neck, are touching recollections to me, simple as they might appear
to other men.

She took possession of the keys soon after this, and went jingling
about the house with the whole bunch in a little basket, tied to
her slender waist.  I seldom found that the places to which they
belonged were locked, or that they were of any use except as a
plaything for Jip - but Dora was pleased, and that pleased me.  She
was quite satisfied that a good deal was effected by this
make-belief of housekeeping; and was as merry as if we had been
keeping a baby-house, for a joke.

So we went on.  Dora was hardly less affectionate to my aunt than
to me, and often told her of the time when she was afraid she was
'a cross old thing'.  I never saw my aunt unbend more
systematically to anyone.  She courted Jip, though Jip never
responded; listened, day after day, to the guitar, though I am
afraid she had no taste for music; never attacked the Incapables,
though the temptation must have been severe; went wonderful
distances on foot to purchase, as surprises, any trifles that she
found out Dora wanted; and never came in by the garden, and missed
her from the room, but she would call out, at the foot of the
stairs, in a voice that sounded cheerfully all over the house:

'Where's Little Blossom?'

CHAPTER 45
Mr. Dick fulfils my aunt's Predictions

It was some time now, since I had left the Doctor.  Living in his
neighbourhood, I saw him frequently; and we all went to his house
on two or three occasions to dinner or tea.  The Old Soldier was in
permanent quarters under the Doctor's roof.  She was exactly the
same as ever, and the same immortal butterflies hovered over her
cap.

Like some other mothers, whom I have known in the course of my
life, Mrs. Markleham was far more fond of pleasure than her
daughter was.  She required a great deal of amusement, and, like a
deep old soldier, pretended, in consulting her own inclinations, to
be devoting herself to her child.  The Doctor's desire that Annie
should be entertained, was therefore particularly acceptable to
this excellent parent; who expressed unqualified approval of his
discretion.

I have no doubt, indeed, that she probed the Doctor's wound without
knowing it.  Meaning nothing but a certain matured frivolity and
selfishness, not always inseparable from full-blown years, I think
she confirmed him in his fear that he was a constraint upon his
young wife, and that there was no congeniality of feeling between
them, by so strongly commending his design of lightening the load
of her life.

'My dear soul,' she said to him one day when I was present, 'you
know there is no doubt it would be a little pokey for Annie to be
always shut up here.'

The Doctor nodded his benevolent head.  'When she comes to her
mother's age,' said Mrs. Markleham, with a flourish of her fan,
'then it'll be another thing.  You might put ME into a Jail, with
genteel society and a rubber, and I should never care to come out. 
But I am not Annie, you know; and Annie is not her mother.'

'Surely, surely,' said the Doctor.

'You are the best of creatures - no, I beg your pardon!' for the
Doctor made a gesture of deprecation, 'I must say before your face,
as I always say behind your back, you are the best of creatures;
but of course you don't - now do you?  - enter into the same
pursuits and fancies as Annie?'

'No,' said the Doctor, in a sorrowful tone.

'No, of course not,' retorted the Old Soldier.  'Take your
Dictionary, for example.  What a useful work a Dictionary is!  What
a necessary work!  The meanings of words!  Without Doctor Johnson,
or somebody of that sort, we might have been at this present moment
calling an Italian-iron, a bedstead.  But we can't expect a
Dictionary - especially when it's making - to interest Annie, can
we?'

The Doctor shook his head.

'And that's why I so much approve,' said Mrs. Markleham, tapping
him on the shoulder with her shut-up fan, 'of your thoughtfulness. 
It shows that you don't expect, as many elderly people do expect,
old heads on young shoulders.  You have studied Annie's character,
and you understand it.  That's what I find so charming!'

Even the calm and patient face of Doctor Strong expressed some
little sense of pain, I thought, under the infliction of these
compliments.

'Therefore, my dear Doctor,' said the Old Soldier, giving him
several affectionate taps, 'you may command me, at all times and
seasons.  Now, do understand that I am entirely at your service. 
I am ready to go with Annie to operas, concerts, exhibitions, all
kinds of places; and you shall never find that I am tired.  Duty,
my dear Doctor, before every consideration in the universe!'

She was as good as her word.  She was one of those people who can
bear a great deal of pleasure, and she never flinched in her
perseverance in the cause.  She seldom got hold of the newspaper
(which she settled herself down in the softest chair in the house
to read through an eye-glass, every day, for two hours), but she
found out something that she was certain Annie would like to see. 
It was in vain for Annie to protest that she was weary of such
things.  Her mother's remonstrance always was, 'Now, my dear Annie,
I am sure you know better; and I must tell you, my love, that you
are not making a proper return for the kindness of Doctor Strong.'

This was usually said in the Doctor's presence, and appeared to me
to constitute Annie's principal inducement for withdrawing her
objections when she made any.  But in general she resigned herself
to her mother, and went where the Old Soldier would.

It rarely happened now that Mr. Maldon accompanied them.  Sometimes
my aunt and Dora were invited to do so, and accepted the
invitation.  Sometimes Dora only was asked.  The time had been,
when I should have been uneasy in her going; but reflection on what
had passed that former night in the Doctor's study, had made a
change in my mistrust.  I believed that the Doctor was right, and
I had no worse suspicions.

My aunt rubbed her nose sometimes when she happened to be alone
with me, and said she couldn't make it out; she wished they were
happier; she didn't think our military friend (so she always called
the Old Soldier) mended the matter at all.  My aunt further
expressed her opinion, 'that if our military friend would cut off
those butterflies, and give 'em to the chimney-sweepers for
May-day, it would look like the beginning of something sensible on
her part.'

But her abiding reliance was on Mr. Dick.  That man had evidently
an idea in his head, she said; and if he could only once pen it up
into a corner, which was his great difficulty, he would distinguish
himself in some extraordinary manner.

Unconscious of this prediction, Mr. Dick continued to occupy
precisely the same ground in reference to the Doctor and to Mrs.
Strong.  He seemed neither to advance nor to recede.  He appeared
to have settled into his original foundation, like a building; and
I must confess that my faith in his ever Moving, was not much
greater than if he had been a building.

But one night, when I had been married some months, Mr. Dick put
his head into the parlour, where I was writing alone (Dora having
gone out with my aunt to take tea with the two little birds), and
said, with a significant cough:

'You couldn't speak to me without inconveniencing yourself,
Trotwood, I am afraid?'

'Certainly, Mr. Dick,' said I; 'come in!'

'Trotwood,' said Mr. Dick, laying his finger on the side of his
nose, after he had shaken hands with me.  'Before I sit down, I
wish to make an observation.  You know your aunt?'

'A little,' I replied.

'She is the most wonderful woman in the world, sir!'

After the delivery of this communication, which he shot out of
himself as if he were loaded with it, Mr. Dick sat down with
greater gravity than usual, and looked at me.

'Now, boy,' said Mr. Dick, 'I am going to put a question to you.'

'As many as you please,' said I.

'What do you consider me, sir?' asked Mr. Dick, folding his arms.

'A dear old friend,' said I.
'Thank you, Trotwood,' returned Mr. Dick, laughing, and reaching
across in high glee to shake hands with me.  'But I mean, boy,'
resuming his gravity, 'what do you consider me in this respect?'
touching his forehead.

I was puzzled how to answer, but he helped me with a word.

'Weak?' said Mr. Dick.

'Well,' I replied, dubiously.  'Rather so.'

'Exactly!' cried Mr. Dick, who seemed quite enchanted by my reply. 
'That is, Trotwood, when they took some of the trouble out of
you-know-who's head, and put it you know where, there was a -' Mr.
Dick made his two hands revolve very fast about each other a great
number of times, and then brought them into collision, and rolled
them over and over one another, to express confusion.  'There was
that sort of thing done to me somehow.  Eh?'

I nodded at him, and he nodded back again.

'In short, boy,' said Mr. Dick, dropping his voice to a whisper, 'I
am simple.'

I would have qualified that conclusion, but he stopped me.

'Yes, I am!  She pretends I am not.  She won't hear of it; but I
am.  I know I am.  If she hadn't stood my friend, sir, I should
have been shut up, to lead a dismal life these many years.  But
I'll provide for her!  I never spend the copying money.  I put it
in a box.  I have made a will.  I'll leave it all to her.  She
shall be rich - noble!'

Mr. Dick took out his pocket-handkerchief, and wiped his eyes.  He
then folded it up with great care, pressed it smooth between his
two hands, put it in his pocket, and seemed to put my aunt away
with it.

'Now you are a scholar, Trotwood,' said Mr. Dick.  'You are a fine
scholar.  You know what a learned man, what a great man, the Doctor
is.  You know what honour he has always done me.  Not proud in his
wisdom.  Humble, humble - condescending even to poor Dick, who is
simple and knows nothing.  I have sent his name up, on a scrap of
paper, to the kite, along the string, when it has been in the sky,
among the larks.  The kite has been glad to receive it, sir, and
the sky has been brighter with it.'

I delighted him by saying, most heartily, that the Doctor was
deserving of our best respect and highest esteem.

'And his beautiful wife is a star,' said Mr. Dick.  'A shining
star.  I have seen her shine, sir.  But,' bringing his chair
nearer, and laying one hand upon my knee - 'clouds, sir - clouds.'

I answered the solicitude which his face expressed, by conveying
the same expression into my own, and shaking my head.

'What clouds?' said Mr. Dick.

He looked so wistfully into my face, and was so anxious to
understand, that I took great pains to answer him slowly and
distinctly, as I might have entered on an explanation to a child.

'There is some unfortunate division between them,' I replied. 
'Some unhappy cause of separation.  A secret.  It may be
inseparable from the discrepancy in their years.  It may have grown
up out of almost nothing.'

Mr. Dick, who had told off every sentence with a thoughtful nod,
paused when I had done, and sat considering, with his eyes upon my
face, and his hand upon my knee.

'Doctor not angry with her, Trotwood?' he said, after some time.

'No.  Devoted to her.'

'Then, I have got it, boy!' said Mr. Dick.

The sudden exultation with which he slapped me on the knee, and
leaned back in his chair, with his eyebrows lifted up as high as he
could possibly lift them, made me think him farther out of his wits
than ever.  He became as suddenly grave again, and leaning forward
as before, said - first respectfully taking out his
pocket-handkerchief, as if it really did represent my aunt:

'Most wonderful woman in the world, Trotwood.  Why has she done
nothing to set things right?'

'Too delicate and difficult a subject for such interference,' I
replied.

'Fine scholar,' said Mr. Dick, touching me with his finger.  'Why
has HE done nothing?'

'For the same reason,' I returned.

'Then, I have got it, boy!' said Mr. Dick.  And he stood up before
me, more exultingly than before, nodding his head, and striking
himself repeatedly upon the breast, until one might have supposed
that he had nearly nodded and struck all the breath out of his
body.

'A poor fellow with a craze, sir,' said Mr. Dick, 'a simpleton, a
weak-minded person - present company, you know!' striking himself
again, 'may do what wonderful people may not do.  I'll bring them
together, boy.  I'll try.  They'll not blame me.  They'll not
object to me.  They'll not mind what I do, if it's wrong.  I'm only
Mr. Dick.  And who minds Dick?  Dick's nobody!  Whoo!' He blew a
slight, contemptuous breath, as if he blew himself away.

It was fortunate he had proceeded so far with his mystery, for we
heard the coach stop at the little garden gate, which brought my
aunt and Dora home.

'Not a word, boy!' he pursued in a whisper; 'leave all the blame
with Dick - simple Dick - mad Dick.  I have been thinking, sir, for
some time, that I was getting it, and now I have got it.  After
what you have said to me, I am sure I have got it.  All right!' Not
another word did Mr. Dick utter on the subject; but he made a very
telegraph of himself for the next half-hour (to the great
disturbance of my aunt's mind), to enjoin inviolable secrecy on me.

To my surprise, I heard no more about it for some two or three
weeks, though I was sufficiently interested in the result of his
endeavours; descrying a strange gleam of good sense - I say nothing
of good feeling, for that he always exhibited - in the conclusion
to which he had come.  At last I began to believe, that, in the
flighty and unsettled state of his mind, he had either forgotten
his intention or abandoned it.

One fair evening, when Dora was not inclined to go out, my aunt and
I strolled up to the Doctor's cottage.  It was autumn, when there
were no debates to vex the evening air; and I remember how the
leaves smelt like our garden at Blunderstone as we trod them under
foot, and how the old, unhappy feeling, seemed to go by, on the
sighing wind.

It was twilight when we reached the cottage.  Mrs. Strong was just
coming out of the garden, where Mr. Dick yet lingered, busy with
his knife, helping the gardener to point some stakes.  The Doctor
was engaged with someone in his study; but the visitor would be
gone directly, Mrs. Strong said, and begged us to remain and see
him.  We went into the drawing-room with her, and sat down by the
darkening window.  There was never any ceremony about the visits of
such old friends and neighbours as we were.

We had not sat here many minutes, when Mrs. Markleham, who usually
contrived to be in a fuss about something, came bustling in, with
her newspaper in her hand, and said, out of breath, 'My goodness
gracious, Annie, why didn't you tell me there was someone in the
Study!'

'My dear mama,' she quietly returned, 'how could I know that you
desired the information?'

'Desired the information!' said Mrs. Markleham, sinking on the
sofa.  'I never had such a turn in all my life!'

'Have you been to the Study, then, mama?' asked Annie.

'BEEN to the Study, my dear!' she returned emphatically.  'Indeed
I have!  I came upon the amiable creature - if you'll imagine my
feelings, Miss Trotwood and David - in the act of making his will.'

Her daughter looked round from the window quickly.

'In the act, my dear Annie,' repeated Mrs. Markleham, spreading the
newspaper on her lap like a table-cloth, and patting her hands upon
it, 'of making his last Will and Testament.  The foresight and
affection of the dear!  I must tell you how it was.  I really must,
in justice to the darling - for he is nothing less! - tell you how
it was.  Perhaps you know, Miss Trotwood, that there is never a
candle lighted in this house, until one's eyes are literally
falling out of one's head with being stretched to read the paper. 
And that there is not a chair in this house, in which a paper can
be what I call, read, except one in the Study.  This took me to the
Study, where I saw a light.  I opened the door.  In company with
the dear Doctor were two professional people, evidently connected
with the law, and they were all three standing at the table: the
darling Doctor pen in hand.  "This simply expresses then," said the
Doctor - Annie, my love, attend to the very words - "this simply
expresses then, gentlemen, the confidence I have in Mrs. Strong,
and gives her all unconditionally?" One of the professional people
replied, "And gives her all unconditionally." Upon that, with the
natural feelings of a mother, I said, "Good God, I beg your
pardon!" fell over the door-step, and came away through the little
back passage where the pantry is.'

Mrs. Strong opened the window, and went out into the verandah,
where she stood leaning against a pillar.

'But now isn't it, Miss Trotwood, isn't it, David, invigorating,'
said Mrs. Markleham, mechanically following her with her eyes, 'to
find a man at Doctor Strong's time of life, with the strength of
mind to do this kind of thing?  It only shows how right I was.  I
said to Annie, when Doctor Strong paid a very flattering visit to
myself, and made her the subject of a declaration and an offer, I
said, "My dear, there is no doubt whatever, in my opinion, with
reference to a suitable provision for you, that Doctor Strong will
do more than he binds himself to do."'

Here the bell rang, and we heard the sound of the visitors' feet as
they went out.

'It's all over, no doubt,' said the Old Soldier, after listening;
'the dear creature has signed, sealed, and delivered, and his
mind's at rest.  Well it may be!  What a mind!  Annie, my love, I
am going to the Study with my paper, for I am a poor creature
without news.  Miss Trotwood, David, pray come and see the Doctor.'

I was conscious of Mr. Dick's standing in the shadow of the room,
shutting up his knife, when we accompanied her to the Study; and of
my aunt's rubbing her nose violently, by the way, as a mild vent
for her intolerance of our military friend; but who got first into
the Study, or how Mrs. Markleham settled herself in a moment in her
easy-chair, or how my aunt and I came to be left together near the
door (unless her eyes were quicker than mine, and she held me
back), I have forgotten, if I ever knew.  But this I know, - that
we saw the Doctor before he saw us, sitting at his table, among the
folio volumes in which he delighted, resting his head calmly on his
hand.  That, in the same moment, we saw Mrs. Strong glide in, pale
and trembling.  That Mr. Dick supported her on his arm.  That he
laid his other hand upon the Doctor's arm, causing him to look up
with an abstracted air.  That, as the Doctor moved his head, his
wife dropped down on one knee at his feet, and, with her hands
imploringly lifted, fixed upon his face the memorable look I had
never forgotten.  That at this sight Mrs. Markleham dropped the
newspaper, and stared more like a figure-head intended for a ship
to be called The Astonishment, than anything else I can think of.

The gentleness of the Doctor's manner and surprise, the dignity
that mingled with the supplicating attitude of his wife, the
amiable concern of Mr. Dick, and the earnestness with which my aunt
said to herself, 'That man mad!' (triumphantly expressive of the
misery from which she had saved him) - I see and hear, rather than
remember, as I write about it.

'Doctor!' said Mr. Dick.  'What is it that's amiss?  Look here!'

'Annie!' cried the Doctor.  'Not at my feet, my dear!'

'Yes!' she said.  'I beg and pray that no one will leave the room!
Oh, my husband and father, break this long silence.  Let us both
know what it is that has come between us!'

Mrs. Markleham, by this time recovering the power of speech, and
seeming to swell with family pride and motherly indignation, here
exclaimed, 'Annie, get up immediately, and don't disgrace everybody
belonging to you by humbling yourself like that, unless you wish to
see me go out of my mind on the spot!'

'Mama!' returned Annie.  'Waste no words on me, for my appeal is to
my husband, and even you are nothing here.'

'Nothing!' exclaimed Mrs. Markleham.  'Me, nothing! The child has
taken leave of her senses.  Please to get me a glass of water!'

I was too attentive to the Doctor and his wife, to give any heed to
this request; and it made no impression on anybody else; so Mrs.
Markleham panted, stared, and fanned herself.

'Annie!' said the Doctor, tenderly taking her in his hands.  'My
dear!  If any unavoidable change has come, in the sequence of time,
upon our married life, you are not to blame.  The fault is mine,
and only mine.  There is no change in my affection, admiration, and
respect.  I wish to make you happy.  I truly love and honour you. 
Rise, Annie, pray!'

But she did not rise.  After looking at him for a little while, she
sank down closer to him, laid her arm across his knee, and dropping
her head upon it, said:

'If I have any friend here, who can speak one word for me, or for
my husband in this matter; if I have any friend here, who can give
a voice to any suspicion that my heart has sometimes whispered to
me; if I have any friend here, who honours my husband, or has ever
cared for me, and has anything within his knowledge, no matter what
it is, that may help to mediate between us, I implore that friend
to speak!'

There was a profound silence.  After a few moments of painful
hesitation, I broke the silence.

'Mrs. Strong,' I said, 'there is something within my knowledge,
which I have been earnestly entreated by Doctor Strong to conceal,
and have concealed until tonight.  But, I believe the time has come
when it would be mistaken faith and delicacy to conceal it any
longer, and when your appeal absolves me from his injunction.'

She turned her face towards me for a moment, and I knew that I was
right.  I could not have resisted its entreaty, if the assurance
that it gave me had been less convincing.

'Our future peace,' she said, 'may be in your hands.  I trust it
confidently to your not suppressing anything.  I know beforehand
that nothing you, or anyone, can tell me, will show my husband's
noble heart in any other light than one.  Howsoever it may seem to
you to touch me, disregard that.  I will speak for myself, before
him, and before God afterwards.'

Thus earnestly besought, I made no reference to the Doctor for his
permission, but, without any other compromise of the truth than a
little softening of the coarseness of Uriah Heep, related plainly
what had passed in that same room that night.  The staring of Mrs.
Markleham during the whole narration, and the shrill, sharp
interjections with which she occasionally interrupted it, defy
description.

When I had finished, Annie remained, for some few moments, silent,
with her head bent down, as I have described.  Then, she took the
Doctor's hand (he was sitting in the same attitude as when we had
entered the room), and pressed it to her breast, and kissed it. 
Mr. Dick softly raised her; and she stood, when she began to speak,
leaning on him, and looking down upon her husband - from whom she
never turned her eyes.

'All that has ever been in my mind, since I was married,' she said
in a low, submissive, tender voice, 'I will lay bare before you. 
I could not live and have one reservation, knowing what I know
now.'

'Nay, Annie,' said the Doctor, mildly, 'I have never doubted you,
my child.  There is no need; indeed there is no need, my dear.'

'There is great need,' she answered, in the same way, 'that I
should open my whole heart before the soul of generosity and truth,
whom, year by year, and day by day, I have loved and venerated more
and more, as Heaven knows!'

'Really,' interrupted Mrs. Markleham, 'if I have any discretion at
all -'

('Which you haven't, you Marplot,' observed my aunt, in an
indignant whisper.)

- 'I must be permitted to observe that it cannot be requisite to
enter into these details.'

'No one but my husband can judge of that, mama,' said Annie without
removing her eyes from his face, 'and he will hear me.  If I say
anything to give you pain, mama, forgive me.  I have borne pain
first, often and long, myself.'

'Upon my word!' gasped Mrs. Markleham.

'When I was very young,' said Annie, 'quite a little child, my
first associations with knowledge of any kind were inseparable from
a patient friend and teacher - the friend of my dead father - who
was always dear to me.  I can remember nothing that I know, without
remembering him.  He stored my mind with its first treasures, and
stamped his character upon them all.  They never could have been,
I think, as good as they have been to me, if I had taken them from
any other hands.'

'Makes her mother nothing!' exclaimed Mrs. Markleham.

'Not so mama,' said Annie; 'but I make him what he was.  I must do
that.  As I grew up, he occupied the same place still.  I was proud
of his interest: deeply, fondly, gratefully attached to him.  I
looked up to him, I can hardly describe how - as a father, as a
guide, as one whose praise was different from all other praise, as
one in whom I could have trusted and confided, if I had doubted all
the world.  You know, mama, how young and inexperienced I was, when
you presented him before me, of a sudden, as a lover.'

'I have mentioned the fact, fifty times at least, to everybody
here!' said Mrs. Markleham.

('Then hold your tongue, for the Lord's sake, and don't mention it
any more!' muttered my aunt.)

'It was so great a change: so great a loss, I felt it, at first,'
said Annie, still preserving the same look and tone, 'that I was
agitated and distressed.  I was but a girl; and when so great a
change came in the character in which I had so long looked up to
him, I think I was sorry.  But nothing could have made him what he
used to be again; and I was proud that he should think me so
worthy, and we were married.'
'- At Saint Alphage, Canterbury,' observed Mrs. Markleham.

('Confound the woman!' said my aunt, 'she WON'T be quiet!')

'I never thought,' proceeded Annie, with a heightened colour, 'of
any worldly gain that my husband would bring to me.  My young heart
had no room in its homage for any such poor reference.  Mama,
forgive me when I say that it was you who first presented to my
mind the thought that anyone could wrong me, and wrong him, by such
a cruel suspicion.'

'Me!' cried Mrs. Markleham.

('Ah!  You, to be sure!' observed my aunt, 'and you can't fan it
away, my military friend!')

'It was the first unhappiness of my new life,' said Annie.  'It was
the first occasion of every unhappy moment I have known.  These
moments have been more, of late, than I can count; but not - my
generous husband! - not for the reason you suppose; for in my heart
there is not a thought, a recollection, or a hope, that any power
could separate from you!'

She raised her eyes, and clasped her hands, and looked as beautiful
and true, I thought, as any Spirit.  The Doctor looked on her,
henceforth, as steadfastly as she on him.

'Mama is blameless,' she went on, 'of having ever urged you for
herself, and she is blameless in intention every way, I am sure, -
but when I saw how many importunate claims were pressed upon you in
my name; how you were traded on in my name; how generous you were,
and how Mr. Wickfield, who had your welfare very much at heart,
resented it; the first sense of my exposure to the mean suspicion
that my tenderness was bought - and sold to you, of all men on
earth - fell upon me like unmerited disgrace, in which I forced you
to participate.  I cannot tell you what it was - mama cannot
imagine what it was - to have this dread and trouble always on my
mind, yet know in my own soul that on my marriage-day I crowned the
love and honour of my life!'

'A specimen of the thanks one gets,' cried Mrs. Markleham, in
tears, 'for taking care of one's family!  I wish I was a Turk!'

('I wish you were, with all my heart - and in your native country!'
said my aunt.)

'It was at that time that mama was most solicitous about my Cousin
Maldon.  I had liked him': she spoke softly, but without any
hesitation: 'very much.  We had been little lovers once.  If
circumstances had not happened otherwise, I might have come to
persuade myself that I really loved him, and might have married
him, and been most wretched.  There can be no disparity in marriage
like unsuitability of mind and purpose.'

I pondered on those words, even while I was studiously attending to
what followed, as if they had some particular interest, or some
strange application that I could not divine.  'There can be no
disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose' -'no
disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.'

'There is nothing,' said Annie, 'that we have in common.  I have
long found that there is nothing.  If I were thankful to my husband
for no more, instead of for so much, I should be thankful to him
for having saved me from the first mistaken impulse of my
undisciplined heart.'

She stood quite still, before the Doctor, and spoke with an
earnestness that thrilled me.  Yet her voice was just as quiet as
before.

'When he was waiting to be the object of your munificence, so
freely bestowed for my sake, and when I was unhappy in the
mercenary shape I was made to wear, I thought it would have become
him better to have worked his own way on.  I thought that if I had
been he, I would have tried to do it, at the cost of almost any
hardship.  But I thought no worse of him, until the night of his
departure for India.  That night I knew he had a false and
thankless heart.  I saw a double meaning, then, in Mr. Wickfield's
scrutiny of me.  I perceived, for the first time, the dark
suspicion that shadowed my life.'

'Suspicion, Annie!' said the Doctor.  'No, no, no!'

'In your mind there was none, I know, my husband!' she returned. 
'And when I came to you, that night, to lay down all my load of
shame and grief, and knew that I had to tell that, underneath your
roof, one of my own kindred, to whom you had been a benefactor, for
the love of me, had spoken to me words that should have found no
utterance, even if I had been the weak and mercenary wretch he
thought me - my mind revolted from the taint the very tale
conveyed.  It died upon my lips, and from that hour till now has
never passed them.'

Mrs. Markleham, with a short groan, leaned back in her easy-chair;
and retired behind her fan, as if she were never coming out any
more.

'I have never, but in your presence, interchanged a word with him
from that time; then, only when it has been necessary for the
avoidance of this explanation.  Years have passed since he knew,
from me, what his situation here was.  The kindnesses you have
secretly done for his advancement, and then disclosed to me, for my
surprise and pleasure, have been, you will believe, but
aggravations of the unhappiness and burden of my secret.'

She sunk down gently at the Doctor's feet, though he did his utmost
to prevent her; and said, looking up, tearfully, into his face:

'Do not speak to me yet!  Let me say a little more!  Right or
wrong, if this were to be done again, I think I should do just the
same.  You never can know what it was to be devoted to you, with
those old associations; to find that anyone could be so hard as to
suppose that the truth of my heart was bartered away, and to be
surrounded by appearances confirming that belief.  I was very
young, and had no adviser.  Between mama and me, in all relating to
you, there was a wide division.  If I shrunk into myself, hiding
the disrespect I had undergone, it was because I honoured you so
much, and so much wished that you should honour me!'

'Annie, my pure heart!' said the Doctor, 'my dear girl!'

'A little more! a very few words more!  I used to think there were
so many whom you might have married, who would not have brought
such charge and trouble on you, and who would have made your home
a worthier home.  I used to be afraid that I had better have
remained your pupil, and almost your child.  I used to fear that I
was so unsuited to your learning and wisdom.  If all this made me
shrink within myself (as indeed it did), when I had that to tell,
it was still because I honoured you so much, and hoped that you
might one day honour me.'

'That day has shone this long time, Annie,' said the Doctor, and
can have but one long night, my dear.'

'Another word!  I afterwards meant - steadfastly meant, and
purposed to myself - to bear the whole weight of knowing the
unworthiness of one to whom you had been so good.  And now a last
word, dearest and best of friends!  The cause of the late change in
you, which I have seen with so much pain and sorrow, and have
sometimes referred to my old apprehension - at other times to
lingering suppositions nearer to the truth - has been made clear
tonight; and by an accident I have also come to know, tonight, the
full measure of your noble trust in me, even under that mistake. 
I do not hope that any love and duty I may render in return, will
ever make me worthy of your priceless confidence; but with all this
knowledge fresh upon me, I can lift my eyes to this dear face,
revered as a father's, loved as a husband's, sacred to me in my
childhood as a friend's, and solemnly declare that in my lightest
thought I have never wronged you; never wavered in the love and the
fidelity I owe you!'

She had her arms around the Doctor's neck, and he leant his head
down over her, mingling his grey hair with her dark brown tresses.

'Oh, hold me to your heart, my husband!  Never cast me out!  Do not
think or speak of disparity between us, for there is none, except
in all my many imperfections.  Every succeeding year I have known
this better, as I have esteemed you more and more.  Oh, take me to
your heart, my husband, for my love was founded on a rock, and it
endures!'

In the silence that ensued, my aunt walked gravely up to Mr. Dick,
without at all hurrying herself, and gave him a hug and a sounding
kiss.  And it was very fortunate, with a view to his credit, that
she did so; for I am confident that I detected him at that moment
in the act of making preparations to stand on one leg, as an
appropriate expression of delight.

'You are a very remarkable man, Dick!' said my aunt, with an air of
unqualified approbation; 'and never pretend to be anything else,
for I know better!'

With that, my aunt pulled him by the sleeve, and nodded to me; and
we three stole quietly out of the room, and came away.

'That's a settler for our military friend, at any rate,' said my
aunt, on the way home.  'I should sleep the better for that, if
there was nothing else to be glad of!'

'She was quite overcome, I am afraid,' said Mr. Dick, with great
commiseration.

'What!  Did you ever see a crocodile overcome?' inquired my aunt.

'I don't think I ever saw a crocodile,' returned Mr. Dick, mildly.

'There never would have been anything the matter, if it hadn't been
for that old Animal,' said my aunt, with strong emphasis.  'It's
very much to be wished that some mothers would leave their
daughters alone after marriage, and not be so violently
affectionate.  They seem to think the only return that can be made
them for bringing an unfortunate young woman into the world - God
bless my soul, as if she asked to be brought, or wanted to come! -
is full liberty to worry her out of it again.  What are you
thinking of, Trot?'

I was thinking of all that had been said.  My mind was still
running on some of the expressions used.  'There can be no
disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.' 
'The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.'  'My love
was founded on a rock.'  But we were at home; and the trodden
leaves were lying under-foot, and the autumn wind was blowing.

CHAPTER 46
Intelligence

I must have been married, if I may trust to my imperfect memory for
dates, about a year or so, when one evening, as I was returning
from a solitary walk, thinking of the book I was then writing - for
my success had steadily increased with my steady application, and
I was engaged at that time upon my first work of fiction - I came
past Mrs. Steerforth's house.  I had often passed it before, during
my residence in that neighbourhood, though never when I could
choose another road.  Howbeit, it did sometimes happen that it was
not easy to find another, without making a long circuit; and so I
had passed that way, upon the whole, pretty often.

I had never done more than glance at the house, as I went by with
a quickened step.  It had been uniformly gloomy and dull.  None of
the best rooms abutted on the road; and the narrow, heavily-framed
old-fashioned windows, never cheerful under any circumstances,
looked very dismal, close shut, and with their blinds always drawn
down.  There was a covered way across a little paved court, to an
entrance that was never used; and there was one round staircase
window, at odds with all the rest, and the only one unshaded by a
blind, which had the same unoccupied blank look.  I do not remember
that I ever saw a light in all the house.  If I had been a casual
passer-by, I should have probably supposed that some childless
person lay dead in it.  If I had happily possessed no knowledge of
the place, and had seen it often in that changeless state, I should
have pleased my fancy with many ingenious speculations, I dare say.

As it was, I thought as little of it as I might.  But my mind could
not go by it and leave it, as my body did; and it usually awakened
a long train of meditations.  Coming before me, on this particular
evening that I mention, mingled with the childish recollections and
later fancies, the ghosts of half-formed hopes, the broken shadows
of disappointments dimly seen and understood, the blending of
experience and imagination, incidental to the occupation with which
my thoughts had been busy, it was more than commonly suggestive. 
I fell into a brown study as I walked on, and a voice at my side
made me start.

It was a woman's voice, too.  I was not long in recollecting Mrs.
Steerforth's little parlour-maid, who had formerly worn blue
ribbons in her cap.  She had taken them out now, to adapt herself,
I suppose, to the altered character of the house; and wore but one
or two disconsolate bows of sober brown.

'If you please, sir, would you have the goodness to walk in, and
speak to Miss Dartle?'

'Has Miss Dartle sent you for me?' I inquired.

'Not tonight, sir, but it's just the same.  Miss Dartle saw you
pass
a night or two ago; and I was to sit at work on the staircase, and
when I saw you pass again, to ask you to step in and speak to her.'

I turned back, and inquired of my conductor, as we went along, how
Mrs. Steerforth was.  She said her lady was but poorly, and kept
her own room a good deal.

When we arrived at the house, I was directed to Miss Dartle in the
garden, and left to make my presence known to her myself.  She was
sitting on a seat at one end of a kind of terrace, overlooking the
great city.  It was a sombre evening, with a lurid light in the
sky; and as I saw the prospect scowling in the distance, with here
and there some larger object starting up into the sullen glare, I
fancied it was no inapt companion to the memory of this fierce
woman.

She saw me as I advanced, and rose for a moment to receive me.  I
thought her, then, still more colourless and thin than when I had
seen her last; the flashing eyes still brighter, and the scar still
plainer.

Our meeting was not cordial.  We had parted angrily on the last
occasion; and there was an air of disdain about her, which she took
no pains to conceal.

'I am told you wish to speak to me, Miss Dartle,' said I, standing
near her, with my hand upon the back of the seat, and declining her
gesture of invitation to sit down.

'If you please,' said she.  'Pray has this girl been found?'

'No.'

'And yet she has run away!'

I saw her thin lips working while she looked at me, as if they were
eager to load her with reproaches.

'Run away?' I repeated.

'Yes! From him,' she said, with a laugh.  'If she is not found,
perhaps she never will be found.  She may be dead!'

The vaunting cruelty with which she met my glance, I never saw
expressed in any other face that ever I have seen.

'To wish her dead,' said I, 'may be the kindest wish that one of
her own sex could bestow upon her.  I am glad that time has
softened you so much, Miss Dartle.'

She condescended to make no reply, but, turning on me with another
scornful laugh, said:

'The friends of this excellent and much-injured young lady are
friends of yours.  You are their champion, and assert their rights. 
Do you wish to know what is known of her?'

'Yes,' said I.

She rose with an ill-favoured smile, and taking a few steps towards
a wall of holly that was near at hand, dividing the lawn from a
kitchen-garden, said, in a louder voice, 'Come here!' - as if she
were calling to some unclean beast.

'You will restrain any demonstrative championship or vengeance in
this place, of course, Mr. Copperfield?' said she, looking over her
shoulder at me with the same expression.

I inclined my head, without knowing what she meant; and she said,
'Come here!' again; and returned, followed by the respectable Mr.
Littimer, who, with undiminished respectability, made me a bow, and
took up his position behind her.  The air of wicked grace: of
triumph, in which, strange to say, there was yet something feminine
and alluring: with which she reclined upon the seat between us, and
looked at me, was worthy of a cruel Princess in a Legend.

'Now,' said she, imperiously, without glancing at him, and touching
the old wound as it throbbed: perhaps, in this instance, with
pleasure rather than pain.  'Tell Mr. Copperfield about the
flight.'

'Mr. James and myself, ma'am -'

'Don't address yourself to me!' she interrupted with a frown.

'Mr. James and myself, sir -'

'Nor to me, if you please,' said I.

Mr. Littimer, without being at all discomposed, signified by a
slight obeisance, that anything that was most agreeable to us was
most agreeable to him; and began again.

'Mr. James and myself have been abroad with the young woman, ever
since she left Yarmouth under Mr. james's protection.  We have been
in a variety of places, and seen a deal of foreign country.  We
have been in France, Switzerland, Italy, in fact, almost all
parts.'

He looked at the back of the seat, as if he were addressing himself
to that; and softly played upon it with his hands, as if he were
striking chords upon a dumb piano.

'Mr. James took quite uncommonly to the young woman; and was more
settled, for a length of time, than I have known him to be since I
have been in his service.  The young woman was very improvable, and
spoke the languages; and wouldn't have been known for the same
country-person.  I noticed that she was much admired wherever we
went.'

Miss Dartle put her hand upon her side.  I saw him steal a glance
at her, and slightly smile to himself.

'Very much admired, indeed, the young woman was.  What with her
dress; what with the air and sun; what with being made so much of;
what with this, that, and the other; her merits really attracted
general notice.'

He made a short pause.  Her eyes wandered restlessly over the
distant prospect, and she bit her nether lip to stop that busy
mouth.

Taking his hands from the seat, and placing one of them within the
other, as he settled himself on one leg, Mr. Littimer proceeded,
with his eyes cast down, and his respectable head a little
advanced, and a little on one side:

'The young woman went on in this manner for some time, being
occasionally low in her spirits, until I think she began to weary
Mr. James by giving way to her low spirits and tempers of that
kind; and things were not so comfortable.  Mr. James he began to be
restless again.  The more restless he got, the worse she got; and
I must say, for myself, that I had a very difficult time of it
indeed between the two.  Still matters were patched up here, and
made good there, over and over again; and altogether lasted, I am
sure, for a longer time than anybody could have expected.'

Recalling her eyes from the distance, she looked at me again now,
with her former air.  Mr. Littimer, clearing his throat behind his
hand with a respectable short cough, changed legs, and went on:

'At last, when there had been, upon the whole, a good many words
and reproaches, Mr. James he set off one morning, from the
neighbourhood of Naples, where we had a villa (the young woman
being very partial to the sea), and, under pretence of coming back
in a day or so, left it in charge with me to break it out, that,
for the general happiness of all concerned, he was' - here an
interruption of the short cough - 'gone.  But Mr. James, I must
say, certainly did behave extremely honourable; for he proposed
that the young woman should marry a very respectable person, who
was fully prepared to overlook the past, and who was, at least, as
good as anybody the young woman could have aspired to in a regular
way: her connexions being very common.'

He changed legs again, and wetted his lips.  I was convinced that
the scoundrel spoke of himself, and I saw my conviction reflected
in Miss Dartle's face.

'This I also had it in charge to communicate.  I was willing to do
anything to relieve Mr. James from his difficulty, and to restore
harmony between himself and an affectionate parent, who has
undergone so much on his account.  Therefore I undertook the
commission.  The young woman's violence when she came to, after I
broke the fact of his departure, was beyond all expectations.  She
was quite mad, and had to be held by force; or, if she couldn't
have got to a knife, or got to the sea, she'd have beaten her head
against the marble floor.'

Miss Dartle, leaning back upon the seat, with a light of exultation
in her face, seemed almost to caress the sounds this fellow had
uttered.

'But when I came to the second part of what had been entrusted to
me,' said Mr. Littimer, rubbing his hands uneasily, 'which anybody
might have supposed would have been, at all events, appreciated as
a kind intention, then the young woman came out in her true
colours.  A more outrageous person I never did see.  Her conduct
was surprisingly bad.  She had no more gratitude, no more feeling,
no more patience, no more reason in her, than a stock or a stone. 
If I hadn't been upon my guard, I am convinced she would have had
my blood.'

'I think the better of her for it,' said I, indignantly.

Mr. Littimer bent his head, as much as to say, 'Indeed, sir?  But
you're young!' and resumed his narrative.

'It was necessary, in short, for a time, to take away everything
nigh her, that she could do herself, or anybody else, an injury
with, and to shut her up close.  Notwithstanding which, she got out
in the night; forced the lattice of a window, that I had nailed up
myself; dropped on a vine that was trailed below; and never has
been seen or heard of, to my knowledge, since.'

'She is dead, perhaps,' said Miss Dartle, with a smile, as if she
could have spurned the body of the ruined girl.

'She may have drowned herself, miss,' returned Mr. Littimer,
catching at an excuse for addressing himself to somebody.  'It's
very possible.  Or, she may have had assistance from the boatmen,
and the boatmen's wives and children.  Being given to low company,
she was very much in the habit of talking to them on the beach,
Miss Dartle, and sitting by their boats.  I have known her do it,
when Mr. James has been away, whole days.  Mr. James was far from
pleased to find out, once, that she had told the children she was
a boatman's daughter, and that in her own country, long ago, she
had roamed about the beach, like them.'

Oh, Emily! Unhappy beauty! What a picture rose before me of her
sitting on the far-off shore, among the children like herself when
she was innocent, listening to little voices such as might have
called her Mother had she been a poor man's wife; and to the great
voice of the sea, with its eternal 'Never more!'

'When it was clear that nothing could be done, Miss Dartle -'

'Did I tell you not to speak to me?' she said, with stern contempt.

'You spoke to me, miss,' he replied.  'I beg your pardon.  But it
is my service to obey.'

'Do your service,' she returned.  'Finish your story, and go!'

'When it was clear,' he said, with infinite respectability and an
obedient bow, 'that she was not to be found, I went to Mr. James,
at the place where it had been agreed that I should write to him,
and informed him of what had occurred.  Words passed between us in
consequence, and I felt it due to my character to leave him.  I
could bear, and I have borne, a great deal from Mr. James; but he
insulted me too far.  He hurt me.  Knowing the unfortunate
difference between himself and his mother, and what her anxiety of
mind was likely to be, I took the liberty of coming home to
England, and relating -'

'For money which I paid him,' said Miss Dartle to me.

'Just so, ma'am - and relating what I knew.  I am not aware,' said
Mr. Littimer, after a moment's reflection, 'that there is anything
else.  I am at present out of employment, and should be happy to
meet with a respectable situation.'

Miss Dartle glanced at me, as though she would inquire if there
were anything that I desired to ask.  As there was something which
had occurred to my mind, I said in reply:

'I could wish to know from this - creature,' I could not bring
myself to utter any more conciliatory word, 'whether they
intercepted a letter that was written to her from home, or whether
he supposes that she received it.'

He remained calm and silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and
the tip of every finger of his right hand delicately poised against
the tip of every finger of his left.

Miss Dartle turned her head disdainfully towards him.

'I beg your pardon, miss,' he said, awakening from his abstraction,
'but, however submissive to you, I have my position, though a
servant.  Mr. Copperfield and you, miss, are different people.  If
Mr. Copperfield wishes to know anything from me, I take the liberty
of reminding Mr. Copperfield that he can put a question to me.  I
have a character to maintain.'

After a momentary struggle with myself, I turned my eyes upon him,
and said, 'You have heard my question.  Consider it addressed to
yourself, if you choose.  What answer do you make?'

'Sir,' he rejoined, with an occasional separation and reunion of
those delicate tips, 'my answer must be qualified; because, to
betray Mr. james's confidence to his mother, and to betray it to
you, are two different actions.  It is not probable, I consider,
that Mr. James would encourage the receipt of letters likely to
increase low spirits and unpleasantness; but further than that,
sir, I should wish to avoid going.'

'Is that all?' inquired Miss Dartle of me.

I indicated that I had nothing more to say.  'Except,' I added, as
I saw him moving off, 'that I understand this fellow's part in the
wicked story, and that, as I shall make it known to the honest man
who has been her father from her childhood, I would recommend him
to avoid going too much into public.'

He had stopped the moment I began, and had listened with his usual
repose of manner.

'Thank you, sir.  But you'll excuse me if I say, sir, that there
are neither slaves nor slave-drivers in this country, and that
people are not allowed to take the law into their own hands.  If
they do, it is more to their own peril, I believe, than to other
people's.  Consequently speaking, I am not at all afraid of going
wherever I may wish, sir.'

With that, he made a polite bow; and, with another to Miss Dartle,
went away through the arch in the wall of holly by which he had
come.  Miss Dartle and I regarded each other for a little while in
silence; her manner being exactly what it was, when she had
produced the man.

'He says besides,' she observed, with a slow curling of her lip,
'that his master, as he hears, is coasting Spain; and this done, is
away to gratify his seafaring tastes till he is weary.  But this is
of no interest to you.  Between these two proud persons, mother and
son, there is a wider breach than before, and little hope of its
healing, for they are one at heart, and time makes each more
obstinate and imperious.  Neither is this of any interest to you;
but it introduces what I wish to say.  This devil whom you make an
angel of.  I mean this low girl whom he picked out of the
tide-mud,' with her black eyes full upon me, and her passionate
finger up, 'may be alive, - for I believe some common things are
hard to die.  If she is, you will desire to have a pearl of such
price found and taken care of.  We desire that, too; that he may
not by any chance be made her prey again.  So far, we are united in
one interest; and that is why I, who would do her any mischief that
so coarse a wretch is capable of feeling, have sent for you to hear
what you have heard.'

I saw, by the change in her face, that someone was advancing behind
me.  It was Mrs. Steerforth, who gave me her hand more coldly than
of yore, and with an augmentation of her former stateliness of
manner, but still, I perceived - and I was touched by it - with an
ineffaceable remembrance of my old love for her son.  She was
greatly altered.  Her fine figure was far less upright, her
handsome face was deeply marked, and her hair was almost white. 
But when she sat down on the seat, she was a handsome lady still;
and well I knew the bright eye with its lofty look, that had been
a light in my very dreams at school.

'Is Mr. Copperfield informed of everything, Rosa?'

'Yes.'

'And has he heard Littimer himself?'

'Yes; I have told him why you wished it.'
'You are a good girl.  I have had some slight correspondence with
your former friend, sir,' addressing me, 'but it has not restored
his sense of duty or natural obligation.  Therefore I have no other
object in this, than what Rosa has mentioned.  If, by the course
which may relieve the mind of the decent man you brought here (for
whom I am sorry - I can say no more), my son may be saved from
again falling into the snares of a designing enemy, well!'

She drew herself up, and sat looking straight before her, far away.

'Madam,' I said respectfully, 'I understand.  I assure you I am in
no danger of putting any strained construction on your motives. 
But I must say, even to you, having known this injured family from
childhood, that if you suppose the girl, so deeply wronged, has not
been cruelly deluded, and would not rather die a hundred deaths
than take a cup of water from your son's hand now, you cherish a
terrible mistake.'

'Well, Rosa, well!' said Mrs. Steerforth, as the other was about to
interpose, 'it is no matter.  Let it be.  You are married, sir, I
am told?'

I answered that I had been some time married.

'And are doing well?  I hear little in the quiet life I lead, but
I understand you are beginning to be famous.'

'I have been very fortunate,' I said, 'and find my name connected
with some praise.'

'You have no mother?' - in a softened voice.

'No.'

'It is a pity,' she returned.  'She would have been proud of you. 
Good night!'

I took the hand she held out with a dignified, unbending air, and
it was as calm in mine as if her breast had been at peace.  Her
pride could still its very pulses, it appeared, and draw the placid
veil before her face, through which she sat looking straight before
her on the far distance.

As I moved away from them along the terrace, I could not help
observing how steadily they both sat gazing on the prospect, and
how it thickened and closed around them.  Here and there, some
early lamps were seen to twinkle in the distant city; and in the
eastern quarter of the sky the lurid light still hovered.  But,
from the greater part of the broad valley interposed, a mist was
rising like a sea, which, mingling with the darkness, made it seem
as if the gathering waters would encompass them.  I have reason to
remember this, and think of it with awe; for before I looked upon
those two again, a stormy sea had risen to their feet.

Reflecting on what had been thus told me, I felt it right that it
should be communicated to Mr. Peggotty.  On the following evening
I went into London in quest of him.  He was always wandering about
from place to place, with his one object of recovering his niece
before him; but was more in London than elsewhere.  Often and
often, now, had I seen him in the dead of night passing along the
streets, searching, among the few who loitered out of doors at
those untimely hours, for what he dreaded to find.

He kept a lodging over the little chandler's shop in Hungerford
Market, which I have had occasion to mention more than once, and
from which he first went forth upon his errand of mercy.  Hither I
directed my walk.  On making inquiry for him, I learned from the
people of the house that he had not gone out yet, and I should find
him in his room upstairs.

He was sitting reading by a window in which he kept a few plants. 
The room was very neat and orderly.  I saw in a moment that it was
always kept prepared for her reception, and that he never went out
but he thought it possible he might bring her home.  He had not
heard my tap at the door, and only raised his eyes when I laid my
hand upon his shoulder.

'Mas'r Davy! Thankee, sir! thankee hearty, for this visit! Sit ye
down.  You're kindly welcome, sir!'

'Mr. Peggotty,' said I, taking the chair he handed me, 'don't
expect much! I have heard some news.'

'Of Em'ly!'

He put his hand, in a nervous manner, on his mouth, and turned
pale, as he fixed his eyes on mine.

'It gives no clue to where she is; but she is not with him.'

He sat down, looking intently at me, and listened in profound
silence to all I had to tell.  I well remember the sense of
dignity, beauty even, with which the patient gravity of his face
impressed me, when, having gradually removed his eyes from mine, he
sat looking downward, leaning his forehead on his hand.  He offered
no interruption, but remained throughout perfectly still.  He
seemed to pursue her figure through the narrative, and to let every
other shape go by him, as if it were nothing.

When I had done, he shaded his face, and continued silent.  I
looked out of the window for a little while, and occupied myself
with the plants.

'How do you fare to feel about it, Mas'r Davy?' he inquired at
length.

'I think that she is living,' I replied.

'I doen't know.  Maybe the first shock was too rough, and in the
wildness of her art -! That there blue water as she used to speak
on.  Could she have thowt o' that so many year, because it was to
be her grave!'

He said this, musing, in a low, frightened voice; and walked across
the little room.

'And yet,' he added, 'Mas'r Davy, I have felt so sure as she was
living - I have know'd, awake and sleeping, as it was so trew that
I should find her - I have been so led on by it, and held up by it
- that I doen't believe I can have been deceived.  No! Em'ly's
alive!'

He put his hand down firmly on the table, and set his sunburnt face
into a resolute expression.

'My niece, Em'ly, is alive, sir!' he said, steadfastly.  'I doen't
know wheer it comes from, or how 'tis, but I am told as she's
alive!'

He looked almost like a man inspired, as he said it.  I waited for
a few moments, until he could give me his undivided attention; and
then proceeded to explain the precaution, that, it had occurred to
me last night, it would be wise to take.

'Now, my dear friend -'I began.

'Thankee, thankee, kind sir,' he said, grasping my hand in both of
his.

'If she should make her way to London, which is likely - for where
could she lose herself so readily as in this vast city; and what
would she wish to do, but lose and hide herself, if she does not go
home?  -'

'And she won't go home,' he interposed, shaking his head
mournfully.  'If she had left of her own accord, she might; not as
It was, sir.'

'If she should come here,' said I, 'I believe there is one person,
here, more likely to discover her than any other in the world.  Do
you remember - hear what I say, with fortitude - think of your
great object! - do you remember Martha?'

'Of our town?'

I needed no other answer than his face.

'Do you know that she is in London?'

'I have seen her in the streets,' he answered, with a shiver.

'But you don't know,' said I, 'that Emily was charitable to her,
with Ham's help, long before she fled from home.  Nor, that, when
we met one night, and spoke together in the room yonder, over the
way, she listened at the door.'

'Mas'r Davy!' he replied in astonishment.  'That night when it snew
so hard?'

'That night.  I have never seen her since.  I went back, after
parting from you, to speak to her, but she was gone.  I was
unwilling to mention her to you then, and I am now; but she is the
person of whom I speak, and with whom I think we should
communicate.  Do you understand?'

'Too well, sir,' he replied.  We had sunk our voices, almost to a
whisper, and continued to speak in that tone.

'You say you have seen her.  Do you think that you could find her? 
I could only hope to do so by chance.'

'I think, Mas'r Davy, I know wheer to look.'

'It is dark.  Being together, shall we go out now, and try to find
her tonight?'

He assented, and prepared to accompany me.  Without appearing to
observe what he was doing, I saw how carefully he adjusted the
little room, put a candle ready and the means of lighting it,
arranged the bed, and finally took out of a drawer one of her
dresses (I remember to have seen her wear it), neatly folded with
some other garments, and a bonnet, which he placed upon a chair. 
He made no allusion to these clothes, neither did I.  There they
had been waiting for her, many and many a night, no doubt.

'The time was, Mas'r Davy,' he said, as we came downstairs, 'when
I thowt this girl, Martha, a'most like the dirt underneath my
Em'ly's feet.  God forgive me, theer's a difference now!'

As we went along, partly to hold him in conversation, and partly to
satisfy myself, I asked him about Ham.  He said, almost in the same
words as formerly, that Ham was just the same, 'wearing away his
life with kiender no care nohow for 't; but never murmuring, and
liked by all'.

I asked him what he thought Ham's state of mind was, in reference
to the cause of their misfortunes?  Whether he believed it was
dangerous?  What he supposed, for example, Ham would do, if he and
Steerforth ever should encounter?

'I doen't know, sir,' he replied.  'I have thowt of it oftentimes,
but I can't awize myself of it, no matters.'

I recalled to his remembrance the morning after her departure, when
we were all three on the beach.  'Do you recollect,' said I, 'a
certain wild way in which he looked out to sea, and spoke about
"the end of it"?'

'Sure I do!' said he.

'What do you suppose he meant?'

'Mas'r Davy,' he replied, 'I've put the question to myself a mort
o' times, and never found no answer.  And theer's one curious thing
- that, though he is so pleasant, I wouldn't fare to feel
comfortable to try and get his mind upon 't.  He never said a wured
to me as warn't as dootiful as dootiful could be, and it ain't
likely as he'd begin to speak any other ways now; but it's fur from
being fleet water in his mind, where them thowts lays.  It's deep,
sir, and I can't see down.'

'You are right,' said I, 'and that has sometimes made me anxious.'

'And me too, Mas'r Davy,' he rejoined.  'Even more so, I do assure
you, than his ventersome ways, though both belongs to the
alteration in him.  I doen't know as he'd do violence under any
circumstances, but I hope as them two may be kep asunders.'

We had come, through Temple Bar, into the city.  Conversing no more
now, and walking at my side, he yielded himself up to the one aim
of his devoted life, and went on, with that hushed concentration of
his faculties which would have made his figure solitary in a
multitude.  We were not far from Blackfriars Bridge, when he turned
his head and pointed to a solitary female figure flitting along the
opposite side of the street.  I knew it, readily, to be the figure
that we sought.

We crossed the road, and were pressing on towards her, when it
occurred to me that she might be more disposed to feel a woman's
interest in the lost girl, if we spoke to her in a quieter place,
aloof from the crowd, and where we should be less observed.  I
advised my companion, therefore, that we should not address her
yet, but follow her; consulting in this, likewise, an indistinct
desire I had, to know where she went.

He acquiescing, we followed at a distance: never losing sight of
her, but never caring to come very near, as she frequently looked
about.  Once, she stopped to listen to a band of music; and then we
stopped too.

She went on a long way.  Still we went on.  It was evident, from
the manner in which she held her course, that she was going to some
fixed destination; and this, and her keeping in the busy streets,
and I suppose the strange fascination in the secrecy and mystery of
so following anyone, made me adhere to my first purpose.  At length
she turned into a dull, dark street, where the noise and crowd were
lost; and I said, 'We may speak to her now'; and, mending our pace,
we went after her.

CHAPTER 47
MARTHA

We were now down in Westminster.  We had turned back to follow her,
having encountered her coming towards us; and Westminster Abbey was
the point at which she passed from the lights and noise of the
leading streets.  She proceeded so quickly, when she got free of
the two currents of passengers setting towards and from the bridge,
that, between this and the advance she had of us when she struck
off, we were in the narrow water-side street by Millbank before we
came up with her.  At that moment she crossed the road, as if to
avoid the footsteps that she heard so close behind; and, without
looking back, passed on even more rapidly.

A glimpse of the river through a dull gateway, where some waggons
were housed for the night, seemed to arrest my feet.  I touched my
companion without speaking, and we both forbore to cross after her,
and both followed on that opposite side of the way; keeping as
quietly as we could in the shadow of the houses, but keeping very
near her.

There was, and is when I write, at the end of that low-lying
street, a dilapidated little wooden building, probably an obsolete
old ferry-house.  Its position is just at that point where the
street ceases, and the road begins to lie between a row of houses
and the river.  As soon as she came here, and saw the water, she
stopped as if she had come to her destination; and presently went
slowly along by the brink of the river, looking intently at it.

All the way here, I had supposed that she was going to some house;
indeed, I had vaguely entertained the hope that the house might be
in some way associated with the lost girl.  But that one dark
glimpse of the river, through the gateway, had instinctively
prepared me for her going no farther.

The neighbourhood was a dreary one at that time; as oppressive,
sad, and solitary by night, as any about London.  There were
neither wharves nor houses on the melancholy waste of road near the
great blank Prison.  A sluggish ditch deposited its mud at the
prison walls.  Coarse grass and rank weeds straggled over all the
marshy land in the vicinity.  In one part, carcases of houses,
inauspiciously begun and never finished, rotted away.  In another,
the ground was cumbered with rusty iron monsters of steam-boilers,
wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, paddles, anchors, diving-bells,
windmill-sails, and I know not what strange objects, accumulated by
some speculator, and grovelling in the dust, underneath which -
having sunk into the soil of their own weight in wet weather - they
had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves.  The clash
and glare of sundry fiery Works upon the river-side, arose by night
to disturb everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke that
poured out of their chimneys.  Slimy gaps and causeways, winding
among old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the
latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year's handbills
offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above high-water mark,
led down through the ooze and slush to the ebb-tide.  There was a
story that one of the pits dug for the dead in the time of the
Great Plague was hereabout; and a blighting influence seemed to
have proceeded from it over the whole place.  Or else it looked as
if it had gradually decomposed into that nightmare condition, out
of the overflowings of the polluted stream.

As if she were a part of the refuse it had cast out, and left to
corruption and decay, the girl we had followed strayed down to the
river's brink, and stood in the midst of this night-picture, lonely
and still, looking at the water.

There were some boats and barges astrand in the mud, and these
enabled us to come within a few yards of her without being seen. 
I then signed to Mr. Peggotty to remain where he was, and emerged
from their shade to speak to her.  I did not approach her solitary
figure without trembling; for this gloomy end to her determined
walk, and the way in which she stood, almost within the cavernous
shadow of the iron bridge, looking at the lights crookedly
reflected in the strong tide, inspired a dread within me.

I think she was talking to herself.  I am sure, although absorbed
in gazing at the water, that her shawl was off her shoulders, and
that she was muffling her hands in it, in an unsettled and
bewildered way, more like the action of a sleep-walker than a
waking person.  I know, and never can forget, that there was that
in her wild manner which gave me no assurance but that she would
sink before my eyes, until I had her arm within my grasp.

At the same moment I said 'Martha!'

She uttered a terrified scream, and struggled with me with such
strength that I doubt if I could have held her alone.  But a
stronger hand than mine was laid upon her; and when she raised her
frightened eyes and saw whose it was, she made but one more effort
and dropped down between us.  We carried her away from the water to
where there were some dry stones, and there laid her down, crying
and moaning.  In a little while she sat among the stones, holding
her wretched head with both her hands.

'Oh, the river!' she cried passionately.  'Oh, the river!'

'Hush, hush!' said I.  'Calm yourself.'

But she still repeated the same words, continually exclaiming, 'Oh,
the river!' over and over again.

'I know it's like me!' she exclaimed.  'I know that I belong to it. 
I know that it's the natural company of such as I am! It comes from
country places, where there was once no harm in it - and it creeps
through the dismal streets, defiled and miserable - and it goes
away, like my life, to a great sea, that is always troubled - and
I feel that I must go with it!'
I have never known what despair was, except in the tone of those
words.

'I can't keep away from it.  I can't forget it.  It haunts me day
and night.  It's the only thing in all the world that I am fit for,
or that's fit for me.  Oh, the dreadful river!'

The thought passed through my mind that in the face of my
companion, as he looked upon her without speech or motion, I might
have read his niece's history, if I had known nothing of it.  I
never saw, in any painting or reality, horror and compassion so
impressively blended.  He shook as if he would have fallen; and his
hand - I touched it with my own, for his appearance alarmed me -
was deadly cold.

'She is in a state of frenzy,' I whispered to him.  'She will speak
differently in a little time.'

I don't know what he would have said in answer.  He made some
motion with his mouth, and seemed to think he had spoken; but he
had only pointed to her with his outstretched hand.

A new burst of crying came upon her now, in which she once more hid
her face among the stones, and lay before us, a prostrate image of
humiliation and ruin.  Knowing that this state must pass, before we
could speak to her with any hope, I ventured to restrain him when
he would have raised her, and we stood by in silence until she
became more tranquil.

'Martha,' said I then, leaning down, and helping her to rise - she
seemed to want to rise as if with the intention of going away, but
she was weak, and leaned against a boat.  'Do you know who this is,
who is with me?'

She said faintly, 'Yes.'

'Do you know that we have followed you a long way tonight?'

She shook her head.  She looked neither at him nor at me, but stood
in a humble attitude, holding her bonnet and shawl in one hand,
without appearing conscious of them, and pressing the other,
clenched, against her forehead.

'Are you composed enough,' said I, 'to speak on the subject which
so interested you - I hope Heaven may remember it! - that snowy
night?'

Her sobs broke out afresh, and she murmured some inarticulate
thanks to me for not having driven her away from the door.

'I want to say nothing for myself,' she said, after a few moments. 
'I am bad, I am lost.  I have no hope at all.  But tell him, sir,'
she had shrunk away from him, 'if you don't feel too hard to me to
do it, that I never was in any way the cause of his misfortune.'
'It has never been attributed to you,' I returned, earnestly
responding to her earnestness.

'It was you, if I don't deceive myself,' she said, in a broken
voice, 'that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on
me; was so gentle to me; didn't shrink away from me like all the
rest, and gave me such kind help! Was it you, sir?'

'It was,' said I.

'I should have been in the river long ago,' she said, glancing at
it with a terrible expression, 'if any wrong to her had been upon
my mind.  I never could have kept out of it a single winter's
night, if I had not been free of any share in that!'

'The cause of her flight is too well understood,' I said.  'You are
innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe, - we know.'

'Oh, I might have been much the better for her, if I had had a
better heart!' exclaimed the girl, with most forlorn regret; 'for
she was always good to me! She never spoke a word to me but what
was pleasant and right.  Is it likely I would try to make her what
I am myself, knowing what I am myself, so well?  When I lost
everything that makes life dear, the worst of all my thoughts was
that I was parted for ever from her!'

Mr. Peggotty, standing with one hand on the gunwale of the boat,
and his eyes cast down, put his disengaged hand before his face.

'And when I heard what had happened before that snowy night, from
some belonging to our town,' cried Martha, 'the bitterest thought
in all my mind was, that the people would remember she once kept
company with me, and would say I had corrupted her! When, Heaven
knows, I would have died to have brought back her good name!'

Long unused to any self-control, the piercing agony of her remorse
and grief was terrible.

'To have died, would not have been much - what can I say?  - I
would have lived!' she cried.  'I would have lived to be old, in
the wretched streets - and to wander about, avoided, in the dark -
and to see the day break on the ghastly line of houses, and
remember how the same sun used to shine into my room, and wake me
once - I would have done even that, to save her!'

Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched
them up, as if she would have ground them.  She writhed into some
new posture constantly: stiffening her arms, twisting them before
her face, as though to shut out from her eyes the little light
there was, and drooping her head, as if it were heavy with
insupportable recollections.

'What shall I ever do!' she said, fighting thus with her despair. 
'How can I go on as I am, a solitary curse to myself, a living
disgrace to everyone I come near!' Suddenly she turned to my
companion.  'Stamp upon me, kill me! When she was your pride, you
would have thought I had done her harm if I had brushed against her
in the street.  You can't believe - why should you?  - a syllable
that comes out of my lips.  It would be a burning shame upon you,
even now, if she and I exchanged a word.  I don't complain.  I
don't say she and I are alike - I know there is a long, long way
between us.  I only say, with all my guilt and wretchedness upon my
head, that I am grateful to her from my soul, and love her.  Oh,
don't think that all the power I had of loving anything is quite
worn out! Throw me away, as all the world does.  Kill me for being
what I am, and having ever known her; but don't think that of me!'

He looked upon her, while she made this supplication, in a wild
distracted manner; and, when she was silent, gently raised her.

'Martha,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'God forbid as I should judge you. 
Forbid as I, of all men, should do that, my girl! You doen't know
half the change that's come, in course of time, upon me, when you
think it likely.  Well!' he paused a moment, then went on.  'You
doen't understand how 'tis that this here gentleman and me has
wished to speak to you.  You doen't understand what 'tis we has
afore us.  Listen now!'

His influence upon her was complete.  She stood, shrinkingly,
before him, as if she were afraid to meet his eyes; but her
passionate sorrow was quite hushed and mute.

'If you heerd,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'owt of what passed between
Mas'r Davy and me, th' night when it snew so hard, you know as I
have been - wheer not - fur to seek my dear niece.  My dear niece,'
he repeated steadily.  'Fur she's more dear to me now, Martha, than
she was dear afore.'

She put her hands before her face; but otherwise remained quiet.

'I have heerd her tell,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'as you was early left
fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough
seafaring-way, their place.  Maybe you can guess that if you'd had
such a friend, you'd have got into a way of being fond of him in
course of time, and that my niece was kiender daughter-like to me.'

As she was silently trembling, he put her shawl carefully about
her, taking it up from the ground for that purpose.

'Whereby,' said he, 'I know, both as she would go to the wureld's
furdest end with me, if she could once see me again; and that she
would fly to the wureld's furdest end to keep off seeing me.  For
though she ain't no call to doubt my love, and doen't - and
doen't,' he repeated, with a quiet assurance of the truth of what
he said, 'there's shame steps in, and keeps betwixt us.'

I read, in every word of his plain impressive way of delivering
himself, new evidence of his having thought of this one topic, in
every feature it presented.

'According to our reckoning,' he proceeded, 'Mas'r Davy's here, and
mine, she is like, one day, to make her own poor solitary course to
London.  We believe - Mas'r Davy, me, and all of us - that you are
as innocent of everything that has befell her, as the unborn child. 
You've spoke of her being pleasant, kind, and gentle to you.  Bless
her, I knew she was! I knew she always was, to all.  You're
thankful to her, and you love her.  Help us all you can to find
her, and may Heaven reward you!'

She looked at him hastily, and for the first time, as if she were
doubtful of what he had said.

'Will you trust me?' she asked, in a low voice of astonishment.

'Full and free!' said Mr. Peggotty.

'To speak to her, if I should ever find her; shelter her, if I have
any shelter to divide with her; and then, without her knowledge,
come to you, and bring you to her?' she asked hurriedly.

We both replied together, 'Yes!'

She lifted up her eyes, and solemnly declared that she would devote
herself to this task, fervently and faithfully.  That she would
never waver in it, never be diverted from it, never relinquish it,
while there was any chance of hope.  If she were not true to it,
might the object she now had in life, which bound her to something
devoid of evil, in its passing away from her, leave her more
forlorn and more despairing, if that were possible, than she had
been upon the river's brink that night; and then might all help,
human and Divine, renounce her evermore!

She did not raise her voice above her breath, or address us, but
said this to the night sky; then stood profoundly quiet, looking at
the gloomy water.

We judged it expedient, now, to tell her all we knew; which I
recounted at length.  She listened with great attention, and with
a face that often changed, but had the same purpose in all its
varying expressions.  Her eyes occasionally filled with tears, but
those she repressed.  It seemed as if her spirit were quite
altered, and she could not be too quiet.

She asked, when all was told, where we were to be communicated
with, if occasion should arise.  Under a dull lamp in the road, I
wrote our two addresses on a leaf of my pocket-book, which I tore
out and gave to her, and which she put in her poor bosom.  I asked
her where she lived herself.  She said, after a pause, in no place
long.  It were better not to know.

Mr. Peggotty suggesting to me, in a whisper, what had already
occurred to myself, I took out my purse; but I could not prevail
upon her to accept any money, nor could I exact any promise from
her that she would do so at another time.  I represented to her
that Mr. Peggotty could not be called, for one in his condition,
poor; and that the idea of her engaging in this search, while
depending on her own resources, shocked us both.  She continued
steadfast.  In this particular, his influence upon her was equally
powerless with mine.  She gratefully thanked him but remained
inexorable.

'There may be work to be got,' she said.  'I'll try.'

'At least take some assistance,' I returned, 'until you have
tried.'

'I could not do what I have promised, for money,' she replied.  'I
could not take it, if I was starving.  To give me money would be to
take away your trust, to take away the object that you have given
me, to take away the only certain thing that saves me from the
river.'

'In the name of the great judge,' said I, 'before whom you and all
of us must stand at His dread time, dismiss that terrible idea! We
can all do some good, if we will.'

She trembled, and her lip shook, and her face was paler, as she
answered:

'It has been put into your hearts, perhaps, to save a wretched
creature for repentance.  I am afraid to think so; it seems too
bold.  If any good should come of me, I might begin to hope; for
nothing but harm has ever come of my deeds yet.  I am to be
trusted, for the first time in a long while, with my miserable
life, on account of what you have given me to try for.  I know no
more, and I can say no more.'

Again she repressed the tears that had begun to flow; and, putting
out her trembling hand, and touching Mr. Peggotty, as if there was
some healing virtue in him, went away along the desolate road.  She
had been ill, probably for a long time.  I observed, upon that
closer opportunity of observation, that she was worn and haggard,
and that her sunken eyes expressed privation and endurance.

We followed her at a short distance, our way lying in the same
direction, until we came back into the lighted and populous
streets.  I had such implicit confidence in her declaration, that
I then put it to Mr. Peggotty, whether it would not seem, in the
onset, like distrusting her, to follow her any farther.  He being
of the same mind, and equally reliant on her, we suffered her to
take her own road, and took ours, which was towards Highgate.  He
accompanied me a good part of the way; and when we parted, with a
prayer for the success of this fresh effort, there was a new and
thoughtful compassion in him that I was at no loss to interpret.

It was midnight when I arrived at home.  I had reached my own gate,
and was standing listening for the deep bell of St. Paul's, the
sound of which I thought had been borne towards me among the
multitude of striking clocks, when I was rather surprised to see
that the door of my aunt's cottage was open, and that a faint light
in the entry was shining out across the road.

Thinking that my aunt might have relapsed into one of her old
alarms, and might be watching the progress of some imaginary
conflagration in the distance, I went to speak to her.  It was with
very great surprise that I saw a man standing in her little garden.

He had a glass and bottle in his hand, and was in the act of
drinking.  I stopped short, among the thick foliage outside, for
the moon was up now, though obscured; and I recognized the man whom
I had once supposed to be a delusion of Mr. Dick's, and had once
encountered with my aunt in the streets of the city.

He was eating as well as drinking, and seemed to eat with a hungry
appetite.  He seemed curious regarding the cottage, too, as if it
were the first time he had seen it.  After stooping to put the
bottle on the ground, he looked up at the windows, and looked
about; though with a covert and impatient air, as if he was anxious
to be gone.

The light in the passage was obscured for a moment, and my aunt
came out.  She was agitated, and told some money into his hand.  I
heard it chink.

'What's the use of this?' he demanded.

'I can spare no more,' returned my aunt.

'Then I can't go,' said he.  'Here! You may take it back!'

'You bad man,' returned my aunt, with great emotion; 'how can you
use me so?  But why do I ask?  It is because you know how weak I
am! What have I to do, to free myself for ever of your visits, but
to abandon you to your deserts?'

'And why don't you abandon me to my deserts?' said he.

'You ask me why!' returned my aunt.  'What a heart you must have!'

He stood moodily rattling the money, and shaking his head, until at
length he said:

'Is this all you mean to give me, then?'

'It is all I CAN give you,' said my aunt.  'You know I have had
losses, and am poorer than I used to be.  I have told you so. 
Having got it, why do you give me the pain of looking at you for
another moment, and seeing what you have become?'

'I have become shabby enough, if you mean that,' he said.  'I lead
the life of an owl.'

'You stripped me of the greater part of all I ever had,' said my
aunt.  'You closed my heart against the whole world, years and
years.  You treated me falsely, ungratefully, and cruelly.  Go, and
repent of it.  Don't add new injuries to the long, long list of
injuries you have done me!'

'Aye!' he returned.  'It's all very fine - Well! I must do the best
I can, for the present, I suppose.'

In spite of himself, he appeared abashed by my aunt's indignant
tears, and came slouching out of the garden.  Taking two or three
quick steps, as if I had just come up, I met him at the gate, and
went in as he came out.  We eyed one another narrowly in passing,
and with no favour.

'Aunt,' said I, hurriedly.  'This man alarming you again! Let me
speak to him.  Who is he?'

'Child,' returned my aunt, taking my arm, 'come in, and don't speak
to me for ten minutes.'

We sat down in her little parlour.  My aunt retired behind the
round green fan of former days, which was screwed on the back of a
chair, and occasionally wiped her eyes, for about a quarter of an
hour.  Then she came out, and took a seat beside me.

'Trot,' said my aunt, calmly, 'it's my husband.'

'Your husband, aunt?  I thought he had been dead!'

'Dead to me,' returned my aunt, 'but living.'

I sat in silent amazement.

'Betsey Trotwood don't look a likely subject for the tender
passion,' said my aunt, composedly, 'but the time was, Trot, when
she believed in that man most entirely.  When she loved him, Trot,
right well.  When there was no proof of attachment and affection
that she would not have given him.  He repaid her by breaking her
fortune, and nearly breaking her heart.  So she put all that sort
of sentiment, once and for ever, in a grave, and filled it up, and
flattened it down.'

'My dear, good aunt!'

'I left him,' my aunt proceeded, laying her hand as usual on the
back of mine, 'generously.  I may say at this distance of time,
Trot, that I left him generously.  He had been so cruel to me, that
I might have effected a separation on easy terms for myself; but I
did not.  He soon made ducks and drakes of what I gave him, sank
lower and lower, married another woman, I believe, became an
adventurer, a gambler, and a cheat.  What he is now, you see.  But
he was a fine-looking man when I married him,' said my aunt, with
an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone; 'and I
believed him - I was a fool! - to be the soul of honour!'

She gave my hand a squeeze, and shook her head.

'He is nothing to me now, Trot- less than nothing.  But, sooner
than have him punished for his offences (as he would be if he
prowled about in this country), I give him more money than I can
afford, at intervals when he reappears, to go away.  I was a fool
when I married him; and I am so far an incurable fool on that
subject, that, for the sake of what I once believed him to be, I
wouldn't have even this shadow of my idle fancy hardly dealt with. 
For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman was.'

MY aunt dismissed the matter with a heavy sigh, and smoothed her
dress.

'There, my dear!' she said.  'Now you know the beginning, middle,
and end, and all about it.  We won't mention the subject to one
another any more; neither, of course, will you mention it to
anybody else.  This is my grumpy, frumpy story, and we'll keep it
to ourselves, Trot!'

CHAPTER 48
DOMESTIC

I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with
the punctual discharge of my newspaper duties; and it came out and
was very successful.  I was not stunned by the praise which sounded
in my ears, notwithstanding that I was keenly alive to it, and
thought better of my own performance, I have little doubt, than
anybody else did.  It has always been in my observation of human
nature, that a man who has any good reason to believe in himself
never flourishes himself before the faces of other people in order
that they may believe in him.  For this reason, I retained my
modesty in very self-respect; and the more praise I got, the more
I tried to deserve.

It is not my purpose, in this record, though in all other
essentials it is my written memory, to pursue the history of my own
fictions.  They express themselves, and I leave them to themselves. 
When I refer to them, incidentally, it is only as a part of my
progress.

Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature and
accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with
confidence.  Without such assurance I should certainly have left it
alone, and bestowed my energy on some other endeavour.  I should
have tried to find out what nature and accident really had made me,
and to be that, and nothing else.
I had been writing, in the newspaper and elsewhere, so
prosperously, that when my new success was achieved, I considered
myself reasonably entitled to escape from the dreary debates.  One
joyful night, therefore, I noted down the music of the
parliamentary bagpipes for the last time, and I have never heard it
since; though I still recognize the old drone in the newspapers,
without any substantial variation (except, perhaps, that there is
more of it), all the livelong session.

I now write of the time when I had been married, I suppose, about
a year and a half.  After several varieties of experiment, we had
given up the housekeeping as a bad job.  The house kept itself, and
we kept a page.  The principal function of this retainer was to
quarrel with the cook; in which respect he was a perfect
Whittington, without his cat, or the remotest chance of being made
Lord Mayor.

He appears to me to have lived in a hail of saucepan-lids.  His
whole existence was a scuffle.  He would shriek for help on the
most improper occasions, - as when we had a little dinner-party, or
a few friends in the evening, - and would come tumbling out of the
kitchen, with iron missiles flying after him.  We wanted to get rid
of him, but he was very much attached to us, and wouldn't go.  He
was a tearful boy, and broke into such deplorable lamentations,
when a cessation of our connexion was hinted at, that we were
obliged to keep him.  He had no mother - no anything in the way of
a relative, that I could discover, except a sister, who fled to
America the moment we had taken him off her hands; and he became
quartered on us like a horrible young changeling.  He had a lively
perception of his own unfortunate state, and was always rubbing his
eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, or stooping to blow his nose on
the extreme corner of a little pocket-handkerchief, which he never
would take completely out of his pocket, but always economized and
secreted.

This unlucky page, engaged in an evil hour at six pounds ten per
annum, was a source of continual trouble to me.  I watched him as
he grew - and he grew like scarlet beans - with painful
apprehensions of the time when he would begin to shave; even of the
days when he would be bald or grey.  I saw no prospect of ever
getting rid of him; and, projecting myself into the future, used to
think what an inconvenience he would be when he was an old man.

I never expected anything less, than this unfortunate's manner of
getting me out of my difficulty.  He stole Dora's watch, which,
like everything else belonging to us, had no particular place of
its own; and, converting it into money, spent the produce (he was
always a weak-minded boy) in incessantly riding up and down between
London and Uxbridge outside the coach.  He was taken to Bow Street,
as well as I remember, on the completion of his fifteenth journey;
when four-and-sixpence, and a second-hand fife which he couldn't
play, were found upon his person.

The surprise and its consequences would have been much less
disagreeable to me if he had not been penitent.  But he was very
penitent indeed, and in a peculiar way - not in the lump, but by
instalments.  For example: the day after that on which I was
obliged to appear against him, he made certain revelations touching
a hamper in the cellar, which we believed to be full of wine, but
which had nothing in it except bottles and corks.  We supposed he
had now eased his mind, and told the worst he knew of the cook;
but, a day or two afterwards, his conscience sustained a new
twinge, and he disclosed how she had a little girl, who, early
every morning, took away our bread; and also how he himself had
been suborned to maintain the milkman in coals.  In two or three
days more, I was informed by the authorities of his having led to
the discovery of sirloins of beef among the kitchen-stuff, and
sheets in the rag-bag.  A little while afterwards, he broke out in
an entirely new direction, and confessed to a knowledge of
burglarious intentions as to our premises, on the part of the
pot-boy, who was immediately taken up.  I got to be so ashamed of
being such a victim, that I would have given him any money to hold
his tongue, or would have offered a round bribe for his being
permitted to run away.  It was an aggravating circumstance in the
case that he had no idea of this, but conceived that he was making
me amends in every new discovery: not to say, heaping obligations
on my head.

At last I ran away myself, whenever I saw an emissary of the police
approaching with some new intelligence; and lived a stealthy life
until he was tried and ordered to be transported.  Even then he
couldn't be quiet, but was always writing us letters; and wanted so
much to see Dora before he went away, that Dora went to visit him,
and fainted when she found herself inside the iron bars.  In short,
I had no peace of my life until he was expatriated, and made (as I
afterwards heard) a shepherd of, 'up the country' somewhere; I have
no geographical idea where.

All this led me into some serious reflections, and presented our
mistakes in a new aspect; as I could not help communicating to Dora
one evening, in spite of my tenderness for her.

'My love,' said I, 'it is very painful to me to think that our want
of system and management, involves not only ourselves (which we
have got used to), but other people.'

'You have been silent for a long time, and now you are going to be
cross!' said Dora.

'No, my dear, indeed! Let me explain to you what I mean.'

'I think I don't want to know,' said Dora.

'But I want you to know, my love.  Put Jip down.'

Dora put his nose to mine, and said 'Boh!' to drive my seriousness
away; but, not succeeding, ordered him into his Pagoda, and sat
looking at me, with her hands folded, and a most resigned little
expression of countenance.

'The fact is, my dear,' I began, 'there is contagion in us.  We
infect everyone about us.'

I might have gone on in this figurative manner, if Dora's face had
not admonished me that she was wondering with all her might whether
I was going to propose any new kind of vaccination, or other
medical remedy, for this unwholesome state of ours.  Therefore I
checked myself, and made my meaning plainer.

'It is not merely, my pet,' said I, 'that we lose money and
comfort, and even temper sometimes, by not learning to be more
careful; but that we incur the serious responsibility of spoiling
everyone who comes into our service, or has any dealings with us. 
I begin to be afraid that the fault is not entirely on one side,
but that these people all turn out ill because we don't turn out
very well ourselves.'

'Oh, what an accusation,' exclaimed Dora, opening her eyes wide;
'to say that you ever saw me take gold watches! Oh!'

'My dearest,' I remonstrated, 'don't talk preposterous nonsense!
Who has made the least allusion to gold watches?'

'You did,' returned Dora.  'You know you did.  You said I hadn't
turned out well, and compared me to him.'

'To whom?' I asked.

'To the page,' sobbed Dora.  'Oh, you cruel fellow, to compare your
affectionate wife to a transported page! Why didn't you tell me
your opinion of me before we were married?  Why didn't you say, you
hard-hearted thing, that you were convinced I was worse than a
transported page?  Oh, what a dreadful opinion to have of me! Oh,
my goodness!'

'Now, Dora, my love,' I returned, gently trying to remove the
handkerchief she pressed to her eyes, 'this is not only very
ridiculous of you, but very wrong.  In the first place, it's not
true.'

'You always said he was a story-teller,' sobbed Dora.  'And now you
say the same of me! Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!'

'My darling girl,' I retorted, 'I really must entreat you to be
reasonable, and listen to what I did say, and do say.  My dear
Dora, unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they
will never learn to do their duty to us.  I am afraid we present
opportunities to people to do wrong, that never ought to be
presented.  Even if we were as lax as we are, in all our
arrangements, by choice - which we are not - even if we liked it,
and found it agreeable to be so - which we don't - I am persuaded
we should have no right to go on in this way.  We are positively
corrupting people.  We are bound to think of that.  I can't help
thinking of it, Dora.  It is a reflection I am unable to dismiss,
and it sometimes makes me very uneasy.  There, dear, that's all. 
Come now.  Don't be foolish!'

Dora would not allow me, for a long time, to remove the
handkerchief.  She sat sobbing and murmuring behind it, that, if I
was uneasy, why had I ever been married?  Why hadn't I said, even
the day before we went to church, that I knew I should be uneasy,
and I would rather not?  If I couldn't bear her, why didn't I send
her away to her aunts at Putney, or to Julia Mills in India?  Julia
would be glad to see her, and would not call her a transported
page; Julia never had called her anything of the sort.  In short,
Dora was so afflicted, and so afflicted me by being in that
condition, that I felt it was of no use repeating this kind of
effort, though never so mildly, and I must take some other course.

What other course was left to take?  To 'form her mind'?  This was
a common phrase of words which had a fair and promising sound, and
I resolved to form Dora's mind.

I began immediately.  When Dora was very childish, and I would have
infinitely preferred to humour her, I tried to be grave - and
disconcerted her, and myself too.  I talked to her on the subjects
which occupied my thoughts; and I read Shakespeare to her - and
fatigued her to the last degree.  I accustomed myself to giving
her, as it were quite casually, little scraps of useful
information, or sound opinion - and she started from them when I
let them off, as if they had been crackers.  No matter how
incidentally or naturally I endeavoured to form my little wife's
mind, I could not help seeing that she always had an instinctive
perception of what I was about, and became a prey to the keenest
apprehensions.  In particular, it was clear to me, that she thought
Shakespeare a terrible fellow.  The formation went on very slowly.

I pressed Traddles into the service without his knowledge; and
whenever he came to see us, exploded my mines upon him for the
edification of Dora at second hand.  The amount of practical wisdom
I bestowed upon Traddles in this manner was immense, and of the
best quality; but it had no other effect upon Dora than to depress
her spirits, and make her always nervous with the dread that it
would be her turn next.  I found myself in the condition of a
schoolmaster, a trap, a pitfall; of always playing spider to Dora's
fly, and always pouncing out of my hole to her infinite
disturbance.

Still, looking forward through this intermediate stage, to the time
when there should be a perfect sympathy between Dora and me, and
when I should have 'formed her mind' to my entire satisfaction, I
persevered, even for months.  Finding at last, however, that,
although I had been all this time a very porcupine or hedgehog,
bristling all over with determination, I had effected nothing, it
began to occur to me that perhaps Dora's mind was already formed.

On further consideration this appeared so likely, that I abandoned
my scheme, which had had a more promising appearance in words than
in action; resolving henceforth to be satisfied with my child-wife,
and to try to change her into nothing else by any process.  I was
heartily tired of being sagacious and prudent by myself, and of
seeing my darling under restraint; so I bought a pretty pair of
ear-rings for her, and a collar for Jip, and went home one day to
make myself agreeable.

Dora was delighted with the little presents, and kissed me
joyfully; but there was a shadow between us, however slight, and I
had made up my mind that it should not be there.  If there must be
such a shadow anywhere, I would keep it for the future in my own
breast.

I sat down by my wife on the sofa, and put the ear-rings in her
ears; and then I told her that I feared we had not been quite as
good company lately, as we used to be, and that the fault was mine. 
Which I sincerely felt, and which indeed it was.

'The truth is, Dora, my life,' I said; 'I have been trying to be
wise.'

'And to make me wise too,' said Dora, timidly.  'Haven't you,
Doady?'

I nodded assent to the pretty inquiry of the raised eyebrows, and
kissed the parted lips.

'It's of not a bit of use,' said Dora, shaking her head, until the
ear-rings rang again.  'You know what a little thing I am, and what
I wanted you to call me from the first.  If you can't do so, I am
afraid you'll never like me.  Are you sure you don't think,
sometimes, it would have been better to have -'

'Done what, my dear?' For she made no effort to proceed.

'Nothing!' said Dora.

'Nothing?' I repeated.

She put her arms round my neck, and laughed, and called herself by
her favourite name of a goose, and hid her face on my shoulder in
such a profusion of curls that it was quite a task to clear them
away and see it.

'Don't I think it would have been better to have done nothing, than
to have tried to form my little wife's mind?' said I, laughing at
myself.  'Is that the question?  Yes, indeed, I do.'

'Is that what you have been trying?' cried Dora.  'Oh what a
shocking boy!'

'But I shall never try any more,' said I.  'For I love her dearly
as she is.'

'Without a story - really?' inquired Dora, creeping closer to me.

'Why should I seek to change,' said I, 'what has been so precious
to me for so long! You never can show better than as your own
natural self, my sweet Dora; and we'll try no conceited
experiments, but go back to our old way, and be happy.'

'And be happy!' returned Dora.  'Yes! All day! And you won't mind
things going a tiny morsel wrong, sometimes?'

'No, no,' said I.  'We must do the best we can.'

'And you won't tell me, any more, that we make other people bad,'
coaxed Dora; 'will you?  Because you know it's so dreadfully
cross!'

'No, no,' said I.

'it's better for me to be stupid than uncomfortable, isn't it?'
said Dora.

'Better to be naturally Dora than anything else in the world.'

'In the world! Ah, Doady, it's a large place!'

She shook her head, turned her delighted bright eyes up to mine,
kissed me, broke into a merry laugh, and sprang away to put on
Jip's new collar.

So ended my last attempt to make any change in Dora.  I had been
unhappy in trying it; I could not endure my own solitary wisdom; I
could not reconcile it with her former appeal to me as my
child-wife.  I resolved to do what I could, in a quiet way, to
improve our proceedings myself, but I foresaw that my utmost would
be very little, or I must degenerate into the spider again, and be
for ever lying in wait.

And the shadow I have mentioned, that was not to be between us any
more, but was to rest wholly on my own heart?  How did that fall?

The old unhappy feeling pervaded my life.  It was deepened, if it
were changed at all; but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed
me like a strain of sorrowful music faintly heard in the night.  I
loved my wife dearly, and I was happy; but the happiness I had
vaguely anticipated, once, was not the happiness I enjoyed, and
there was always something wanting.

In fulfilment of the compact I have made with myself, to reflect my
mind on this paper, I again examine it, closely, and bring its
secrets to the light.  What I missed, I still regarded - I always
regarded - as something that had been a dream of my youthful fancy;
that was incapable of realization; that I was now discovering to be
so, with some natural pain, as all men did.  But that it would have
been better for me if my wife could have helped me more, and shared
the many thoughts in which I had no partner; and that this might
have been; I knew.

Between these two irreconcilable conclusions: the one, that what I
felt was general and unavoidable; the other, that it was particular
to me, and might have been different: I balanced curiously, with no
distinct sense of their opposition to each other.  When I thought
of the airy dreams of youth that are incapable of realization, I
thought of the better state preceding manhood that I had outgrown;
and then the contented days with Agnes, in the dear old house,
arose before me, like spectres of the dead, that might have some
renewal in another world, but never more could be reanimated here.

Sometimes, the speculation came into my thoughts, What might have
happened, or what would have happened, if Dora and I had never
known each other?  But she was so incorporated with my existence,
that it was the idlest of all fancies, and would soon rise out of
my reach and sight, like gossamer floating in the air.

I always loved her.  What I am describing, slumbered, and half
awoke, and slept again, in the innermost recesses of my mind. 
There was no evidence of it in me; I know of no influence it had in
anything I said or did.  I bore the weight of all our little cares,
and all my projects; Dora held the pens; and we both felt that our
shares were adjusted as the case required.  She was truly fond of
me, and proud of me; and when Agnes wrote a few earnest words in
her letters to Dora, of the pride and interest with which my old
friends heard of my growing reputation, and read my book as if they
heard me speaking its contents, Dora read them out to me with tears
of joy in her bright eyes, and said I was a dear old clever, famous
boy.

'The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.'  Those
words of Mrs. Strong's were constantly recurring to me, at this
time; were almost always present to my mind.  I awoke with them,
often, in the night; I remember to have even read them, in dreams,
inscribed upon the walls of houses.  For I knew, now, that my own
heart was undisciplined when it first loved Dora; and that if it
had been disciplined, it never could have felt, when we were
married, what it had felt in its secret experience.

'There can be no disparity in marriage, like unsuitability of mind
and purpose.'  Those words I remembered too.  I had endeavoured to
adapt Dora to myself, and found it impracticable.  It remained for
me to adapt myself to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be
happy; to bear on my own shoulders what I must, and be happy still. 
This was the discipline to which I tried to bring my heart, when I
began to think.  It made my second year much happier than my first;
and, what was better still, made Dora's life all sunshine.

But, as that year wore on, Dora was not strong.  I had hoped that
lighter hands than mine would help to mould her character, and that
a baby-smile upon her breast might change my child-wife to a woman. 
It was not to be.  The spirit fluttered for a moment on the
threshold of its little prison, and, unconscious of captivity, took
wing.

'When I can run about again, as I used to do, aunt,' said Dora, 'I
shall make Jip race.  He is getting quite slow and lazy.'

'I suspect, my dear,' said my aunt quietly working by her side, 'he
has a worse disorder than that.  Age, Dora.'

'Do you think he is old?' said Dora, astonished.  'Oh, how strange
it seems that Jip should be old!'

'It's a complaint we are all liable to, Little One, as we get on in
life,' said my aunt, cheerfully; 'I don't feel more free from it
than I used to be, I assure you.'

'But Jip,' said Dora, looking at him with compassion, 'even little
Jip! Oh, poor fellow!'

'I dare say he'll last a long time yet, Blossom,' said my aunt,
patting Dora on the cheek, as she leaned out of her couch to look
at Jip, who responded by standing on his hind legs, and baulking
himself in various asthmatic attempts to scramble up by the head
and shoulders.  'He must have a piece of flannel in his house this
winter, and I shouldn't wonder if he came out quite fresh again,
with the flowers in the spring.  Bless the little dog!' exclaimed
my aunt, 'if he had as many lives as a cat, and was on the point of
losing 'em all, he'd bark at me with his last breath, I believe!'

Dora had helped him up on the sofa; where he really was defying my
aunt to such a furious extent, that he couldn't keep straight, but
barked himself sideways.  The more my aunt looked at him, the more
he reproached her; for she had lately taken to spectacles, and for
some inscrutable reason he considered the glasses personal.

Dora made him lie down by her, with a good deal of persuasion; and
when he was quiet, drew one of his long ears through and through
her hand, repeating thoughtfully, 'Even little Jip! Oh, poor
fellow!'

'His lungs are good enough,' said my aunt, gaily, 'and his dislikes
are not at all feeble.  He has a good many years before him, no
doubt.  But if you want a dog to race with, Little Blossom, he has
lived too well for that, and I'll give you one.'

'Thank you, aunt,' said Dora, faintly.  'But don't, please!'

'No?' said my aunt, taking off her spectacles.

'I couldn't have any other dog but Jip,' said Dora.  'It would be
so unkind to Jip! Besides, I couldn't be such friends with any
other dog but Jip; because he wouldn't have known me before I was
married, and wouldn't have barked at Doady when he first came to
our house.  I couldn't care for any other dog but Jip, I am afraid,
aunt.'

'To be sure!' said my aunt, patting her cheek again.  'You are
right.'

'You are not offended,' said Dora.  'Are you?'

'Why, what a sensitive pet it is!' cried my aunt, bending over her
affectionately.  'To think that I could be offended!'

'No, no, I didn't really think so,' returned Dora; 'but I am a
little tired, and it made me silly for a moment - I am always a
silly little thing, you know, but it made me more silly - to talk
about Jip.  He has known me in all that has happened to me, haven't
you, Jip?  And I couldn't bear to slight him, because he was a
little altered - could I, Jip?'

Jip nestled closer to his mistress, and lazily licked her hand.

'You are not so old, Jip, are you, that you'll leave your mistress
yet?' said Dora.  'We may keep one another company a little
longer!'

My pretty Dora! When she came down to dinner on the ensuing Sunday,
and was so glad to see old Traddles (who always dined with us on
Sunday), we thought she would be 'running about as she used to do',
in a few days.  But they said, wait a few days more; and then, wait
a few days more; and still she neither ran nor walked.  She looked
very pretty, and was very merry; but the little feet that used to
be so nimble when they danced round Jip, were dull and motionless.

I began to carry her downstairs every morning, and upstairs every
night.  She would clasp me round the neck and laugh, the while, as
if I did it for a wager.  Jip would bark and caper round us, and go
on before, and look back on the landing, breathing short, to see
that we were coming.  My aunt, the best and most cheerful of
nurses, would trudge after us, a moving mass of shawls and pillows. 
Mr. Dick would not have relinquished his post of candle-bearer to
anyone alive.  Traddles would be often at the bottom of the
staircase, looking on, and taking charge of sportive messages from
Dora to the dearest girl in the world.  We made quite a gay
procession of it, and my child-wife was the gayest there.

But, sometimes, when I took her up, and felt that she was lighter
in my arms, a dead blank feeling came upon me, as if I were
approaching to some frozen region yet unseen, that numbed my life. 
I avoided the recognition of this feeling by any name, or by any
communing with myself; until one night, when it was very strong
upon me, and my aunt had left her with a parting cry of 'Good
night, Little Blossom,' I sat down at my desk alone, and cried to
think, Oh what a fatal name it was, and how the blossom withered in
its bloom upon the tree!

CHAPTER 49
I AM INVOLVED IN MYSTERY

I received one morning by the post, the following letter, dated
Canterbury, and addressed to me at Doctor's Commons; which I read
with some surprise:

'MY DEAR SIR,

'Circumstances beyond my individual control have, for a
considerable lapse of time, effected a severance of that intimacy
which, in the limited opportunities conceded to me in the midst of
my professional duties, of contemplating the scenes and events of
the past, tinged by the prismatic hues of memory, has ever afforded
me, as it ever must continue to afford, gratifying emotions of no
common description.  This fact, my dear sir, combined with the
distinguished elevation to which your talents have raised you,
deters me from presuming to aspire to the liberty of addressing the
companion of my youth, by the familiar appellation of Copperfield!
It is sufficient to know that the name to which I do myself the
honour to refer, will ever be treasured among the muniments of our
house (I allude to the archives connected with our former lodgers,
preserved by Mrs. Micawber), with sentiments of personal esteem
amounting to affection.

'It is not for one, situated, through his original errors and a
fortuitous combination of unpropitious events, as is the foundered
Bark (if he may be allowed to assume so maritime a denomination),
who now takes up the pen to address you - it is not, I repeat, for
one so circumstanced, to adopt the language of compliment, or of
congratulation.  That he leaves to abler and to purer hands.

'If your more important avocations should admit of your ever
tracing these imperfect characters thus far - which may be, or may
not be, as circumstances arise - you will naturally inquire by what
object am I influenced, then, in inditing the present missive? 
Allow me to say that I fully defer to the reasonable character of
that inquiry, and proceed to develop it; premising that it is not
an object of a pecuniary nature.

'Without more directly referring to any latent ability that may
possibly exist on my part, of wielding the thunderbolt, or
directing the devouring and avenging flame in any quarter, I may be
permitted to observe, in passing, that my brightest visions are for
ever dispelled - that my peace is shattered and my power of
enjoyment destroyed - that my heart is no longer in the right place
- and that I no more walk erect before my fellow man.  The canker
is in the flower.  The cup is bitter to the brim.  The worm is at
his work, and will soon dispose of his victim.  The sooner the
better.  But I will not digress.
'Placed in a mental position of peculiar painfulness, beyond the
assuaging reach even of Mrs. Micawber's influence, though exercised
in the tripartite character of woman, wife, and mother, it is my
intention to fly from myself for a short period, and devote a
respite of eight-and-forty hours to revisiting some metropolitan
scenes of past enjoyment.  Among other havens of domestic
tranquillity and peace of mind, my feet will naturally tend towards
the King's Bench Prison.  In stating that I shall be (D. V.) on the
outside of the south wall of that place of incarceration on civil
process, the day after tomorrow, at seven in the evening,
precisely, my object in this epistolary communication is
accomplished.

'I do not feel warranted in soliciting my former friend Mr.
Copperfield, or my former friend Mr. Thomas Traddles of the Inner
Temple, if that gentleman is still existent and forthcoming, to
condescend to meet me, and renew (so far as may be) our past
relations of the olden time.  I confine myself to throwing out the
observation, that, at the hour and place I have indicated, may be
found such ruined vestiges as yet
               'Remain,
                    'Of
                         'A
                              'Fallen Tower,
                                   'WILKINS MICAWBER.

'P.S.  It may be advisable to superadd to the above, the statement
that Mrs. Micawber is not in confidential possession of my
intentions.'

I read the letter over several times.  Making due allowance for Mr.
Micawber's lofty style of composition, and for the extraordinary
relish with which he sat down and wrote long letters on all
possible and impossible occasions, I still believed that something
important lay hidden at the bottom of this roundabout
communication.  I put it down, to think about it; and took it up
again, to read it once more; and was still pursuing it, when
Traddles found me in the height of my perplexity.

'My dear fellow,' said I, 'I never was better pleased to see you. 
You come to give me the benefit of your sober judgement at a most
opportune time.  I have received a very singular letter, Traddles,
from Mr. Micawber.'

'No?' cried Traddles.  'You don't say so?  And I have received one
from Mrs. Micawber!'

With that, Traddles, who was flushed with walking, and whose hair,
under the combined effects of exercise and excitement, stood on end
as if he saw a cheerful ghost, produced his letter and made an
exchange with me.  I watched him into the heart of Mr. Micawber's
letter, and returned the elevation of eyebrows with which he said
"'Wielding the thunderbolt, or directing the devouring and avenging
flame!" Bless me, Copperfield!'- and then entered on the perusal of
Mrs. Micawber's epistle.

It ran thus:

'My best regards to Mr. Thomas Traddles, and if he should still
remember one who formerly had the happiness of being well
acquainted with him, may I beg a few moments of his leisure time? 
I assure Mr. T. T. that I would not intrude upon his kindness, were
I in any other position than on the confines of distraction.

'Though harrowing to myself to mention, the alienation of Mr.
Micawber (formerly so domesticated) from his wife and family, is
the cause of my addressing my unhappy appeal to Mr. Traddles, and
soliciting his best indulgence.  Mr. T. can form no adequate idea
of the change in Mr. Micawber's conduct, of his wildness, of his
violence.  It has gradually augmented, until it assumes the
appearance of aberration of intellect.  Scarcely a day passes, I
assure Mr. Traddles, on which some paroxysm does not take place. 
Mr. T. will not require me to depict my feelings, when I inform him
that I have become accustomed to hear Mr. Micawber assert that he
has sold himself to the D.  Mystery and secrecy have long been his
principal characteristic, have long replaced unlimited confidence. 
The slightest provocation, even being asked if there is anything he
would prefer for dinner, causes him to express a wish for a
separation.  Last night, on being childishly solicited for
twopence, to buy 'lemon-stunners' - a local sweetmeat - he
presented an oyster-knife at the twins!

'I entreat Mr. Traddles to bear with me in entering into these
details.  Without them, Mr. T. would indeed find it difficult to
form the faintest conception of my heart-rending situation.

'May I now venture to confide to Mr. T. the purport of my letter? 
Will he now allow me to throw myself on his friendly consideration? 
Oh yes, for I know his heart!

'The quick eye of affection is not easily blinded, when of the
female sex.  Mr. Micawber is going to London.  Though he studiously
concealed his hand, this morning before breakfast, in writing the
direction-card which he attached to the little brown valise of
happier days, the eagle-glance of matrimonial anxiety detected, d,
o, n, distinctly traced.  The West-End destination of the coach, is
the Golden Cross.  Dare I fervently implore Mr. T. to see my
misguided husband, and to reason with him?  Dare I ask Mr. T. to
endeavour to step in between Mr. Micawber and his agonized family? 
Oh no, for that would be too much!

'If Mr. Copperfield should yet remember one unknown to fame, will
Mr. T. take charge of my unalterable regards and similar
entreaties?  In any case, he will have the benevolence to consider
this communication strictly private, and on no account whatever to
be alluded to, however distantly, in the presence of Mr. Micawber. 
If Mr. T. should ever reply to it (which I cannot but feel to be
most improbable), a letter addressed to M. E., Post Office,
Canterbury, will be fraught with less painful consequences than any
addressed immediately to one, who subscribes herself, in extreme
distress,

'Mr. Thomas Traddles's respectful friend and suppliant,

                                   'EMMA MICAWBER.'

'What do you think of that letter?' said Traddles, casting his eyes
upon me, when I had read it twice.

'What do you think of the other?' said I.  For he was still reading
it with knitted brows.

'I think that the two together, Copperfield,' replied Traddles,
'mean more than Mr. and Mrs. Micawber usually mean in their
correspondence - but I don't know what.  They are both written in
good faith, I have no doubt, and without any collusion.  Poor
thing!' he was now alluding to Mrs. Micawber's letter, and we were
standing side by side comparing the two; 'it will be a charity to
write to her, at all events, and tell her that we will not fail to
see Mr. Micawber.'

I acceded to this the more readily, because I now reproached myself
with having treated her former letter rather lightly.  It had set
me thinking a good deal at the time, as I have mentioned in its
place; but my absorption in my own affairs, my experience of the
family, and my hearing nothing more, had gradually ended in my
dismissing the subject.  I had often thought of the Micawbers, but
chiefly to wonder what 'pecuniary liabilities' they were
establishing in Canterbury, and to recall how shy Mr. Micawber was
of me when he became clerk to Uriah Heep.

However, I now wrote a comforting letter to Mrs. Micawber, in our
joint names, and we both signed it.  As we walked into town to post
it, Traddles and I held a long conference, and launched into a
number of speculations, which I need not repeat.  We took my aunt
into our counsels in the afternoon; but our only decided conclusion
was, that we would be very punctual in keeping Mr. Micawber's
appointment.

Although we appeared at the stipulated place a quarter of an hour
before the time, we found Mr. Micawber already there.  He was
standing with his arms folded, over against the wall, looking at
the spikes on the top, with a sentimental expression, as if they
were the interlacing boughs of trees that had shaded him in his
youth.

When we accosted him, his manner was something more confused, and
something less genteel, than of yore.  He had relinquished his
legal suit of black for the purposes of this excursion, and wore
the old surtout and tights, but not quite with the old air.  He
gradually picked up more and more of it as we conversed with him;
but, his very eye-glass seemed to hang less easily, and his
shirt-collar, though still of the old formidable dimensions, rather
drooped.

'Gentlemen!' said Mr. Micawber, after the first salutations, 'you
are friends in need, and friends indeed.  Allow me to offer my
inquiries with reference to the physical welfare of Mrs.
Copperfield in esse, and Mrs. Traddles in posse, - presuming, that
is to say, that my friend Mr. Traddles is not yet united to the
object of his affections, for weal and for woe.'

We acknowledged his politeness, and made suitable replies.  He then
directed our attention to the wall, and was beginning, 'I assure
you, gentlemen,' when I ventured to object to that ceremonious form
of address, and to beg that he would speak to us in the old way.

'My dear Copperfield,' he returned, pressing my hand, 'your
cordiality overpowers me.  This reception of a shattered fragment
of the Temple once called Man - if I may be permitted so to express
myself - bespeaks a heart that is an honour to our common nature. 
I was about to observe that I again behold the serene spot where
some of the happiest hours of my existence fleeted by.'

'Made so, I am sure, by Mrs. Micawber,' said I.  'I hope she is
well?'

'Thank you,' returned Mr. Micawber, whose face clouded at this
reference, 'she is but so-so.  And this,' said Mr. Micawber,
nodding his head sorrowfully, 'is the Bench! Where, for the first
time in many revolving years, the overwhelming pressure of
pecuniary liabilities was not proclaimed, from day to day, by
importune voices declining to vacate the passage; where there was
no knocker on the door for any creditor to appeal to; where
personal service of process was not required, and detainees were
merely lodged at the gate! Gentlemen,' said Mr. Micawber, 'when the
shadow of that iron-work on the summit of the brick structure has
been reflected on the gravel of the Parade, I have seen my children
thread the mazes of the intricate pattern, avoiding the dark marks. 
I have been familiar with every stone in the place.  If I betray
weakness, you will know how to excuse me.'

'We have all got on in life since then, Mr. Micawber,' said I.

'Mr. Copperfield,' returned Mr. Micawber, bitterly, 'when I was an
inmate of that retreat I could look my fellow-man in the face, and
punch his head if he offended me.  My fellow-man and myself are no
longer on those glorious terms!'

Turning from the building in a downcast manner, Mr. Micawber
accepted my proffered arm on one side, and the proffered arm of
Traddles on the other, and walked away between us.

'There are some landmarks,' observed Mr. Micawber, looking fondly
back over his shoulder, 'on the road to the tomb, which, but for
the impiety of the aspiration, a man would wish never to have
passed.  Such is the Bench in my chequered career.'

'Oh, you are in low spirits, Mr. Micawber,' said Traddles.

'I am, sir,' interposed Mr. Micawber.

'I hope,' said Traddles, 'it is not because you have conceived a
dislike to the law - for I am a lawyer myself, you know.'

Mr. Micawber answered not a word.

'How is our friend Heep, Mr. Micawber?' said I, after a silence.

'My dear Copperfield,' returned Mr. Micawber, bursting into a state
of much excitement, and turning pale, 'if you ask after my employer
as your friend, I am sorry for it; if you ask after him as MY
friend, I sardonically smile at it.  In whatever capacity you ask
after my employer, I beg, without offence to you, to limit my reply
to this - that whatever his state of health may be, his appearance
is foxy: not to say diabolical.  You will allow me, as a private
individual, to decline pursuing a subject which has lashed me to
the utmost verge of desperation in my professional capacity.'

I expressed my regret for having innocently touched upon a theme
that roused him so much.  'May I ask,' said I, 'without any hazard
of repeating the mistake, how my old friends Mr. and Miss Wickfield
are?'

'Miss Wickfield,' said Mr. Micawber, now turning red, 'is, as she
always is, a pattern, and a bright example.  My dear Copperfield,
she is the only starry spot in a miserable existence.  My respect
for that young lady, my admiration of her character, my devotion to
her for her love and truth, and goodness! - Take me,' said Mr.
Micawber, 'down a turning, for, upon my soul, in my present state
of mind I am not equal to this!'

We wheeled him off into a narrow street, where he took out his
pocket-handkerchief, and stood with his back to a wall.  If I
looked as gravely at him as Traddles did, he must have found our
company by no means inspiriting.

'It is my fate,' said Mr. Micawber, unfeignedly sobbing, but doing
even that, with a shadow of the old expression of doing something
genteel; 'it is my fate, gentlemen, that the finer feelings of our
nature have become reproaches to me.  My homage to Miss Wickfield,
is a flight of arrows in my bosom.  You had better leave me, if you
please, to walk the earth as a vagabond.  The worm will settle my
business in double-quick time.'

Without attending to this invocation, we stood by, until he put up
his pocket-handkerchief, pulled up his shirt-collar, and, to delude
any person in the neighbourhood who might have been observing him,
hummed a tune with his hat very much on one side.  I then mentioned
- not knowing what might be lost if we lost sight of him yet - that
it would give me great pleasure to introduce him to my aunt, if he
would ride out to Highgate, where a bed was at his service.

'You shall make us a glass of your own punch, Mr. Micawber,' said
I, 'and forget whatever you have on your mind, in pleasanter
reminiscences.'

'Or, if confiding anything to friends will be more likely to
relieve you, you shall impart it to us, Mr. Micawber,' said
Traddles, prudently.

'Gentlemen,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'do with me as you will! I am
a straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all
directions by the elephants - I beg your pardon; I should have said
the elements.'

We walked on, arm-in-arm, again; found the coach in the act of
starting; and arrived at Highgate without encountering any
difficulties by the way.  I was very uneasy and very uncertain in
my mind what to say or do for the best - so was Traddles,
evidently.  Mr. Micawber was for the most part plunged into deep
gloom.  He occasionally made an attempt to smarten himself, and hum
the fag-end of a tune; but his relapses into profound melancholy
were only made the more impressive by the mockery of a hat
exceedingly on one side, and a shirt-collar pulled up to his eyes.

We went to my aunt's house rather than to mine, because of Dora's
not being well.  My aunt presented herself on being sent for, and
welcomed Mr. Micawber with gracious cordiality.  Mr. Micawber
kissed her hand, retired to the window, and pulling out his
pocket-handkerchief, had a mental wrestle with himself.

Mr. Dick was at home.  He was by nature so exceedingly
compassionate of anyone who seemed to be ill at ease, and was so
quick to find any such person out, that he shook hands with Mr.
Micawber, at least half-a-dozen times in five minutes.  To Mr.
Micawber, in his trouble, this warmth, on the part of a stranger,
was so extremely touching, that he could only say, on the occasion
of each successive shake, 'My dear sir, you overpower me!' Which
gratified Mr. Dick so much, that he went at it again with greater
vigour than before.

'The friendliness of this gentleman,' said Mr. Micawber to my aunt,
'if you will allow me, ma'am, to cull a figure of speech from the
vocabulary of our coarser national sports - floors me.  To a man
who is struggling with a complicated burden of perplexity and
disquiet, such a reception is trying, I assure you.'

'My friend Mr. Dick,' replied my aunt proudly, 'is not a common
man.'

'That I am convinced of,' said Mr. Micawber.  'My dear sir!' for
Mr. Dick was shaking hands with him again; 'I am deeply sensible of
your cordiality!'

'How do you find yourself?' said Mr. Dick, with an anxious look.

'Indifferent, my dear sir,' returned Mr. Micawber, sighing.

'You must keep up your spirits,' said Mr. Dick, 'and make yourself
as comfortable as possible.'

Mr. Micawber was quite overcome by these friendly words, and by
finding Mr. Dick's hand again within his own.  'It has been my
lot,' he observed, 'to meet, in the diversified panorama of human
existence, with an occasional oasis, but never with one so green,
so gushing, as the present!'

At another time I should have been amused by this; but I felt that
we were all constrained and uneasy, and I watched Mr. Micawber so
anxiously, in his vacillations between an evident disposition to
reveal something, and a counter-disposition to reveal nothing, that
I was in a perfect fever.  Traddles, sitting on the edge of his
chair, with his eyes wide open, and his hair more emphatically
erect than ever, stared by turns at the ground and at Mr. Micawber,
without so much as attempting to put in a word.  My aunt, though I
saw that her shrewdest observation was concentrated on her new
guest, had more useful possession of her wits than either of us;
for she held him in conversation, and made it necessary for him to
talk, whether he liked it or not.

'You are a very old friend of my nephew's, Mr. Micawber,' said my
aunt.  'I wish I had had the pleasure of seeing you before.'

'Madam,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'I wish I had had the honour of
knowing you at an earlier period.  I was not always the wreck you
at present behold.'

'I hope Mrs. Micawber and your family are well, sir,' said my aunt.

Mr. Micawber inclined his head.  'They are as well, ma'am,' he
desperately observed after a pause, 'as Aliens and Outcasts can
ever hope to be.'

'Lord bless you, sir!' exclaimed my aunt, in her abrupt way.  'What
are you talking about?'

'The subsistence of my family, ma'am,' returned Mr. Micawber,
'trembles in the balance.  My employer -'

Here Mr. Micawber provokingly left off; and began to peel the
lemons that had been under my directions set before him, together
with all the other appliances he used in making punch.

'Your employer, you know,' said Mr. Dick, jogging his arm as a
gentle reminder.

'My good sir,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'you recall me, I am obliged
to you.'  They shook hands again.  'My employer, ma'am - Mr. Heep
- once did me the favour to observe to me, that if I were not in
the receipt of the stipendiary emoluments appertaining to my
engagement with him, I should probably be a mountebank about the
country, swallowing a sword-blade, and eating the devouring
element.  For anything that I can perceive to the contrary, it is
still probable that my children may be reduced to seek a livelihood
by personal contortion, while Mrs. Micawber abets their unnatural
feats by playing the barrel-organ.'

Mr. Micawber, with a random but expressive flourish of his knife,
signified that these performances might be expected to take place
after he was no more; then resumed his peeling with a desperate
air.

My aunt leaned her elbow on the little round table that she usually
kept beside her, and eyed him attentively.  Notwithstanding the
aversion with which I regarded the idea of entrapping him into any
disclosure he was not prepared to make voluntarily, I should have
taken him up at this point, but for the strange proceedings in
which I saw him engaged; whereof his putting the lemon-peel into
the kettle, the sugar into the snuffer-tray, the spirit into the
empty jug, and confidently attempting to pour boiling water out of
a candlestick, were among the most remarkable.  I saw that a crisis
was at hand, and it came.  He clattered all his means and
implements together, rose from his chair, pulled out his
pocket-handkerchief, and burst into tears.

'My dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, behind his handkerchief,
'this is an occupation, of all others, requiring an untroubled
mind, and self-respect.  I cannot perform it.  It is out of the
question.'

'Mr. Micawber,' said I, 'what is the matter?  Pray speak out.  You
are among friends.'

'Among friends, sir!' repeated Mr. Micawber; and all he had
reserved came breaking out of him.  'Good heavens, it is
principally because I AM among friends that my state of mind is
what it is.  What is the matter, gentlemen?  What is NOT the
matter?  Villainy is the matter; baseness is the matter; deception,
fraud, conspiracy, are the matter; and the name of the whole
atrocious mass is - HEEP!'

MY aunt clapped her hands, and we all started up as if we were
possessed.

'The struggle is over!' said Mr. Micawber violently gesticulating
with his pocket-handkerchief, and fairly striking out from time to
time with both arms, as if he were swimming under superhuman
difficulties.  'I will lead this life no longer.  I am a wretched
being, cut off from everything that makes life tolerable.  I have
been under a Taboo in that infernal scoundrel's service.  Give me
back my wife, give me back my family, substitute Micawber for the
petty wretch who walks about in the boots at present on my feet,
and call upon me to swallow a sword tomorrow, and I'll do it.  With
an appetite!'

I never saw a man so hot in my life.  I tried to calm him, that we
might come to something rational; but he got hotter and hotter, and
wouldn't hear a word.

'I'll put my hand in no man's hand,' said Mr. Micawber, gasping,
puffing, and sobbing, to that degree that he was like a man
fighting with cold water, 'until I have - blown to fragments - the
- a - detestable - serpent - HEEP! I'll partake of no one's
hospitality, until I have - a - moved Mount Vesuvius - to eruption
- on - a - the abandoned rascal - HEEP! Refreshment - a -
underneath this roof - particularly punch - would - a - choke me -
unless - I had - previously - choked the eyes - out of the head -
a - of - interminable cheat, and liar - HEEP! I - a- I'll know
nobody - and - a - say nothing - and - a - live nowhere - until I
have crushed - to - a - undiscoverable atoms - the - transcendent
and immortal hypocrite and perjurer - HEEP!'

I really had some fear of Mr. Micawber's dying on the spot.  The
manner in which he struggled through these inarticulate sentences,
and, whenever he found himself getting near the name of Heep,
fought his way on to it, dashed at it in a fainting state, and
brought it out with a vehemence little less than marvellous, was
frightful; but now, when he sank into a chair, steaming, and looked
at us, with every possible colour in his face that had no business
there, and an endless procession of lumps following one another in
hot haste up his throat, whence they seemed to shoot into his
forehead, he had the appearance of being in the last extremity.  I
would have gone to his assistance, but he waved me off, and
wouldn't hear a word.

'No, Copperfield! - No communication - a - until - Miss Wickfield
- a - redress from wrongs inflicted by consummate scoundrel -
HEEP!' (I am quite convinced he could not have uttered three words,
but for the amazing energy with which this word inspired him when
he felt it coming.) 'Inviolable secret - a - from the whole world
- a - no exceptions - this day week - a - at breakfast-time - a -
everybody present - including aunt - a - and extremely friendly
gentleman - to be at the hotel at Canterbury - a - where - Mrs.
Micawber and myself - Auld Lang Syne in chorus - and - a - will
expose intolerable ruffian - HEEP! No more to say - a - or listen
to persuasion - go immediately - not capable - a - bear society -
upon the track of devoted and doomed traitor - HEEP!'

With this last repetition of the magic word that had kept him going
at all, and in which he surpassed all his previous efforts, Mr.
Micawber rushed out of the house; leaving us in a state of
excitement, hope, and wonder, that reduced us to a condition little
better than his own.  But even then his passion for writing letters
was too strong to be resisted; for while we were yet in the height
of our excitement, hope, and wonder, the following pastoral note
was brought to me from a neighbouring tavern, at which he had
called to write it: -

          'Most secret and confidential.
'MY DEAR SIR,

'I beg to be allowed to convey, through you, my apologies to your
excellent aunt for my late excitement.  An explosion of a
smouldering volcano long suppressed, was the result of an internal
contest more easily conceived than described.

'I trust I rendered tolerably intelligible my appointment for the
morning of this day week, at the house of public entertainment at
Canterbury, where Mrs. Micawber and myself had once the honour of
uniting our voices to yours, in the well-known strain of the
Immortal exciseman nurtured beyond the Tweed.

'The duty done, and act of reparation performed, which can alone
enable me to contemplate my fellow mortal, I shall be known no
more.  I shall simply require to be deposited in that place of
universal resort, where

     Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
     The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,

                    '- With the plain Inscription,

                         'WILKINS MICAWBER.'

CHAPTER 50
Mr. PEGGOTTY'S DREAM COMES TRUE

By this time, some months had passed since our interview on the
bank of the river with Martha.  I had never seen her since, but she
had communicated with Mr. Peggotty on several occasions.  Nothing
had come of her zealous intervention; nor could I infer, from what
he told me, that any clue had been obtained, for a moment, to
Emily's fate.  I confess that I began to despair of her recovery,
and gradually to sink deeper and deeper into the belief that she
was dead.

His conviction remained unchanged.  So far as I know - and I
believe his honest heart was transparent to me - he never wavered
again, in his solemn certainty of finding her.  His patience never
tired.  And, although I trembled for the agony it might one day be
to him to have his strong assurance shivered at a blow, there was
something so religious in it, so affectingly expressive of its
anchor being in the purest depths of his fine nature, that the
respect and honour in which I held him were exalted every day.

His was not a lazy trustfulness that hoped, and did no more.  He
had been a man of sturdy action all his life, and he knew that in
all things wherein he wanted help he must do his own part
faithfully, and help himself.  I have known him set out in the
night, on a misgiving that the light might not be, by some
accident, in the window of the old boat, and walk to Yarmouth.  I
have known him, on reading something in the newspaper that might
apply to her, take up his stick, and go forth on a journey of
three- or four-score miles.  He made his way by sea to Naples, and
back, after hearing the narrative to which Miss Dartle had assisted
me.  All his journeys were ruggedly performed; for he was always
steadfast in a purpose of saving money for Emily's sake, when she
should be found.  In all this long pursuit, I never heard him
repine; I never heard him say he was fatigued, or out of heart.

Dora had often seen him since our marriage, and was quite fond of
him.  I fancy his figure before me now, standing near her sofa,
with his rough cap in his hand, and the blue eyes of my child-wife
raised, with a timid wonder, to his face.  Sometimes of an evening,
about twilight, when he came to talk with me, I would induce him to
smoke his pipe in the garden, as we slowly paced to and fro
together; and then, the picture of his deserted home, and the
comfortable air it used to have in my childish eyes of an evening
when the fire was burning, and the wind moaning round it, came most
vividly into my mind.

One evening, at this hour, he told me that he had found Martha
waiting near his lodging on the preceding night when he came out,
and that she had asked him not to leave London on any account,
until he should have seen her again.

'Did she tell you why?' I inquired.

'I asked her, Mas'r Davy,' he replied, 'but it is but few words as
she ever says, and she on'y got my promise and so went away.'

'Did she say when you might expect to see her again?' I demanded.

'No, Mas'r Davy,' he returned, drawing his hand thoughtfully down
his face.  'I asked that too; but it was more (she said) than she
could tell.'

As I had long forborne to encourage him with hopes that hung on
threads, I made no other comment on this information than that I
supposed he would see her soon.  Such speculations as it engendered
within me I kept to myself, and those were faint enough.

I was walking alone in the garden, one evening, about a fortnight
afterwards.  I remember that evening well.  It was the second in
Mr. Micawber's week of suspense.  There had been rain all day, and
there was a damp feeling in the air.  The leaves were thick upon
the trees, and heavy with wet; but the rain had ceased, though the
sky was still dark; and the hopeful birds were singing cheerfully. 
As I walked to and fro in the garden, and the twilight began to
close around me, their little voices were hushed; and that peculiar
silence which belongs to such an evening in the country when the
lightest trees are quite still, save for the occasional droppings
from their boughs, prevailed.

There was a little green perspective of trellis-work and ivy at the
side of our cottage, through which I could see, from the garden
where I was walking, into the road before the house.  I happened to
turn my eyes towards this place, as I was thinking of many things;
and I saw a figure beyond, dressed in a plain cloak.  It was
bending eagerly towards me, and beckoning.

'Martha!' said I, going to it.

'Can you come with me?' she inquired, in an agitated whisper.  'I
have been to him, and he is not at home.  I wrote down where he was
to come, and left it on his table with my own hand.  They said he
would not be out long.  I have tidings for him.  Can you come
directly?'

My answer was, to pass out at the gate immediately.  She made a
hasty gesture with her hand, as if to entreat my patience and my
silence, and turned towards London, whence, as her dress betokened,
she had come expeditiously on foot.

I asked her if that were not our destination?  On her motioning
Yes, with the same hasty gesture as before, I stopped an empty
coach that was coming by, and we got into it.  When I asked her
where the coachman was to drive, she answered, 'Anywhere near
Golden Square! And quick!' - then shrunk into a corner, with one
trembling hand before her face, and the other making the former
gesture, as if she could not bear a voice.

Now much disturbed, and dazzled with conflicting gleams of hope and
dread, I looked at her for some explanation.  But seeing how
strongly she desired to remain quiet, and feeling that it was my
own natural inclination too, at such a time, I did not attempt to
break the silence.  We proceeded without a word being spoken. 
Sometimes she glanced out of the window, as though she thought we
were going slowly, though indeed we were going fast; but otherwise
remained exactly as at first.

We alighted at one of the entrances to the Square she had
mentioned, where I directed the coach to wait, not knowing but that
we might have some occasion for it.  She laid her hand on my arm,
and hurried me on to one of the sombre streets, of which there are
several in that part, where the houses were once fair dwellings in
the occupation of single families, but have, and had, long
degenerated into poor lodgings let off in rooms.  Entering at the
open door of one of these, and releasing my arm, she beckoned me to
follow her up the common staircase, which was like a tributary
channel to the street.

The house swarmed with inmates.  As we went up, doors of rooms were
opened and people's heads put out; and we passed other people on
the stairs, who were coming down.  In glancing up from the outside,
before we entered, I had seen women and children lolling at the
windows over flower-pots; and we seemed to have attracted their
curiosity, for these were principally the observers who looked out
of their doors.  It was a broad panelled staircase, with massive
balustrades of some dark wood; cornices above the doors, ornamented
with carved fruit and flowers; and broad seats in the windows.  But
all these tokens of past grandeur were miserably decayed and dirty;
rot, damp, and age, had weakened the flooring, which in many places
was unsound and even unsafe.  Some attempts had been made, I
noticed, to infuse new blood into this dwindling frame, by
repairing the costly old wood-work here and there with common deal;
but it was like the marriage of a reduced old noble to a plebeian
pauper, and each party to the ill-assorted union shrunk away from
the other.  Several of the back windows on the staircase had been
darkened or wholly blocked up.  In those that remained, there was
scarcely any glass; and, through the crumbling frames by which the
bad air seemed always to come in, and never to go out, I saw,
through other glassless windows, into other houses in a similar
condition, and looked giddily down into a wretched yard, which was
the common dust-heap of the mansion.

We proceeded to the top-storey of the house.  Two or three times,
by the way, I thought I observed in the indistinct light the skirts
of a female figure going up before us.  As we turned to ascend the
last flight of stairs between us and the roof, we caught a full
view of this figure pausing for a moment, at a door.  Then it
turned the handle, and went in.

'What's this!' said Martha, in a whisper.  'She has gone into my
room.  I don't know her!'

I knew her.  I had recognized her with amazement, for Miss Dartle.

I said something to the effect that it was a lady whom I had seen
before, in a few words, to my conductress; and had scarcely done
so, when we heard her voice in the room, though not, from where we
stood, what she was saying.  Martha, with an astonished look,
repeated her former action, and softly led me up the stairs; and
then, by a little back-door which seemed to have no lock, and which
she pushed open with a touch, into a small empty garret with a low
sloping roof, little better than a cupboard.  Between this, and the
room she had called hers, there was a small door of communication,
standing partly open.  Here we stopped, breathless with our ascent,
and she placed her hand lightly on my lips.  I could only see, of
the room beyond, that it was pretty large; that there was a bed in
it; and that there were some common pictures of ships upon the
walls.  I could not see Miss Dartle, or the person whom we had
heard her address.  Certainly, my companion could not, for my
position was the best.
A dead silence prevailed for some moments.  Martha kept one hand on
my lips, and raised the other in a listening attitude.

'It matters little to me her not being at home,' said Rosa Dartle
haughtily, 'I know nothing of her.  It is you I come to see.'

'Me?' replied a soft voice.

At the sound of it, a thrill went through my frame.  For it was
Emily's!

'Yes,' returned Miss Dartle, 'I have come to look at you.  What? 
You are not ashamed of the face that has done so much?'

The resolute and unrelenting hatred of her tone, its cold stern
sharpness, and its mastered rage, presented her before me, as if I
had seen her standing in the light.  I saw the flashing black eyes,
and the passion-wasted figure; and I saw the scar, with its white
track cutting through her lips, quivering and throbbing as she
spoke.

'I have come to see,' she said, 'James Steerforth's fancy; the girl
who ran away with him, and is the town-talk of the commonest people
of her native place; the bold, flaunting, practised companion of
persons like James Steerforth.  I want to know what such a thing is
like.'

There was a rustle, as if the unhappy girl, on whom she heaped
these taunts, ran towards the door, and the speaker swiftly
interposed herself before it.  It was succeeded by a moment's
pause.

When Miss Dartle spoke again, it was through her set teeth, and
with a stamp upon the ground.

'Stay there!' she said, 'or I'll proclaim you to the house, and the
whole street! If you try to evade me, I'll stop you, if it's by the
hair, and raise the very stones against you!'

A frightened murmur was the only reply that reached my ears.  A
silence succeeded.  I did not know what to do.  Much as I desired
to put an end to the interview, I felt that I had no right to
present myself; that it was for Mr. Peggotty alone to see her and
recover her.  Would he never come?  I thought impatiently.

'So!' said Rosa Dartle, with a contemptuous laugh, 'I see her at
last! Why, he was a poor creature to be taken by that delicate
mock-modesty, and that hanging head!'

'Oh, for Heaven's sake, spare me!' exclaimed Emily.  'Whoever you
are, you know my pitiable story, and for Heaven's sake spare me, if
you would be spared yourself!'

'If I would be spared!' returned the other fiercely; 'what is there
in common between US, do you think!'

'Nothing but our sex,' said Emily, with a burst of tears.

'And that,' said Rosa Dartle, 'is so strong a claim, preferred by
one so infamous, that if I had any feeling in my breast but scorn
and abhorrence of you, it would freeze it up.  Our sex! You are an
honour to our sex!'

'I have deserved this,' said Emily, 'but it's dreadful! Dear, dear
lady, think what I have suffered, and how I am fallen! Oh, Martha,
come back! Oh, home, home!'

Miss Dartle placed herself in a chair, within view of the door, and
looked downward, as if Emily were crouching on the floor before
her.  Being now between me and the light, I could see her curled
lip, and her cruel eyes intently fixed on one place, with a greedy
triumph.

'Listen to what I say!' she said; 'and reserve your false arts for
your dupes.  Do you hope to move me by your tears?  No more than
you could charm me by your smiles, you purchased slave.'

'Oh, have some mercy on me!' cried Emily.  'Show me some
compassion, or I shall die mad!'

'It would be no great penance,' said Rosa Dartle, 'for your crimes. 
Do you know what you have done?  Do you ever think of the home you
have laid waste?'

'Oh, is there ever night or day, when I don't think of it!' cried
Emily; and now I could just see her, on her knees, with her head
thrown back, her pale face looking upward, her hands wildly clasped
and held out, and her hair streaming about her.  'Has there ever
been a single minute, waking or sleeping, when it hasn't been
before me, just as it used to be in the lost days when I turned my
back upon it for ever and for ever! Oh, home, home! Oh dear, dear
uncle, if you ever could have known the agony your love would cause
me when I fell away from good, you never would have shown it to me
so constant, much as you felt it; but would have been angry to me,
at least once in my life, that I might have had some comfort! I
have none, none, no comfort upon earth, for all of them were always
fond of me!' She dropped on her face, before the imperious figure
in the chair, with an imploring effort to clasp the skirt of her
dress.

Rosa Dartle sat looking down upon her, as inflexible as a figure of
brass.  Her lips were tightly compressed, as if she knew that she
must keep a strong constraint upon herself - I write what I
sincerely believe - or she would be tempted to strike the beautiful
form with her foot.  I saw her, distinctly, and the whole power of
her face and character seemed forced into that expression.  - Would
he never come?

'The miserable vanity of these earth-worms!' she said, when she had
so far controlled the angry heavings of her breast, that she could
trust herself to speak.  'YOUR home! Do you imagine that I bestow
a thought on it, or suppose you could do any harm to that low
place, which money would not pay for, and handsomely?  YOUR home!
You were a part of the trade of your home, and were bought and sold
like any other vendible thing your people dealt in.'

'Oh, not that!' cried Emily.  'Say anything of me; but don't visit
my disgrace and shame, more than I have done, on folks who are as
honourable as you! Have some respect for them, as you are a lady,
if you have no mercy for me.'

'I speak,' she said, not deigning to take any heed of this appeal,
and drawing away her dress from the contamination of Emily's touch,
'I speak of HIS home - where I live.  Here,' she said, stretching
out her hand with her contemptuous laugh, and looking down upon the
prostrate girl, 'is a worthy cause of division between lady-mother
and gentleman-son; of grief in a house where she wouldn't have been
admitted as a kitchen-girl; of anger, and repining, and reproach. 
This piece of pollution, picked up from the water-side, to be made
much of for an hour, and then tossed back to her original place!'

'No! no!' cried Emily, clasping her hands together.  'When he first
came into my way - that the day had never dawned upon me, and he
had met me being carried to my grave! - I had been brought up as
virtuous as you or any lady, and was going to be the wife of as
good a man as you or any lady in the world can ever marry.  If you
live in his home and know him, you know, perhaps, what his power
with a weak, vain girl might be.  I don't defend myself, but I know
well, and he knows well, or he will know when he comes to die, and
his mind is troubled with it, that he used all his power to deceive
me, and that I believed him, trusted him, and loved him!'

Rosa Dartle sprang up from her seat; recoiled; and in recoiling
struck at her, with a face of such malignity, so darkened and
disfigured by passion, that I had almost thrown myself between
them.  The blow, which had no aim, fell upon the air.  As she now
stood panting, looking at her with the utmost detestation that she
was capable of expressing, and trembling from head to foot with
rage and scorn, I thought I had never seen such a sight, and never
could see such another.

'YOU love him?  You?' she cried, with her clenched hand, quivering
as if it only wanted a weapon to stab the object of her wrath.

Emily had shrunk out of my view.  There was no reply.

'And tell that to ME,' she added, 'with your shameful lips?  Why
don't they whip these creatures?  If I could order it to be done,
I would have this girl whipped to death.'

And so she would, I have no doubt.  I would not have trusted her
with the rack itself, while that furious look lasted.
She slowly, very slowly, broke into a laugh, and pointed at Emily
with her hand, as if she were a sight of shame for gods and men.

'SHE love!' she said.  'THAT carrion! And he ever cared for her,
she'd tell me.  Ha, ha! The liars that these traders are!'

Her mockery was worse than her undisguised rage.  Of the two, I
would have much preferred to be the object of the latter.  But,
when she suffered it to break loose, it was only for a moment.  She
had chained it up again, and however it might tear her within, she
subdued it to herself.

'I came here, you pure fountain of love,' she said, 'to see - as I
began by telling you - what such a thing as you was like.  I was
curious.  I am satisfied.  Also to tell you, that you had best seek
that home of yours, with all speed, and hide your head among those
excellent people who are expecting you, and whom your money will
console.  When it's all gone, you can believe, and trust, and love
again, you know! I thought you a broken toy that had lasted its
time; a worthless spangle that was tarnished, and thrown away. 
But, finding you true gold, a very lady, and an ill-used innocent,
with a fresh heart full of love and trustfulness - which you look
like, and is quite consistent with your story! - I have something
more to say.  Attend to it; for what I say I'll do.  Do you hear
me, you fairy spirit?  What I say, I mean to do!'

Her rage got the better of her again, for a moment; but it passed
over her face like a spasm, and left her smiling.

'Hide yourself,' she pursued, 'if not at home, somewhere.  Let it
be somewhere beyond reach; in some obscure life - or, better still,
in some obscure death.  I wonder, if your loving heart will not
break, you have found no way of helping it to be still! I have
heard of such means sometimes.  I believe they may be easily
found.'

A low crying, on the part of Emily, interrupted her here.  She
stopped, and listened to it as if it were music.

'I am of a strange nature, perhaps,' Rosa Dartle went on; 'but I
can't breathe freely in the air you breathe.  I find it sickly. 
Therefore, I will have it cleared; I will have it purified of you. 
If you live here tomorrow, I'll have your story and your character
proclaimed on the common stair.  There are decent women in the
house, I am told; and it is a pity such a light as you should be
among them, and concealed.  If, leaving here, you seek any refuge
in this town in any character but your true one (which you are
welcome to bear, without molestation from me), the same service
shall be done you, if I hear of your retreat.  Being assisted by a
gentleman who not long ago aspired to the favour of your hand, I am
sanguine as to that.'

Would he never, never come?  How long was I to bear this?  How long
could I bear it?
'Oh me, oh me!' exclaimed the wretched Emily, in a tone that might
have touched the hardest heart, I should have thought; but there
was no relenting in Rosa Dartle's smile.  'What, what, shall I do!'

'Do?' returned the other.  'Live happy in your own reflections!
Consecrate your existence to the recollection of James Steerforth's
tenderness - he would have made you his serving-man's wife, would
he not?  - or to feeling grateful to the upright and deserving
creature who would have taken you as his gift.  Or, if those proud
remembrances, and the consciousness of your own virtues, and the
honourable position to which they have raised you in the eyes of
everything that wears the human shape, will not sustain you, marry
that good man, and be happy in his condescension.  If this will not
do either, die! There are doorways and dust-heaps for such deaths,
and such despair - find one, and take your flight to Heaven!'

I heard a distant foot upon the stairs.  I knew it, I was certain. 
It was his, thank God!

She moved slowly from before the door when she said this, and
passed out of my sight.

'But mark!' she added, slowly and sternly, opening the other door
to go away, 'I am resolved, for reasons that I have and hatreds
that I entertain, to cast you out, unless you withdraw from my
reach altogether, or drop your pretty mask.  This is what I had to
say; and what I say, I mean to do!'

The foot upon the stairs came nearer - nearer - passed her as she
went down - rushed into the room!

'Uncle!'

A fearful cry followed the word.  I paused a moment, and looking
in, saw him supporting her insensible figure in his arms.  He gazed
for a few seconds in the face; then stooped to kiss it - oh, how
tenderly! - and drew a handkerchief before it.

'Mas'r Davy,' he said, in a low tremulous voice, when it was
covered, 'I thank my Heav'nly Father as my dream's come true! I
thank Him hearty for having guided of me, in His own ways, to my
darling!'

With those words he took her up in his arms; and, with the veiled
face lying on his bosom, and addressed towards his own, carried
her, motionless and unconscious, down the stairs.

CHAPTER 51
THE BEGINNING OF A LONGER JOURNEY

It was yet early in the morning of the following day, when, as I
was walking in my garden with my aunt (who took little other
exercise now, being so much in attendance on my dear Dora), I was
told that Mr. Peggotty desired to speak with me.  He came into the
garden to meet me half-way, on my going towards the gate; and bared
his head, as it was always his custom to do when he saw my aunt,
for whom he had a high respect.  I had been telling her all that
had happened overnight.  Without saying a word, she walked up with
a cordial face, shook hands with him, and patted him on the arm. 
It was so expressively done, that she had no need to say a word. 
Mr. Peggotty understood her quite as well as if she had said a
thousand.

'I'll go in now, Trot,' said my aunt, 'and look after Little
Blossom, who will be getting up presently.'

'Not along of my being heer, ma'am, I hope?' said Mr. Peggotty. 
'Unless my wits is gone a bahd's neezing' - by which Mr. Peggotty
meant to say, bird's-nesting - 'this morning, 'tis along of me as
you're a-going to quit us?'

'You have something to say, my good friend,' returned my aunt, 'and
will do better without me.'

'By your leave, ma'am,' returned Mr. Peggotty, 'I should take it
kind, pervising you doen't mind my clicketten, if you'd bide heer.'

'Would you?' said my aunt, with short good-nature.  'Then I am sure
I will!'

So, she drew her arm through Mr. Peggotty's, and walked with him to
a leafy little summer-house there was at the bottom of the garden,
where she sat down on a bench, and I beside her.  There was a seat
for Mr. Peggotty too, but he preferred to stand, leaning his hand
on the small rustic table.  As he stood, looking at his cap for a
little while before beginning to speak, I could not help observing
what power and force of character his sinewy hand expressed, and
what a good and trusty companion it was to his honest brow and
iron-grey hair.

'I took my dear child away last night,' Mr. Peggotty began, as he
raised his eyes to ours, 'to my lodging, wheer I have a long time
been expecting of her and preparing fur her.  It was hours afore
she knowed me right; and when she did, she kneeled down at my feet,
and kiender said to me, as if it was her prayers, how it all come
to be.  You may believe me, when I heerd her voice, as I had heerd
at home so playful - and see her humbled, as it might be in the
dust our Saviour wrote in with his blessed hand - I felt a wownd go
to my 'art, in the midst of all its thankfulness.'

He drew his sleeve across his face, without any pretence of
concealing why; and then cleared his voice.

'It warn't for long as I felt that; for she was found.  I had on'y
to think as she was found, and it was gone.  I doen't know why I do
so much as mention of it now, I'm sure.  I didn't have it in my
mind a minute ago, to say a word about myself; but it come up so
nat'ral, that I yielded to it afore I was aweer.'

'You are a self-denying soul,' said my aunt, 'and will have your
reward.'

Mr. Peggotty, with the shadows of the leaves playing athwart his
face, made a surprised inclination of the head towards my aunt, as
an acknowledgement of her good opinion; then took up the thread he
had relinquished.

'When my Em'ly took flight,' he said, in stern wrath for the
moment, 'from the house wheer she was made a prisoner by that theer
spotted snake as Mas'r Davy see, - and his story's trew, and may
GOD confound him! - she took flight in the night.  It was a dark
night, with a many stars a-shining.  She was wild.  She ran along
the sea beach, believing the old boat was theer; and calling out to
us to turn away our faces, for she was a-coming by.  She heerd
herself a-crying out, like as if it was another person; and cut
herself on them sharp-pinted stones and rocks, and felt it no more
than if she had been rock herself.  Ever so fur she run, and there
was fire afore her eyes, and roarings in her ears.  Of a sudden -
or so she thowt, you unnerstand - the day broke, wet and windy, and
she was lying b'low a heap of stone upon the shore, and a woman was
a-speaking to her, saying, in the language of that country, what
was it as had gone so much amiss?'

He saw everything he related.  It passed before him, as he spoke,
so vividly, that, in the intensity of his earnestness, he presented
what he described to me, with greater distinctness than I can
express.  I can hardly believe, writing now long afterwards, but
that I was actually present in these scenes; they are impressed
upon me with such an astonishing air of fidelity.

'As Em'ly's eyes - which was heavy - see this woman better,' Mr.
Peggotty went on, 'she know'd as she was one of them as she had
often talked to on the beach.  Fur, though she had run (as I have
said) ever so fur in the night, she had oftentimes wandered long
ways, partly afoot, partly in boats and carriages, and know'd all
that country, 'long the coast, miles and miles.  She hadn't no
children of her own, this woman, being a young wife; but she was a-
looking to have one afore long.  And may my prayers go up to Heaven
that 'twill be a happiness to her, and a comfort, and a honour, all
her life! May it love her and be dootiful to her, in her old age;
helpful of her at the last; a Angel to her heer, and heerafter!'

'Amen!' said my aunt.

'She had been summat timorous and down,' said Mr. Peggotty, and had
sat, at first, a little way off, at her spinning, or such work as
it was, when Em'ly talked to the children.  But Em'ly had took
notice of her, and had gone and spoke to her; and as the young
woman was partial to the children herself, they had soon made
friends.  Sermuchser, that when Em'ly went that way, she always giv
Em'ly flowers.  This was her as now asked what it was that had gone
so much amiss.  Em'ly told her, and she - took her home.  She did
indeed.  She took her home,' said Mr. Peggotty, covering his face.

He was more affected by this act of kindness, than I had ever seen
him affected by anything since the night she went away.  My aunt
and I did not attempt to disturb him.

'It was a little cottage, you may suppose,' he said, presently,
'but she found space for Em'ly in it, - her husband was away at
sea, - and she kep it secret, and prevailed upon such neighbours as
she had (they was not many near) to keep it secret too.  Em'ly was
took bad with fever, and, what is very strange to me is, - maybe
'tis not so strange to scholars, - the language of that country
went out of her head, and she could only speak her own, that no one
unnerstood.  She recollects, as if she had dreamed it, that she lay
there always a-talking her own tongue, always believing as the old
boat was round the next pint in the bay, and begging and imploring
of 'em to send theer and tell how she was dying, and bring back a
message of forgiveness, if it was on'y a wured.  A'most the whole
time, she thowt, - now, that him as I made mention on just now was
lurking for her unnerneath the winder; now that him as had brought
her to this was in the room, - and cried to the good young woman
not to give her up, and know'd, at the same time, that she couldn't
unnerstand, and dreaded that she must be took away.  Likewise the
fire was afore her eyes, and the roarings in her ears; and theer
was no today, nor yesterday, nor yet tomorrow; but everything in
her life as ever had been, or as ever could be, and everything as
never had been, and as never could be, was a crowding on her all at
once, and nothing clear nor welcome, and yet she sang and laughed
about it! How long this lasted, I doen't know; but then theer come
a sleep; and in that sleep, from being a many times stronger than
her own self, she fell into the weakness of the littlest child.'

Here he stopped, as if for relief from the terrors of his own
description.  After being silent for a few moments, he pursued his
story.

'It was a pleasant arternoon when she awoke; and so quiet, that
there warn't a sound but the rippling of that blue sea without a
tide, upon the shore.  It was her belief, at first, that she was at
home upon a Sunday morning; but the vine leaves as she see at the
winder, and the hills beyond, warn't home, and contradicted of her. 
Then, come in her friend to watch alongside of her bed; and then
she know'd as the old boat warn't round that next pint in the bay
no more, but was fur off; and know'd where she was, and why; and
broke out a-crying on that good young woman's bosom, wheer I hope
her baby is a-lying now, a-cheering of her with its pretty eyes!'

He could not speak of this good friend of Emily's without a flow of
tears.  It was in vain to try.  He broke down again, endeavouring
to bless her!

'That done my Em'ly good,' he resumed, after such emotion as I
could not behold without sharing in; and as to my aunt, she wept
with all her heart; 'that done Em'ly good, and she begun to mend. 
But, the language of that country was quite gone from her, and she
was forced to make signs.  So she went on, getting better from day
to day, slow, but sure, and trying to learn the names of common
things - names as she seemed never to have heerd in all her life -
till one evening come, when she was a-setting at her window,
looking at a little girl at play upon the beach.  And of a sudden
this child held out her hand, and said, what would be in English,
"Fisherman's daughter, here's a shell!" - for you are to unnerstand
that they used at first to call her "Pretty lady", as the general
way in that country is, and that she had taught 'em to call her
"Fisherman's daughter" instead.  The child says of a sudden,
"Fisherman's daughter, here's a shell!" Then Em'ly unnerstands her;
and she answers, bursting out a-crying; and it all comes back!

'When Em'ly got strong again,' said Mr. Peggotty, after another
short interval of silence, 'she cast about to leave that good young
creetur, and get to her own country.  The husband was come home,
then; and the two together put her aboard a small trader bound to
Leghorn, and from that to France.  She had a little money, but it
was less than little as they would take for all they done.  I'm
a'most glad on it, though they was so poor! What they done, is laid
up wheer neither moth or rust doth corrupt, and wheer thieves do
not break through nor steal.  Mas'r Davy, it'll outlast all the
treasure in the wureld.

'Em'ly got to France, and took service to wait on travelling ladies
at a inn in the port.  Theer, theer come, one day, that snake.  -
Let him never come nigh me.  I doen't know what hurt I might do
him! - Soon as she see him, without him seeing her, all her fear
and wildness returned upon her, and she fled afore the very breath
he draw'd.  She come to England, and was set ashore at Dover.

'I doen't know," said Mr. Peggotty, 'for sure, when her 'art begun
to fail her; but all the way to England she had thowt to come to
her dear home.  Soon as she got to England she turned her face
tow'rds it.  But, fear of not being forgiv, fear of being pinted
at, fear of some of us being dead along of her, fear of many
things, turned her from it, kiender by force, upon the road:
"Uncle, uncle," she says to me, "the fear of not being worthy to do
what my torn and bleeding breast so longed to do, was the most
fright'ning fear of all! I turned back, when my 'art was full of
prayers that I might crawl to the old door-step, in the night, kiss
it, lay my wicked face upon it, and theer be found dead in the
morning."

'She come,' said Mr. Peggotty, dropping his voice to an
awe-stricken whisper, 'to London.  She - as had never seen it in
her life - alone - without a penny - young - so pretty - come to
London.  A'most the moment as she lighted heer, all so desolate,
she found (as she believed) a friend; a decent woman as spoke to
her about the needle-work as she had been brought up to do, about
finding plenty of it fur her, about a lodging fur the night, and
making secret inquiration concerning of me and all at home,
tomorrow.  When my child,' he said aloud, and with an energy of
gratitude that shook him from head to foot, 'stood upon the brink
of more than I can say or think on - Martha, trew to her promise,
saved her.'

I could not repress a cry of joy.

'Mas'r Davy!' said he, gripping my hand in that strong hand of his,
'it was you as first made mention of her to me.  I thankee, sir!
She was arnest.  She had know'd of her bitter knowledge wheer to
watch and what to do.  She had done it.  And the Lord was above
all! She come, white and hurried, upon Em'ly in her sleep.  She
says to her, "Rise up from worse than death, and come with me!"
Them belonging to the house would have stopped her, but they might
as soon have stopped the sea.  "Stand away from me," she says, "I
am a ghost that calls her from beside her open grave!" She told
Em'ly she had seen me, and know'd I loved her, and forgive her. 
She wrapped her, hasty, in her clothes.  She took her, faint and
trembling, on her arm.  She heeded no more what they said, than if
she had had no ears.  She walked among 'em with my child, minding
only her; and brought her safe out, in the dead of the night, from
that black pit of ruin!

'She attended on Em'ly,' said Mr. Peggotty, who had released my
hand, and put his own hand on his heaving chest; 'she attended to
my Em'ly, lying wearied out, and wandering betwixt whiles, till
late next day.  Then she went in search of me; then in search of
you, Mas'r Davy.  She didn't tell Em'ly what she come out fur, lest
her 'art should fail, and she should think of hiding of herself. 
How the cruel lady know'd of her being theer, I can't say.  Whether
him as I have spoke so much of, chanced to see 'em going theer, or
whether (which is most like, to my thinking) he had heerd it from
the woman, I doen't greatly ask myself.  My niece is found.

'All night long,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'we have been together, Em'ly
and me.  'Tis little (considering the time) as she has said, in
wureds, through them broken-hearted tears; 'tis less as I have seen
of her dear face, as grow'd into a woman's at my hearth.  But, all
night long, her arms has been about my neck; and her head has laid
heer; and we knows full well, as we can put our trust in one
another, ever more.'

He ceased to speak, and his hand upon the table rested there in
perfect repose, with a resolution in it that might have conquered
lions.

'It was a gleam of light upon me, Trot,' said my aunt, drying her
eyes, 'when I formed the resolution of being godmother to your
sister Betsey Trotwood, who disappointed me; but, next to that,
hardly anything would have given me greater pleasure, than to be
godmother to that good young creature's baby!'

Mr. Peggotty nodded his understanding of my aunt's feelings, but
could not trust himself with any verbal reference to the subject of
her commendation.  We all remained silent, and occupied with our
own reflections (my aunt drying her eyes, and now sobbing
convulsively, and now laughing and calling herself a fool); until
I spoke.

'You have quite made up your mind,' said I to Mr. Peggotty, 'as to
the future, good friend?  I need scarcely ask you.'

'Quite, Mas'r Davy,' he returned; 'and told Em'ly.  Theer's mighty
countries, fur from heer.  Our future life lays over the sea.'

'They will emigrate together, aunt,' said I.

'Yes!' said Mr. Peggotty, with a hopeful smile.  'No one can't
reproach my darling in Australia.  We will begin a new life over
theer!'

I asked him if he yet proposed to himself any time for going away.

'I was down at the Docks early this morning, sir,' he returned, 'to
get information concerning of them ships.  In about six weeks or
two months from now, there'll be one sailing - I see her this
morning - went aboard - and we shall take our passage in her.'

'Quite alone?' I asked.

'Aye, Mas'r Davy!' he returned.  'My sister, you see, she's that
fond of you and yourn, and that accustomed to think on'y of her own
country, that it wouldn't be hardly fair to let her go.  Besides
which, theer's one she has in charge, Mas'r Davy, as doen't ought
to be forgot.'

'Poor Ham!' said I.

'My good sister takes care of his house, you see, ma'am, and he
takes kindly to her,' Mr. Peggotty explained for my aunt's better
information.  'He'll set and talk to her, with a calm spirit, wen
it's like he couldn't bring himself to open his lips to another. 
Poor fellow!' said Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, 'theer's not so
much left him, that he could spare the little as he has!'

'And Mrs. Gummidge?' said I.

'Well, I've had a mort of consideration, I do tell you,' returned
Mr. Peggotty, with a perplexed look which gradually cleared as he
went on, 'concerning of Missis Gummidge.  You see, wen Missis
Gummidge falls a-thinking of the old 'un, she an't what you may
call good company.  Betwixt you and me, Mas'r Davy - and you, ma'am
- wen Mrs. Gummidge takes to wimicking,' - our old country word for
crying, - 'she's liable to be considered to be, by them as didn't
know the old 'un, peevish-like.  Now I DID know the old 'un,' said
Mr. Peggotty, 'and I know'd his merits, so I unnerstan' her; but
'tan't entirely so, you see, with others - nat'rally can't be!'

My aunt and I both acquiesced.

'Wheerby,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'my sister might - I doen't say she
would, but might - find Missis Gummidge give her a leetle trouble
now-and-again.  Theerfur 'tan't my intentions to moor Missis
Gummidge 'long with them, but to find a Beein' fur her wheer she
can fisherate for herself.'  (A Beein' signifies, in that dialect,
a home, and to fisherate is to provide.) 'Fur which purpose,' said
Mr. Peggotty, 'I means to make her a 'lowance afore I go, as'll
leave her pretty comfort'ble.  She's the faithfullest of creeturs. 
'Tan't to be expected, of course, at her time of life, and being
lone and lorn, as the good old Mawther is to be knocked about
aboardship, and in the woods and wilds of a new and fur-away
country.  So that's what I'm a-going to do with her.'

He forgot nobody.  He thought of everybody's claims and strivings,
but his own.

'Em'ly,' he continued, 'will keep along with me - poor child, she's
sore in need of peace and rest! - until such time as we goes upon
our voyage.  She'll work at them clothes, as must be made; and I
hope her troubles will begin to seem longer ago than they was, wen
she finds herself once more by her rough but loving uncle.'

MY aunt nodded confirmation of this hope, and imparted great
satisfaction to Mr. Peggotty.

'Theer's one thing furder, Mas'r Davy,' said he, putting his hand
in his breast-pocket, and gravely taking out the little paper
bundle I had seen before, which he unrolled on the table.  'Theer's
these here banknotes - fifty pound, and ten.  To them I wish to add
the money as she come away with.  I've asked her about that (but
not saying why), and have added of it up.  I an't a scholar.  Would
you be so kind as see how 'tis?'

He handed me, apologetically for his scholarship, a piece of paper,
and observed me while I looked it over.  It was quite right.

'Thankee, sir,' he said, taking it back.  'This money, if you
doen't see objections, Mas'r Davy, I shall put up jest afore I go,
in a cover directed to him; and put that up in another, directed to
his mother.  I shall tell her, in no more wureds than I speak to
you, what it's the price on; and that I'm gone, and past receiving
of it back.'

I told him that I thought it would be right to do so - that I was
thoroughly convinced it would be, since he felt it to be right.

'I said that theer was on'y one thing furder,' he proceeded with a
grave smile, when he had made up his little bundle again, and put
it in his pocket; 'but theer was two.  I warn't sure in my mind,
wen I come out this morning, as I could go and break to Ham, of my
own self, what had so thankfully happened.  So I writ a letter
while I was out, and put it in the post-office, telling of 'em how
all was as 'tis; and that I should come down tomorrow to unload my
mind of what little needs a-doing of down theer, and, most-like,
take my farewell leave of Yarmouth.'

'And do you wish me to go with you?' said I, seeing that he left
something unsaid.

'If you could do me that kind favour, Mas'r Davy,' he replied.  'I
know the sight on you would cheer 'em up a bit.'

My little Dora being in good spirits, and very desirous that I
should go - as I found on talking it over with her - I readily
pledged myself to accompany him in accordance with his wish.  Next
morning, consequently, we were on the Yarmouth coach, and again
travelling over the old ground.

As we passed along the familiar street at night - Mr. Peggotty, in
despite of all my remonstrances, carrying my bag - I glanced into
Omer and Joram's shop, and saw my old friend Mr. Omer there,
smoking his pipe.  I felt reluctant to be present, when Mr.
Peggotty first met his sister and Ham; and made Mr. Omer my excuse
for lingering behind.

'How is Mr. Omer, after this long time?' said I, going in.

He fanned away the smoke of his pipe, that he might get a better
view of me, and soon recognized me with great delight.

'I should get up, sir, to acknowledge such an honour as this
visit,' said he, 'only my limbs are rather out of sorts, and I am
wheeled about.  With the exception of my limbs and my breath,
howsoever, I am as hearty as a man can be, I'm thankful to say.'

I congratulated him on his contented looks and his good spirits,
and saw, now, that his easy-chair went on wheels.

'It's an ingenious thing, ain't it?' he inquired, following the
direction of my glance, and polishing the elbow with his arm.  'It
runs as light as a feather, and tracks as true as a mail-coach. 
Bless you, my little Minnie - my grand-daughter you know, Minnie's
child - puts her little strength against the back, gives it a
shove, and away we go, as clever and merry as ever you see
anything! And I tell you what - it's a most uncommon chair to smoke
a pipe in.'

I never saw such a good old fellow to make the best of a thing, and
find out the enjoyment of it, as Mr. Omer.  He was as radiant, as
if his chair, his asthma, and the failure of his limbs, were the
various branches of a great invention for enhancing the luxury of
a pipe.

'I see more of the world, I can assure you,' said Mr. Omer, 'in
this chair, than ever I see out of it.  You'd be surprised at the
number of people that looks in of a day to have a chat.  You really
would! There's twice as much in the newspaper, since I've taken to
this chair, as there used to be.  As to general reading, dear me,
what a lot of it I do get through! That's what I feel so strong,
you know! If it had been my eyes, what should I have done?  If it
had been my ears, what should I have done?  Being my limbs, what
does it signify?  Why, my limbs only made my breath shorter when I
used 'em.  And now, if I want to go out into the street or down to
the sands, I've only got to call Dick, Joram's youngest 'prentice,
and away I go in my own carriage, like the Lord Mayor of London.'

He half suffocated himself with laughing here.

'Lord bless you!' said Mr. Omer, resuming his pipe, 'a man must
take the fat with the lean; that's what he must make up his mind
to, in this life.  Joram does a fine business.  Ex-cellent
business!'

'I am very glad to hear it,' said I.

'I knew you would be,' said Mr. Omer.  'And Joram and Minnie are
like Valentines.  What more can a man expect?  What's his limbs to
that!'

His supreme contempt for his own limbs, as he sat smoking, was one
of the pleasantest oddities I have ever encountered.

'And since I've took to general reading, you've took to general
writing, eh, sir?' said Mr. Omer, surveying me admiringly.  'What
a lovely work that was of yours! What expressions in it! I read it
every word - every word.  And as to feeling sleepy! Not at all!'

I laughingly expressed my satisfaction, but I must confess that I
thought this association of ideas significant.

'I give you my word and honour, sir,' said Mr. Omer, 'that when I
lay that book upon the table, and look at it outside; compact in
three separate and indiwidual wollumes - one, two, three; I am as
proud as Punch to think that I once had the honour of being
connected with your family.  And dear me, it's a long time ago,
now, ain't it?  Over at Blunderstone.  With a pretty little party
laid along with the other party.  And you quite a small party then,
yourself.  Dear, dear!'

I changed the subject by referring to Emily.  After assuring him
that I did not forget how interested he had always been in her, and
how kindly he had always treated her, I gave him a general account
of her restoration to her uncle by the aid of Martha; which I knew
would please the old man.  He listened with the utmost attention,
and said, feelingly, when I had done:

'I am rejoiced at it, sir! It's the best news I have heard for many
a day.  Dear, dear, dear! And what's going to be undertook for that
unfortunate young woman, Martha, now?'

'You touch a point that my thoughts have been dwelling on since
yesterday,' said I, 'but on which I can give you no information
yet, Mr. Omer.  Mr. Peggotty has not alluded to it, and I have a
delicacy in doing so.  I am sure he has not forgotten it.  He
forgets nothing that is disinterested and good.'

'Because you know,' said Mr. Omer, taking himself up, where he had
left off, 'whatever is done, I should wish to be a member of.  Put
me down for anything you may consider right, and let me know.  I
never could think the girl all bad, and I am glad to find she's
not.  So will my daughter Minnie be.  Young women are contradictory
creatures in some things - her mother was just the same as her -
but their hearts are soft and kind.  It's all show with Minnie,
about Martha.  Why she should consider it necessary to make any
show, I don't undertake to tell you.  But it's all show, bless you. 
She'd do her any kindness in private.  So, put me down for whatever
you may consider right, will you be so good?  and drop me a line
where to forward it.  Dear me!' said Mr. Omer, 'when a man is
drawing on to a time of life, where the two ends of life meet; when
he finds himself, however hearty he is, being wheeled about for the
second time, in a speeches of go-cart; he should be over-rejoiced
to do a kindness if he can.  He wants plenty.  And I don't speak of
myself, particular,' said Mr. Omer, 'because, sir, the way I look
at it is, that we are all drawing on to the bottom of the hill,
whatever age we are, on account of time never standing still for a
single moment.  So let us always do a kindness, and be
over-rejoiced.  To be sure!'

He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and put it on a ledge in the
back of his chair, expressly made for its reception.

'There's Em'ly's cousin, him that she was to have been married to,'
said Mr. Omer, rubbing his hands feebly, 'as fine a fellow as there
is in Yarmouth! He'll come and talk or read to me, in the evening,
for an hour together sometimes.  That's a kindness, I should call
it! All his life's a kindness.'

'I am going to see him now,' said I.

'Are you?' said Mr. Omer.  'Tell him I was hearty, and sent my
respects.  Minnie and Joram's at a ball.  They would be as proud to
see you as I am, if they was at home.  Minnie won't hardly go out
at all, you see, "on account of father", as she says.  So I swore
tonight, that if she didn't go, I'd go to bed at six.  In
consequence of which,' Mr. Omer shook himself and his chair with
laughter at the success of his device, 'she and Joram's at a ball.'

I shook hands with him, and wished him good night.

'Half a minute, sir,' said Mr. Omer.  'If you was to go without
seeing my little elephant, you'd lose the best of sights.  You
never see such a sight! Minnie!'
A musical little voice answered, from somewhere upstairs, 'I am
coming, grandfather!' and a pretty little girl with long, flaxen,
curling hair, soon came running into the shop.

'This is my little elephant, sir,' said Mr. Omer, fondling the
child.  'Siamese breed, sir.  Now, little elephant!'

The little elephant set the door of the parlour open, enabling me
to see that, in these latter days, it was converted into a bedroom
for Mr. Omer who could not be easily conveyed upstairs; and then
hid her pretty forehead, and tumbled her long hair, against the
back of Mr. Omer's chair.

'The elephant butts, you know, sir,' said Mr. Omer, winking, 'when
he goes at a object.  Once, elephant.  Twice.  Three times!'

At this signal, the little elephant, with a dexterity that was next
to marvellous in so small an animal, whisked the chair round with
Mr. Omer in it, and rattled it off, pell-mell, into the parlour,
without touching the door-post: Mr. Omer indescribably enjoying the
performance, and looking back at me on the road as if it were the
triumphant issue of his life's exertions.

After a stroll about the town I went to Ham's house.  Peggotty had
now removed here for good; and had let her own house to the
successor of Mr. Barkis in the carrying business, who had paid her
very well for the good-will, cart, and horse.  I believe the very
same slow horse that Mr. Barkis drove was still at work.

I found them in the neat kitchen, accompanied by Mrs. Gummidge, who
had been fetched from the old boat by Mr. Peggotty himself.  I
doubt if she could have been induced to desert her post, by anyone
else.  He had evidently told them all.  Both Peggotty and Mrs.
Gummidge had their aprons to their eyes, and Ham had just stepped
out 'to take a turn on the beach'.  He presently came home, very
glad to see me; and I hope they were all the better for my being
there.  We spoke, with some approach to cheerfulness, of Mr.
Peggotty's growing rich in a new country, and of the wonders he
would describe in his letters.  We said nothing of Emily by name,
but distantly referred to her more than once.  Ham was the serenest
of the party.

But, Peggotty told me, when she lighted me to a little chamber
where the Crocodile book was lying ready for me on the table, that
he always was the same.  She believed (she told me, crying) that he
was broken-hearted; though he was as full of courage as of
sweetness, and worked harder and better than any boat-builder in
any yard in all that part.  There were times, she said, of an
evening, when he talked of their old life in the boat-house; and
then he mentioned Emily as a child.  But, he never mentioned her as
a woman.

I thought I had read in his face that he would like to speak to me
alone.  I therefore resolved to put myself in his way next evening,
as he came home from his work.  Having settled this with myself, I
fell asleep.  That night, for the first time in all those many
nights, the candle was taken out of the window, Mr. Peggotty swung
in his old hammock in the old boat, and the wind murmured with the
old sound round his head.

All next day, he was occupied in disposing of his fishing-boat and
tackle; in packing up, and sending to London by waggon, such of his
little domestic possessions as he thought would be useful to him;
and in parting with the rest, or bestowing them on Mrs. Gummidge. 
She was with him all day.  As I had a sorrowful wish to see the old
place once more, before it was locked up, I engaged to meet them
there in the evening.  But I so arranged it, as that I should meet
Ham first.

It was easy to come in his way, as I knew where he worked.  I met
him at a retired part of the sands, which I knew he would cross,
and turned back with him, that he might have leisure to speak to me
if he really wished.  I had not mistaken the expression of his
face.  We had walked but a little way together, when he said,
without looking at me:

'Mas'r Davy, have you seen her?'

'Only for a moment, when she was in a swoon,' I softly answered.

We walked a little farther, and he said:

'Mas'r Davy, shall you see her, d'ye think?'

'It would be too painful to her, perhaps,' said I.

'I have thowt of that,' he replied.  'So 'twould, sir, so 'twould.'

'But, Ham,' said I, gently, 'if there is anything that I could
write to her, for you, in case I could not tell it; if there is
anything you would wish to make known to her through me; I should
consider it a sacred trust.'

'I am sure on't.  I thankee, sir, most kind! I think theer is
something I could wish said or wrote.'

'What is it?'

We walked a little farther in silence, and then he spoke.

''Tan't that I forgive her.  'Tan't that so much.  'Tis more as I
beg of her to forgive me, for having pressed my affections upon
her.  Odd times, I think that if I hadn't had her promise fur to
marry me, sir, she was that trustful of me, in a friendly way, that
she'd have told me what was struggling in her mind, and would have
counselled with me, and I might have saved her.'

I pressed his hand.  'Is that all?'
'Theer's yet a something else,' he returned, 'if I can say it,
Mas'r Davy.'

We walked on, farther than we had walked yet, before he spoke
again.  He was not crying when he made the pauses I shall express
by lines.  He was merely collecting himself to speak very plainly.

'I loved her - and I love the mem'ry of her - too deep - to be able
to lead her to believe of my own self as I'm a happy man.  I could
only be happy - by forgetting of her - and I'm afeerd I couldn't
hardly bear as she should be told I done that.  But if you, being
so full of learning, Mas'r Davy, could think of anything to say as
might bring her to believe I wasn't greatly hurt: still loving of
her, and mourning for her: anything as might bring her to believe
as I was not tired of my life, and yet was hoping fur to see her
without blame, wheer the wicked cease from troubling and the weary
are at rest - anything as would ease her sorrowful mind, and yet
not make her think as I could ever marry, or as 'twas possible that
anyone could ever be to me what she was - I should ask of you to
say that - with my prayers for her - that was so dear.'

I pressed his manly hand again, and told him I would charge myself
to do this as well as I could.

'I thankee, sir,' he answered.  ''Twas kind of you to meet me. 
'Twas kind of you to bear him company down.  Mas'r Davy, I
unnerstan' very well, though my aunt will come to Lon'on afore they
sail, and they'll unite once more, that I am not like to see him
agen.  I fare to feel sure on't.  We doen't say so, but so 'twill
be, and better so.  The last you see on him - the very last - will
you give him the lovingest duty and thanks of the orphan, as he was
ever more than a father to?'

This I also promised, faithfully.

'I thankee agen, sir,' he said, heartily shaking hands.  'I know
wheer you're a-going.  Good-bye!'

With a slight wave of his hand, as though to explain to me that he
could not enter the old place, he turned away.  As I looked after
his figure, crossing the waste in the moonlight, I saw him turn his
face towards a strip of silvery light upon the sea, and pass on,
looking at it, until he was a shadow in the distance.

The door of the boat-house stood open when I approached; and, on
entering, I found it emptied of all its furniture, saving one of
the old lockers, on which Mrs. Gummidge, with a basket on her knee,
was seated, looking at Mr. Peggotty.  He leaned his elbow on the
rough chimney-piece, and gazed upon a few expiring embers in the
grate; but he raised his head, hopefully, on my coming in, and
spoke in a cheery manner.

'Come, according to promise, to bid farewell to 't, eh, Mas'r
Davy?' he said, taking up the candle.  'Bare enough, now, an't it?'
'Indeed you have made good use of the time,' said I.

'Why, we have not been idle, sir.  Missis Gummidge has worked like
a - I doen't know what Missis Gummidge an't worked like,' said Mr.
Peggotty, looking at her, at a loss for a sufficiently approving
simile.

Mrs. Gummidge, leaning on her basket, made no observation.

'Theer's the very locker that you used to sit on, 'long with
Em'ly!' said Mr. Peggotty, in a whisper.  'I'm a-going to carry it
away with me, last of all.  And heer's your old little bedroom,
see, Mas'r Davy! A'most as bleak tonight, as 'art could wish!'

In truth, the wind, though it was low, had a solemn sound, and
crept around the deserted house with a whispered wailing that was
very mournful.  Everything was gone, down to the little mirror with
the oyster-shell frame.  I thought of myself, lying here, when that
first great change was being wrought at home.  I thought of the
blue-eyed child who had enchanted me.  I thought of Steerforth: and
a foolish, fearful fancy came upon me of his being near at hand,
and liable to be met at any turn.

''Tis like to be long,' said Mr. Peggotty, in a low voice, 'afore
the boat finds new tenants.  They look upon 't, down beer, as being
unfortunate now!'

'Does it belong to anybody in the neighbourhood?' I asked.

'To a mast-maker up town,' said Mr. Peggotty.  'I'm a-going to give
the key to him tonight.'

We looked into the other little room, and came back to Mrs.
Gummidge, sitting on the locker, whom Mr. Peggotty, putting the
light on the chimney-piece, requested to rise, that he might carry
it outside the door before extinguishing the candle.

'Dan'l,' said Mrs. Gummidge, suddenly deserting her basket, and
clinging to his arm 'my dear Dan'l, the parting words I speak in
this house is, I mustn't be left behind.  Doen't ye think of
leaving me behind, Dan'l! Oh, doen't ye ever do it!'

Mr. Peggotty, taken aback, looked from Mrs. Gummidge to me, and
from me to Mrs. Gummidge, as if he had been awakened from a sleep.

'Doen't ye, dearest Dan'l, doen't ye!' cried Mrs. Gummidge,
fervently.  'Take me 'long with you, Dan'l, take me 'long with you
and Em'ly! I'll be your servant, constant and trew.  If there's
slaves in them parts where you're a-going, I'll be bound to you for
one, and happy, but doen't ye leave me behind, Dan'l, that's a
deary dear!'

'My good soul,' said Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, 'you doen't
know what a long voyage, and what a hard life 'tis!'
'Yes, I do, Dan'l! I can guess!' cried Mrs. Gummidge.  'But my
parting words under this roof is, I shall go into the house and
die, if I am not took.  I can dig, Dan'l.  I can work.  I can live
hard.  I can be loving and patient now - more than you think,
Dan'l, if you'll on'y try me.  I wouldn't touch the 'lowance, not
if I was dying of want, Dan'l Peggotty; but I'll go with you and
Em'ly, if you'll on'y let me, to the world's end! I know how 'tis;
I know you think that I am lone and lorn; but, deary love, 'tan't
so no more! I ain't sat here, so long, a-watching, and a-thinking
of your trials, without some good being done me.  Mas'r Davy, speak
to him for me! I knows his ways, and Em'ly's, and I knows their
sorrows, and can be a comfort to 'em, some odd times, and labour
for 'em allus! Dan'l, deary Dan'l, let me go 'long with you!'

And Mrs. Gummidge took his hand, and kissed it with a homely pathos
and affection, in a homely rapture of devotion and gratitude, that
he well deserved.

We brought the locker out, extinguished the candle, fastened the
door on the outside, and left the old boat close shut up, a dark
speck in the cloudy night.  Next day, when we were returning to
London outside the coach, Mrs. Gummidge and her basket were on the
seat behind, and Mrs. Gummidge was happy.

CHAPTER 52
I ASSIST AT AN EXPLOSION

When the time Mr. Micawber had appointed so mysteriously, was
within four-and-twenty hours of being come, my aunt and I consulted
how we should proceed; for my aunt was very unwilling to leave
Dora.  Ah! how easily I carried Dora up and down stairs, now!

We were disposed, notwithstanding Mr. Micawber's stipulation for my
aunt's attendance, to arrange that she should stay at home, and be
represented by Mr. Dick and me.  In short, we had resolved to take
this course, when Dora again unsettled us by declaring that she
never would forgive herself, and never would forgive her bad boy,
if my aunt remained behind, on any pretence.

'I won't speak to you,' said Dora, shaking her curls at my aunt. 
'I'll be disagreeable! I'll make Jip bark at you all day.  I shall
be sure that you really are a cross old thing, if you don't go!'

'Tut, Blossom!' laughed my aunt.  'You know you can't do without
me!'

'Yes, I can,' said Dora.  'You are no use to me at all.  You never
run up and down stairs for me, all day long.  You never sit and
tell me stories about Doady, when his shoes were worn out, and he
was covered with dust - oh, what a poor little mite of a fellow!
You never do anything at all to please me, do you, dear?' Dora made
haste to kiss my aunt, and say, 'Yes, you do! I'm only joking!'-
lest my aunt should think she really meant it.

'But, aunt,' said Dora, coaxingly, 'now listen.  You must go.  I
shall tease you, 'till you let me have my own way about it.  I
shall lead my naughty boy such a life, if he don't make you go.  I
shall make myself so disagreeable - and so will Jip! You'll wish
you had gone, like a good thing, for ever and ever so long, if you
don't go.  Besides,' said Dora, putting back her hair, and looking
wonderingly at my aunt and me, 'why shouldn't you both go?  I am
not very ill indeed.  Am I?'

'Why, what a question!' cried my aunt.

'What a fancy!' said I.

'Yes! I know I am a silly little thing!' said Dora, slowly looking
from one of us to the other, and then putting up her pretty lips to
kiss us as she lay upon her couch.  'Well, then, you must both go,
or I shall not believe you; and then I shall cry!'

I saw, in my aunt's face, that she began to give way now, and Dora
brightened again, as she saw it too.

'You'll come back with so much to tell me, that it'll take at least
a week to make me understand!' said Dora.  'Because I know I shan't
understand, for a length of time, if there's any business in it. 
And there's sure to be some business in it! If there's anything to
add up, besides, I don't know when I shall make it out; and my bad
boy will look so miserable all the time.  There! Now you'll go,
won't you?  You'll only be gone one night, and Jip will take care
of me while you are gone.  Doady will carry me upstairs before you
go, and I won't come down again till you come back; and you shall
take Agnes a dreadfully scolding letter from me, because she has
never been to see us!'

We agreed, without any more consultation, that we would both go,
and that Dora was a little Impostor, who feigned to be rather
unwell, because she liked to be petted.  She was greatly pleased,
and very merry; and we four, that is to say, my aunt, Mr. Dick,
Traddles, and I, went down to Canterbury by the Dover mail that
night.

At the hotel where Mr. Micawber had requested us to await him,
which we got into, with some trouble, in the middle of the night,
I found a letter, importing that he would appear in the morning
punctually at half past nine.  After which, we went shivering, at
that uncomfortable hour, to our respective beds, through various
close passages; which smelt as if they had been steeped, for ages,
in a solution of soup and stables.

Early in the morning, I sauntered through the dear old tranquil
streets, and again mingled with the shadows of the venerable
gateways and churches.  The rooks were sailing about the cathedral
towers; and the towers themselves, overlooking many a long
unaltered mile of the rich country and its pleasant streams, were
cutting the bright morning air, as if there were no such thing as
change on earth.  Yet the bells, when they sounded, told me
sorrowfully of change in everything; told me of their own age, and
my pretty Dora's youth; and of the many, never old, who had lived
and loved and died, while the reverberations of the bells had
hummed through the rusty armour of the Black Prince hanging up
within, and, motes upon the deep of Time, had lost themselves in
air, as circles do in water.

I looked at the old house from the corner of the street, but did
not go nearer to it, lest, being observed, I might unwittingly do
any harm to the design I had come to aid.  The early sun was
striking edgewise on its gables and lattice-windows, touching them
with gold; and some beams of its old peace seemed to touch my
heart.

I strolled into the country for an hour or so, and then returned by
the main street, which in the interval had shaken off its last
night's sleep.  Among those who were stirring in the shops, I saw
my ancient enemy the butcher, now advanced to top-boots and a baby,
and in business for himself.  He was nursing the baby, and appeared
to be a benignant member of society.

We all became very anxious and impatient, when we sat down to
breakfast.  As it approached nearer and nearer to half past nine
o'clock, our restless expectation of Mr. Micawber increased.  At
last we made no more pretence of attending to the meal, which,
except with Mr. Dick, had been a mere form from the first; but my
aunt walked up and down the room, Traddles sat upon the sofa
affecting to read the paper with his eyes on the ceiling; and I
looked out of the window to give early notice of Mr. Micawber's
coming.  Nor had I long to watch, for, at the first chime of the
half hour, he appeared in the street.

'Here he is,' said I, 'and not in his legal attire!'

My aunt tied the strings of her bonnet (she had come down to
breakfast in it), and put on her shawl, as if she were ready for
anything that was resolute and uncompromising.  Traddles buttoned
his coat with a determined air.  Mr. Dick, disturbed by these
formidable appearances, but feeling it necessary to imitate them,
pulled his hat, with both hands, as firmly over his ears as he
possibly could; and instantly took it off again, to welcome Mr.
Micawber.

'Gentlemen, and madam,' said Mr. Micawber, 'good morning! My dear
sir,' to Mr. Dick, who shook hands with him violently, 'you are
extremely good.'

'Have you breakfasted?' said Mr. Dick.  'Have a chop!'

'Not for the world, my good sir!' cried Mr. Micawber, stopping him
on his way to the bell; 'appetite and myself, Mr. Dixon, have long
been strangers.'

Mr. Dixon was so well pleased with his new name, and appeared to
think it so obliging in Mr. Micawber to confer it upon him, that he
shook hands with him again, and laughed rather childishly.

'Dick,' said my aunt, 'attention!'

Mr. Dick recovered himself, with a blush.

'Now, sir,' said my aunt to Mr. Micawber, as she put on her gloves,
'we are ready for Mount Vesuvius, or anything else, as soon as YOU
please.'

'Madam,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'I trust you will shortly witness
an eruption.  Mr. Traddles, I have your permission, I believe, to
mention here that we have been in communication together?'

'It is undoubtedly the fact, Copperfield,' said Traddles, to whom
I looked in surprise.  'Mr. Micawber has consulted me in reference
to what he has in contemplation; and I have advised him to the best
of my judgement.'

'Unless I deceive myself, Mr. Traddles,' pursued Mr. Micawber,
'what I contemplate is a disclosure of an important nature.'

'Highly so,' said Traddles.

'Perhaps, under such circumstances, madam and gentlemen,' said Mr.
Micawber, 'you will do me the favour to submit yourselves, for the
moment, to the direction of one who, however unworthy to be
regarded in any other light but as a Waif and Stray upon the shore
of human nature, is still your fellow-man, though crushed out of
his original form by individual errors, and the accumulative force
of a combination of circumstances?'

'We have perfect confidence in you, Mr. Micawber,' said I, 'and
will do what you please.'

'Mr. Copperfield,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'your confidence is not,
at the existing juncture, ill-bestowed.  I would beg to be allowed
a start of five minutes by the clock; and then to receive the
present company, inquiring for Miss Wickfield, at the office of
Wickfield and Heep, whose Stipendiary I am.'

My aunt and I looked at Traddles, who nodded his approval.

'I have no more,' observed Mr. Micawber, 'to say at present.'

With which, to my infinite surprise, he included us all in a
comprehensive bow, and disappeared; his manner being extremely
distant, and his face extremely pale.

Traddles only smiled, and shook his head (with his hair standing
upright on the top of it), when I looked to him for an explanation;
so I took out my watch, and, as a last resource, counted off the
five minutes.  My aunt, with her own watch in her hand, did the
like.  When the time was expired, Traddles gave her his arm; and we
all went out together to the old house, without saying one word on
the way.

We found Mr. Micawber at his desk, in the turret office on the
ground floor, either writing, or pretending to write, hard.  The
large office-ruler was stuck into his waistcoat, and was not so
well concealed but that a foot or more of that instrument protruded
from his bosom, like a new kind of shirt-frill.

As it appeared to me that I was expected to speak, I said aloud:

'How do you do, Mr. Micawber?'

'Mr. Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, gravely, 'I hope I see you
well?'

'Is Miss Wickfield at home?' said I.

'Mr. Wickfield is unwell in bed, sir, of a rheumatic fever,' he
returned; 'but Miss Wickfield, I have no doubt, will be happy to
see old friends.  Will you walk in, sir?'

He preceded us to the dining-room - the first room I had entered in
that house - and flinging open the door of Mr. Wickfield's former
office, said, in a sonorous voice:

'Miss Trotwood, Mr. David Copperfield, Mr. Thomas Traddles, and Mr.
Dixon!'

I had not seen Uriah Heep since the time of the blow.  Our visit
astonished him, evidently; not the less, I dare say, because it
astonished ourselves.  He did not gather his eyebrows together, for
he had none worth mentioning; but he frowned to that degree that he
almost closed his small eyes, while the hurried raising of his
grisly hand to his chin betrayed some trepidation or surprise. 
This was only when we were in the act of entering his room, and
when I caught a glance at him over my aunt's shoulder.  A moment
afterwards, he was as fawning and as humble as ever.

'Well, I am sure,' he said.  'This is indeed an unexpected
pleasure! To have, as I may say, all friends round St. Paul's at
once, is a treat unlooked for! Mr. Copperfield, I hope I see you
well, and - if I may umbly express myself so - friendly towards
them as is ever your friends, whether or not.  Mrs. Copperfield,
sir, I hope she's getting on.  We have been made quite uneasy by
the poor accounts we have had of her state, lately, I do assure
you.'

I felt ashamed to let him take my hand, but I did not know yet what
else to do.

'Things are changed in this office, Miss Trotwood, since I was an
umble clerk, and held your pony; ain't they?' said Uriah, with his
sickliest smile.  'But I am not changed, Miss Trotwood.'

'Well, sir,' returned my aunt, 'to tell you the truth, I think you
are pretty constant to the promise of your youth; if that's any
satisfaction to you.'

'Thank you, Miss Trotwood,' said Uriah, writhing in his ungainly
manner, 'for your good opinion! Micawber, tell 'em to let Miss
Agnes know - and mother.  Mother will be quite in a state, when she
sees the present company!' said Uriah, setting chairs.

'You are not busy, Mr. Heep?' said Traddles, whose eye the cunning
red eye accidentally caught, as it at once scrutinized and evaded
us.

'No, Mr. Traddles,' replied Uriah, resuming his official seat, and
squeezing his bony hands, laid palm to palm between his bony knees. 
'Not so much so as I could wish.  But lawyers, sharks, and leeches,
are not easily satisfied, you know! Not but what myself and
Micawber have our hands pretty full, in general, on account of Mr.
Wickfield's being hardly fit for any occupation, sir.  But it's a
pleasure as well as a duty, I am sure, to work for him.  You've not
been intimate with Mr. Wickfield, I think, Mr. Traddles?  I believe
I've only had the honour of seeing you once myself?'

'No, I have not been intimate with Mr. Wickfield,' returned
Traddles; 'or I might perhaps have waited on you long ago, Mr.
Heep.'

There was something in the tone of this reply, which made Uriah
look at the speaker again, with a very sinister and suspicious
expression.  But, seeing only Traddles, with his good-natured face,
simple manner, and hair on end, he dismissed it as he replied, with
a jerk of his whole body, but especially his throat:

'I am sorry for that, Mr. Traddles.  You would have admired him as
much as we all do.  His little failings would only have endeared
him to you the more.  But if you would like to hear my
fellow-partner eloquently spoken of, I should refer you to
Copperfield.  The family is a subject he's very strong upon, if you
never heard him.'

I was prevented from disclaiming the compliment (if I should have
done so, in any case), by the entrance of Agnes, now ushered in by
Mr. Micawber.  She was not quite so self-possessed as usual, I
thought; and had evidently undergone anxiety and fatigue.  But her
earnest cordiality, and her quiet beauty, shone with the gentler
lustre for it.

I saw Uriah watch her while she greeted us; and he reminded me of
an ugly and rebellious genie watching a good spirit.  In the
meanwhile, some slight sign passed between Mr. Micawber and
Traddles; and Traddles, unobserved except by me, went out.

'Don't wait, Micawber,' said Uriah.

Mr. Micawber, with his hand upon the ruler in his breast, stood
erect before the door, most unmistakably contemplating one of his
fellow-men, and that man his employer.

'What are you waiting for?' said Uriah.  'Micawber! did you hear me
tell you not to wait?'

'Yes!' replied the immovable Mr. Micawber.

'Then why DO you wait?' said Uriah.

'Because I - in short, choose,' replied Mr. Micawber, with a burst.

Uriah's cheeks lost colour, and an unwholesome paleness, still
faintly tinged by his pervading red, overspread them.  He looked at
Mr. Micawber attentively, with his whole face breathing short and
quick in every feature.

'You are a dissipated fellow, as all the world knows,' he said,
with an effort at a smile, 'and I am afraid you'll oblige me to get
rid of you.  Go along! I'll talk to you presently.'

'If there is a scoundrel on this earth,' said Mr. Micawber,
suddenly breaking out again with the utmost vehemence, 'with whom
I have already talked too much, that scoundrel's name is - HEEP!'

Uriah fell back, as if he had been struck or stung.  Looking slowly
round upon us with the darkest and wickedest expression that his
face could wear, he said, in a lower voice:

'Oho! This is a conspiracy! You have met here by appointment! You
are playing Booty with my clerk, are you, Copperfield?  Now, take
care.  You'll make nothing of this.  We understand each other, you
and me.  There's no love between us.  You were always a puppy with
a proud stomach, from your first coming here; and you envy me my
rise, do you?  None of your plots against me; I'll counterplot you!
Micawber, you be off.  I'll talk to you presently.'

'Mr. Micawber,' said I, 'there is a sudden change in this fellow. 
in more respects than the extraordinary one of his speaking the
truth in one particular, which assures me that he is brought to
bay.  Deal with him as he deserves!'

'You are a precious set of people, ain't you?' said Uriah, in the
same low voice, and breaking out into a clammy heat, which he wiped
from his forehead, with his long lean hand, 'to buy over my clerk,
who is the very scum of society, - as you yourself were,
Copperfield, you know it, before anyone had charity on you, - to
defame me with his lies?  Miss Trotwood, you had better stop this;
or I'll stop your husband shorter than will be pleasant to you.  I
won't know your story professionally, for nothing, old lady! Miss
Wickfield, if you have any love for your father, you had better not
join that gang.  I'll ruin him, if you do.  Now, come! I have got
some of you under the harrow.  Think twice, before it goes over
you.  Think twice, you, Micawber, if you don't want to be crushed. 
I recommend you to take yourself off, and be talked to presently,
you fool! while there's time to retreat.  Where's mother?' he said,
suddenly appearing to notice, with alarm, the absence of Traddles,
and pulling down the bell-rope.  'Fine doings in a person's own
house!'

'Mrs. Heep is here, sir,' said Traddles, returning with that worthy
mother of a worthy son.  'I have taken the liberty of making myself
known to her.'

'Who are you to make yourself known?' retorted Uriah.  'And what do
you want here?'

'I am the agent and friend of Mr. Wickfield, sir,' said Traddles,
in a composed and business-like way.  'And I have a power of
attorney from him in my pocket, to act for him in all matters.'

'The old ass has drunk himself into a state of dotage,' said Uriah,
turning uglier than before, 'and it has been got from him by
fraud!'

'Something has been got from him by fraud, I know,' returned
Traddles quietly; 'and so do you, Mr. Heep.  We will refer that
question, if you please, to Mr. Micawber.'

'Ury -!' Mrs. Heep began, with an anxious gesture.

'YOU hold your tongue, mother,' he returned; 'least said, soonest
mended.'

'But, my Ury -'

'Will you hold your tongue, mother, and leave it to me?'

Though I had long known that his servility was false, and all his
pretences knavish and hollow, I had had no adequate conception of
the extent of his hypocrisy, until I now saw him with his mask off. 
The suddenness with which he dropped it, when he perceived that it
was useless to him; the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed;
the leer with which he exulted, even at this moment, in the evil he
had done - all this time being desperate too, and at his wits' end
for the means of getting the better of us - though perfectly
consistent with the experience I had of him, at first took even me
by surprise, who had known him so long, and disliked him so
heartily.

I say nothing of the look he conferred on me, as he stood eyeing
us, one after another; for I had always understood that he hated
me, and I remembered the marks of my hand upon his cheek.  But when
his eyes passed on to Agnes, and I saw the rage with which he felt
his power over her slipping away, and the exhibition, in their
disappointment, of the odious passions that had led him to aspire
to one whose virtues he could never appreciate or care for, I was
shocked by the mere thought of her having lived, an hour, within
sight of such a man.

After some rubbing of the lower part of his face, and some looking
at us with those bad eyes, over his grisly fingers, he made one
more address to me, half whining, and half abusive.

'You think it justifiable, do you, Copperfield, you who pride
yourself so much on your honour and all the rest of it, to sneak
about my place, eaves-dropping with my clerk?  If it had been ME,
I shouldn't have wondered; for I don't make myself out a gentleman
(though I never was in the streets either, as you were, according
to Micawber), but being you! - And you're not afraid of doing this,
either?  You don't think at all of what I shall do, in return; or
of getting yourself into trouble for conspiracy and so forth?  Very
well.  We shall see! Mr. What's-your-name, you were going to refer
some question to Micawber.  There's your referee.  Why don't you
make him speak?  He has learnt his lesson, I see.'

Seeing that what he said had no effect on me or any of us, he sat
on the edge of his table with his hands in his pockets, and one of
his splay feet twisted round the other leg, waiting doggedly for
what might follow.

Mr. Micawber, whose impetuosity I had restrained thus far with the
greatest difficulty, and who had repeatedly interposed with the
first syllable Of SCOUN-drel! without getting to the second, now
burst forward, drew the ruler from his breast (apparently as a
defensive weapon), and produced from his pocket a foolscap
document, folded in the form of a large letter.  Opening this
packet, with his old flourish, and glancing at the contents, as if
he cherished an artistic admiration of their style of composition,
he began to read as follows:

'"Dear Miss Trotwood and gentlemen -"'

'Bless and save the man!' exclaimed my aunt in a low voice.  'He'd
write letters by the ream, if it was a capital offence!'

Mr. Micawber, without hearing her, went on.

'"In appearing before you to denounce probably the most consummate
Villain that has ever existed,"' Mr. Micawber, without looking off
the letter, pointed the ruler, like a ghostly truncheon, at Uriah
Heep, '"I ask no consideration for myself.  The victim, from my
cradle, of pecuniary liabilities to which I have been unable to
respond, I have ever been the sport and toy of debasing
circumstances.  Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, have,
collectively or separately, been the attendants of my career."'

The relish with which Mr. Micawber described himself as a prey to
these dismal calamities, was only to be equalled by the emphasis
with which he read his letter; and the kind of homage he rendered
to it with a roll of his head, when he thought he had hit a
sentence very hard indeed.

'"In an accumulation of Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, I
entered the office - or, as our lively neighbour the Gaul would
term it, the Bureau - of the Firm, nominally conducted under the
appellation of Wickfield and - HEEP, but in reality, wielded by -
HEEP alone.  HEEP, and only HEEP, is the mainspring of that
machine.  HEEP, and only HEEP, is the Forger and the Cheat."'

Uriah, more blue than white at these words, made a dart at the
letter, as if to tear it in pieces.  Mr. Micawber, with a perfect
miracle of dexterity or luck, caught his advancing knuckles with
the ruler, and disabled his right hand.  It dropped at the wrist,
as if it were broken.  The blow sounded as if it had fallen on
wood.

'The Devil take you!' said Uriah, writhing in a new way with pain. 
'I'll be even with you.'

'Approach me again, you - you - you HEEP of infamy,' gasped Mr.
Micawber, 'and if your head is human, I'll break it.  Come on, come
on! '

I think I never saw anything more ridiculous - I was sensible of
it, even at the time - than Mr. Micawber making broad-sword guards
with the ruler, and crying, 'Come on!' while Traddles and I pushed
him back into a corner, from which, as often as we got him into it,
he persisted in emerging again.

His enemy, muttering to himself, after wringing his wounded hand
for sometime, slowly drew off his neck-kerchief and bound it up;
then held it in his other hand, and sat upon his table with his
sullen face looking down.

Mr. Micawber, when he was sufficiently cool, proceeded with his
letter.

'"The stipendiary emoluments in consideration of which I entered
into the service of - HEEP,"' always pausing before that word and
uttering it with astonishing vigour, '"were not defined, beyond the
pittance of twenty-two shillings and six per week.  The rest was
left contingent on the value of my professional exertions; in other
and more expressive words, on the baseness of my nature, the
cupidity of my motives, the poverty of my family, the general moral
(or rather immoral) resemblance between myself and - HEEP.  Need I
say, that it soon became necessary for me to solicit from - HEEP -
pecuniary advances towards the support of Mrs. Micawber, and our
blighted but rising family?  Need I say that this necessity had
been foreseen by - HEEP?  That those advances were secured by
I.O.U.'s and other similar acknowledgements, known to the legal
institutions of this country?  And that I thus became immeshed in
the web he had spun for my reception?"'

Mr. Micawber's enjoyment of his epistolary powers, in describing
this unfortunate state of things, really seemed to outweigh any
pain or anxiety that the reality could have caused him.  He read
on:

'"Then it was that - HEEP - began to favour me with just so much of
his confidence, as was necessary to the discharge of his infernal
business.  Then it was that I began, if I may so Shakespearianly
express myself, to dwindle, peak, and pine.  I found that my
services were constantly called into requisition for the
falsification of business, and the mystification of an individual
whom I will designate as Mr. W.  That Mr. W. was imposed upon, kept
in ignorance, and deluded, in every possible way; yet, that all
this while, the ruffian - HEEP - was professing unbounded gratitude
to, and unbounded friendship for, that much-abused gentleman.  This
was bad enough; but, as the philosophic Dane observes, with that
universal applicability which distinguishes the illustrious
ornament of the Elizabethan Era, worse remains behind!"'

Mr. Micawber was so very much struck by this happy rounding off
with a quotation, that he indulged himself, and us, with a second
reading of the sentence, under pretence of having lost his place.

'"It is not my intention,"' he continued reading on, '"to enter on
a detailed list, within the compass of the present epistle (though
it is ready elsewhere), of the various malpractices of a minor
nature, affecting the individual whom I have denominated Mr. W., to
which I have been a tacitly consenting party.  My object, when the
contest within myself between stipend and no stipend, baker and no
baker, existence and non-existence, ceased, was to take advantage
of my opportunities to discover and expose the major malpractices
committed, to that gentleman's grievous wrong and injury, by -
HEEP.  Stimulated by the silent monitor within, and by a no less
touching and appealing monitor without - to whom I will briefly
refer as Miss W. - I entered on a not unlaborious task of
clandestine investigation, protracted - now, to the best of my
knowledge, information, and belief, over a period exceeding twelve
calendar months."'

He read this passage as if it were from an Act of Parliament; and
appeared majestically refreshed by the sound of the words.

'"My charges against - HEEP,"' he read on, glancing at him, and
drawing the ruler into a convenient position under his left arm, in
case of need, '"are as follows."'

We all held our breath, I think.  I am sure Uriah held his.

'"First,"' said Mr. Micawber, '"When Mr. W.'s faculties and memory
for business became, through causes into which it is not necessary
or expedient for me to enter, weakened and confused, - HEEP -
designedly perplexed and complicated the whole of the official
transactions.  When Mr. W. was least fit to enter on business, -
HEEP was always at hand to force him to enter on it.  He obtained
Mr. W.'s signature under such circumstances to documents of
importance, representing them to be other documents of no
importance.  He induced Mr. W. to empower him to draw out, thus,
one particular sum of trust-money, amounting to twelve six
fourteen, two and nine, and employed it to meet pretended business
charges and deficiencies which were either already provided for, or
had never really existed.  He gave this proceeding, throughout, the
appearance of having originated in Mr. W.'s own dishonest
intention, and of having been accomplished by Mr. W.'s own
dishonest act; and has used it, ever since, to torture and
constrain him."'

'You shall prove this, you Copperfield!' said Uriah, with a
threatening shake of the head.  'All in good time!'

'Ask - HEEP - Mr. Traddles, who lived in his house after him,' said
Mr. Micawber, breaking off from the letter; 'will you?'

'The fool himself- and lives there now,' said Uriah, disdainfully.

'Ask - HEEP - if he ever kept a pocket-book in that house,' said
Mr. Micawber; 'will you?'

I saw Uriah's lank hand stop, involuntarily, in the scraping of his
chin.

'Or ask him,' said Mr. Micawber,'if he ever burnt one there.  If he
says yes, and asks you where the ashes are, refer him to Wilkins
Micawber, and he will hear of something not at all to his
advantage!'

The triumphant flourish with which Mr. Micawber delivered himself
of these words, had a powerful effect in alarming the mother; who
cried out, in much agitation:

'Ury, Ury! Be umble, and make terms, my dear!'

'Mother!' he retorted, 'will you keep quiet?  You're in a fright,
and don't know what you say or mean.  Umble!' he repeated, looking
at me, with a snarl; 'I've umbled some of 'em for a pretty long
time back, umble as I was!'

Mr. Micawber, genteelly adjusting his chin in his cravat, presently
proceeded with his composition.

'"Second.  HEEP has, on several occasions, to the best of my
knowledge, information, and belief -"'

'But that won't do,' muttered Uriah, relieved.  'Mother, you keep
quiet.'

'We will endeavour to provide something that WILL do, and do for
you finally, sir, very shortly,' replied Mr. Micawber.

'"Second.  HEEP has, on several occasions, to the best of my
knowledge, information, and belief, systematically forged, to
various entries, books, and documents, the signature of Mr. W.; and
has distinctly done so in one instance, capable of proof by me.  To
wit, in manner following, that is to say:"'

Again, Mr. Micawber had a relish in this formal piling up of words,
which, however ludicrously displayed in his case, was, I must say,
not at all peculiar to him.  I have observed it, in the course of
my life, in numbers of men.  It seems to me to be a general rule. 
In the taking of legal oaths, for instance, deponents seem to enjoy
themselves mightily when they come to several good words in
succession, for the expression of one idea; as, that they utterly
detest, abominate, and abjure, or so forth; and the old anathemas
were made relishing on the same principle.  We talk about the
tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannize over them too; we are
fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait
upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds
well.  As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries
on state occasions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so,
the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration,
if there be but a great parade of them.  And as individuals get
into trouble by making too great a show of liveries, or as slaves
when they are too numerous rise against their masters, so I think
I could mention a nation that has got into many great difficulties,
and will get into many greater, from maintaining too large a
retinue of words.

Mr. Micawber read on, almost smacking his lips:

'"To wit, in manner following, that is to say.  Mr. W. being
infirm, and it being within the bounds of probability that his
decease might lead to some discoveries, and to the downfall of -
HEEP'S - power over the W. family, - as I, Wilkins Micawber, the
undersigned, assume - unless the filial affection of his daughter
could be secretly influenced from allowing any investigation of the
partnership affairs to be ever made, the said - HEEP - deemed it
expedient to have a bond ready by him, as from Mr. W., for the
before-mentioned sum of twelve six fourteen, two and nine, with
interest, stated therein to have been advanced by - HEEP - to Mr.
W. to save Mr. W. from dishonour; though really the sum was never
advanced by him, and has long been replaced.  The signatures to
this instrument purporting to be executed by Mr. W. and attested by
Wilkins Micawber, are forgeries by - HEEP.  I have, in my
possession, in his hand and pocket-book, several similar imitations
of Mr. W.'s signature, here and there defaced by fire, but legible
to anyone.  I never attested any such document.  And I have the
document itself, in my possession."'
Uriah Heep, with a start, took out of his pocket a bunch of keys,
and opened a certain drawer; then, suddenly bethought himself of
what he was about, and turned again towards us, without looking in
it.

'"And I have the document,"' Mr. Micawber read again, looking about
as if it were the text of a sermon, '"in my possession, - that is
to say, I had, early this morning, when this was written, but have
since relinquished it to Mr. Traddles."'

'It is quite true,' assented Traddles.

'Ury, Ury!' cried the mother, 'be umble and make terms.  I know my
son will be umble, gentlemen, if you'll give him time to think. 
Mr. Copperfield, I'm sure you know that he was always very umble,
sir!'

It was singular to see how the mother still held to the old trick,
when the son had abandoned it as useless.

'Mother,' he said, with an impatient bite at the handkerchief in
which his hand was wrapped, 'you had better take and fire a loaded
gun at me.'

'But I love you, Ury,' cried Mrs. Heep.  And I have no doubt she
did; or that he loved her, however strange it may appear; though,
to be sure, they were a congenial couple.  'And I can't bear to
hear you provoking the gentlemen, and endangering of yourself more. 
I told the gentleman at first, when he told me upstairs it was come
to light, that I would answer for your being umble, and making
amends.  Oh, see how umble I am, gentlemen, and don't mind him!'

'Why, there's Copperfield, mother,' he angrily retorted, pointing
his lean finger at me, against whom all his animosity was levelled,
as the prime mover in the discovery; and I did not undeceive him;
'there's Copperfield, would have given you a hundred pound to say
less than you've blurted out!'

'I can't help it, Ury,' cried his mother.  'I can't see you running
into danger, through carrying your head so high.  Better be umble,
as you always was.'

He remained for a little, biting the handkerchief, and then said to
me with a scowl:

'What more have you got to bring forward?  If anything, go on with
it.  What do you look at me for?'

Mr. Micawber promptly resumed his letter, glad to revert to a
performance with which he was so highly satisfied.

'"Third.  And last.  I am now in a condition to show, by - HEEP'S
- false books, and - HEEP'S - real memoranda, beginning with the
partially destroyed pocket-book (which I was unable to comprehend,
at the time of its accidental discovery by Mrs. Micawber, on our
taking possession of our present abode, in the locker or bin
devoted to the reception of the ashes calcined on our domestic
hearth), that the weaknesses, the faults, the very virtues, the
parental affections, and the sense of honour, of the unhappy Mr. W.
have been for years acted on by, and warped to the base purposes of
- HEEP.  That Mr. W. has been for years deluded and plundered, in
every conceivable manner, to the pecuniary aggrandisement of the
avaricious, false, and grasping - HEEP.  That the engrossing object
of- HEEP - was, next to gain, to subdue Mr. and Miss W. (of his
ulterior views in reference to the latter I say nothing) entirely
to himself.  That his last act, completed but a few months since,
was to induce Mr. W. to execute a relinquishment of his share in
the partnership, and even a bill of sale on the very furniture of
his house, in consideration of a certain annuity, to be well and
truly paid by - HEEP - on the four common quarter-days in each and
every year.  That these meshes; beginning with alarming and
falsified accounts of the estate of which Mr. W. is the receiver,
at a period when Mr. W. had launched into imprudent and ill-judged
speculations, and may not have had the money, for which he was
morally and legally responsible, in hand; going on with pretended
borrowings of money at enormous interest, really coming from - HEEP
- and by - HEEP - fraudulently obtained or withheld from Mr. W.
himself, on pretence of such speculations or otherwise; perpetuated
by a miscellaneous catalogue of unscrupulous chicaneries -
gradually thickened, until the unhappy Mr. W. could see no world
beyond.  Bankrupt, as he believed, alike in circumstances, in all
other hope, and in honour, his sole reliance was upon the monster
in the garb of man,"' - Mr. Micawber made a good deal of this, as
a new turn of expression, - '"who, by making himself necessary to
him, had achieved his destruction.  All this I undertake to show. 
Probably much more!"'

I whispered a few words to Agnes, who was weeping, half joyfully,
half sorrowfully, at my side; and there was a movement among us, as
if Mr. Micawber had finished.  He said, with exceeding gravity,
'Pardon me,' and proceeded, with a mixture of the lowest spirits
and the most intense enjoyment, to the peroration of his letter.

'"I have now concluded.  It merely remains for me to substantiate
these accusations; and then, with my ill-starred family, to
disappear from the landscape on which we appear to be an
encumbrance.  That is soon done.  It may be reasonably inferred
that our baby will first expire of inanition, as being the frailest
member of our circle; and that our twins will follow next in order. 
So be it! For myself, my Canterbury Pilgrimage has done much;
imprisonment on civil process, and want, will soon do more.  I
trust that the labour and hazard of an investigation - of which the
smallest results have been slowly pieced together, in the pressure
of arduous avocations, under grinding penurious apprehensions, at
rise of morn, at dewy eve, in the shadows of night, under the
watchful eye of one whom it were superfluous to call Demon -
combined with the struggle of parental Poverty to turn it, when
completed, to the right account, may be as the sprinkling of a few
drops of sweet water on my funeral pyre.  I ask no more.  Let it
be, in justice, merely said of me, as of a gallant and eminent
naval Hero, with whom I have no pretensions to cope, that what I
have done, I did, in despite of mercenary and selfish objects,

     For England, home, and Beauty.

     '"Remaining always, &c.  &c., WILKINS MICAWBER."'

Much affected, but still intensely enjoying himself, Mr. Micawber
folded up his letter, and handed it with a bow to my aunt, as
something she might like to keep.

There was, as I had noticed on my first visit long ago, an iron
safe in the room.  The key was in it.  A hasty suspicion seemed to
strike Uriah; and, with a glance at Mr. Micawber, he went to it,
and threw the doors clanking open.  It was empty.

'Where are the books?' he cried, with a frightful face.  'Some
thief has stolen the books!'

Mr. Micawber tapped himself with the ruler.  'I did, when I got the
key from you as usual - but a little earlier - and opened it this
morning.'

'Don't be uneasy,' said Traddles.  'They have come into my
possession.  I will take care of them, under the authority I
mentioned.'

'You receive stolen goods, do you?' cried Uriah.

'Under such circumstances,' answered Traddles, 'yes.'

What was my astonishment when I beheld my aunt, who had been
profoundly quiet and attentive, make a dart at Uriah Heep, and
seize him by the collar with both hands!

'You know what I want?' said my aunt.

'A strait-waistcoat,' said he.

'No.  My property!' returned my aunt.  'Agnes, my dear, as long as
I believed it had been really made away with by your father, I
wouldn't - and, my dear, I didn't, even to Trot, as he knows -
breathe a syllable of its having been placed here for investment. 
But, now I know this fellow's answerable for it, and I'll have it!
Trot, come and take it away from him!'

Whether my aunt supposed, for the moment, that he kept her property
in his neck-kerchief, I am sure I don't know; but she certainly
pulled at it as if she thought so.  I hastened to put myself
between them, and to assure her that we would all take care that he
should make the utmost restitution of everything he had wrongly
got.  This, and a few moments' reflection, pacified her; but she
was not at all disconcerted by what she had done (though I cannot
say as much for her bonnet) and resumed her seat composedly.

During the last few minutes, Mrs. Heep had been clamouring to her
son to be 'umble'; and had been going down on her knees to all of
us in succession, and making the wildest promises.  Her son sat her
down in his chair; and, standing sulkily by her, holding her arm
with his hand, but not rudely, said to me, with a ferocious look:

'What do you want done?'

'I will tell you what must be done,' said Traddles.

'Has that Copperfield no tongue?' muttered Uriah, 'I would do a
good deal for you if you could tell me, without lying, that
somebody had cut it out.'

'My Uriah means to be umble!' cried his mother.  'Don't mind what
he says, good gentlemen!'

'What must be done,' said Traddles, 'is this.  First, the deed of
relinquishment, that we have heard of, must be given over to me now
- here.'

'Suppose I haven't got it,' he interrupted.

'But you have,' said Traddles; 'therefore, you know, we won't
suppose so.'  And I cannot help avowing that this was the first
occasion on which I really did justice to the clear head, and the
plain, patient, practical good sense, of my old schoolfellow. 
'Then,' said Traddles, 'you must prepare to disgorge all that your
rapacity has become possessed of, and to make restoration to the
last farthing.  All the partnership books and papers must remain in
our possession; all your books and papers; all money accounts and
securities, of both kinds.  In short, everything here.'

'Must it?  I don't know that,' said Uriah.  'I must have time to
think about that.'

'Certainly,' replied Traddles; 'but, in the meanwhile, and until
everything is done to our satisfaction, we shall maintain
possession of these things; and beg you - in short, compel you - to
keep to your own room, and hold no communication with anyone.'

'I won't do it!' said Uriah, with an oath.

'Maidstone jail is a safer place of detention,' observed Traddles;
'and though the law may be longer in righting us, and may not be
able to right us so completely as you can, there is no doubt of its
punishing YOU.  Dear me, you know that quite as well as I!
Copperfield, will you go round to the Guildhall, and bring a couple
of officers?'

Here, Mrs. Heep broke out again, crying on her knees to Agnes to
interfere in their behalf, exclaiming that he was very humble, and
it was all true, and if he didn't do what we wanted, she would, and
much more to the same purpose; being half frantic with fears for
her darling.  To inquire what he might have done, if he had had any
boldness, would be like inquiring what a mongrel cur might do, if
it had the spirit of a tiger.  He was a coward, from head to foot;
and showed his dastardly nature through his sullenness and
mortification, as much as at any time of his mean life.

'Stop!' he growled to me; and wiped his hot face with his hand. 
'Mother, hold your noise.  Well! Let 'em have that deed.  Go and
fetch it!'

'Do you help her, Mr. Dick,' said Traddles, 'if you please.'

Proud of his commission, and understanding it, Mr. Dick accompanied
her as a shepherd's dog might accompany a sheep.  But, Mrs. Heep
gave him little trouble; for she not only returned with the deed,
but with the box in which it was, where we found a banker's book
and some other papers that were afterwards serviceable.

'Good!' said Traddles, when this was brought.  'Now, Mr. Heep, you
can retire to think: particularly observing, if you please, that I
declare to you, on the part of all present, that there is only one
thing to be done; that it is what I have explained; and that it
must be done without delay.'

Uriah, without lifting his eyes from the ground, shuffled across
the room with his hand to his chin, and pausing at the door, said:

'Copperfield, I have always hated you.  You've always been an
upstart, and you've always been against me.'

'As I think I told you once before,' said I, 'it is you who have
been, in your greed and cunning, against all the world.  It may be
profitable to you to reflect, in future, that there never were
greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and
overreach themselves.  It is as certain as death.'

'Or as certain as they used to teach at school (the same school
where I picked up so much umbleness), from nine o'clock to eleven,
that labour was a curse; and from eleven o'clock to one, that it
was a blessing and a cheerfulness, and a dignity, and I don't know
what all, eh?' said he with a sneer.  'You preach, about as
consistent as they did.  Won't umbleness go down?  I shouldn't have
got round my gentleman fellow-partner without it, I think.  -
Micawber, you old bully, I'll pay YOU!'

Mr. Micawber, supremely defiant of him and his extended finger, and
making a great deal of his chest until he had slunk out at the
door, then addressed himself to me, and proffered me the
satisfaction of 'witnessing the re-establishment of mutual
confidence between himself and Mrs. Micawber'.  After which, he
invited the company generally to the contemplation of that
affecting spectacle.

'The veil that has long been interposed between Mrs. Micawber and
myself, is now withdrawn,' said Mr. Micawber; 'and my children and
the Author of their Being can once more come in contact on equal
terms.'

As we were all very grateful to him, and all desirous to show that
we were, as well as the hurry and disorder of our spirits would
permit, I dare say we should all have gone, but that it was
necessary for Agnes to return to her father, as yet unable to bear
more than the dawn of hope; and for someone else to hold Uriah in
safe keeping.  So, Traddles remained for the latter purpose, to be
presently relieved by Mr. Dick; and Mr. Dick, my aunt, and I, went
home with Mr. Micawber.  As I parted hurriedly from the dear girl
to whom I owed so much, and thought from what she had been saved,
perhaps, that morning - her better resolution notwithstanding - I
felt devoutly thankful for the miseries of my younger days which
had brought me to the knowledge of Mr. Micawber.

His house was not far off; and as the street door opened into the
sitting-room, and he bolted in with a precipitation quite his own,
we found ourselves at once in the bosom of the family.  Mr.
Micawber exclaiming, 'Emma! my life!' rushed into Mrs. Micawber's
arms.  Mrs. Micawber shrieked, and folded Mr. Micawber in her
embrace.  Miss Micawber, nursing the unconscious stranger of Mrs.
Micawber's last letter to me, was sensibly affected.  The stranger
leaped.  The twins testified their joy by several inconvenient but
innocent demonstrations.  Master Micawber, whose disposition
appeared to have been soured by early disappointment, and whose
aspect had become morose, yielded to his better feelings, and
blubbered.

'Emma!' said Mr. Micawber.  'The cloud is past from my mind. 
Mutual confidence, so long preserved between us once, is restored,
to know no further interruption.  Now, welcome poverty!' cried Mr.
Micawber, shedding tears.  'Welcome misery, welcome houselessness,
welcome hunger, rags, tempest, and beggary! Mutual confidence will
sustain us to the end!'

With these expressions, Mr. Micawber placed Mrs. Micawber in a
chair, and embraced the family all round; welcoming a variety of
bleak prospects, which appeared, to the best of my judgement, to be
anything but welcome to them; and calling upon them to come out
into Canterbury and sing a chorus, as nothing else was left for
their support.

But Mrs. Micawber having, in the strength of her emotions, fainted
away, the first thing to be done, even before the chorus could be
considered complete, was to recover her.  This my aunt and Mr.
Micawber did; and then my aunt was introduced, and Mrs. Micawber
recognized me.

'Excuse me, dear Mr. Copperfield,' said the poor lady, giving me
her hand, 'but I am not strong; and the removal of the late
misunderstanding between Mr. Micawber and myself was at first too
much for me.'

'Is this all your family, ma'am?' said my aunt.

'There are no more at present,' returned Mrs. Micawber.

'Good gracious, I didn't mean that, ma'am,' said my aunt.  'I mean,
are all these yours?'

'Madam,' replied Mr. Micawber, 'it is a true bill.'

'And that eldest young gentleman, now,' said my aunt, musing, 'what
has he been brought up to?'

'It was my hope when I came here,' said Mr. Micawber, 'to have got
Wilkins into the Church: or perhaps I shall express my meaning more
strictly, if I say the Choir.  But there was no vacancy for a tenor
in the venerable Pile for which this city is so justly eminent; and
he has - in short, he has contracted a habit of singing in
public-houses, rather than in sacred edifices.'

'But he means well,' said Mrs. Micawber, tenderly.

'I dare say, my love,' rejoined Mr. Micawber, 'that he means
particularly well; but I have not yet found that he carries out his
meaning, in any given direction whatsoever.'

Master Micawber's moroseness of aspect returned upon him again, and
he demanded, with some temper, what he was to do?  Whether he had
been born a carpenter, or a coach-painter, any more than he had
been born a bird?  Whether he could go into the next street, and
open a chemist's shop?  Whether he could rush to the next assizes,
and proclaim himself a lawyer?  Whether he could come out by force
at the opera, and succeed by violence?  Whether he could do
anything, without being brought up to something?

My aunt mused a little while, and then said:

'Mr. Micawber, I wonder you have never turned your thoughts to
emigration.'

'Madam,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'it was the dream of my youth, and
the fallacious aspiration of my riper years.'  I am thoroughly
persuaded, by the by, that he had never thought of it in his life.

'Aye?' said my aunt, with a glance at me.  'Why, what a thing it
would be for yourselves and your family, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, if
you were to emigrate now.'

'Capital, madam, capital,' urged Mr. Micawber, gloomily.

'That is the principal, I may say the only difficulty, my dear Mr.
Copperfield,' assented his wife.

'Capital?' cried my aunt.  'But you are doing us a great service -
have done us a great service, I may say, for surely much will come
out of the fire - and what could we do for you, that would be half
so good as to find the capital?'

'I could not receive it as a gift,' said Mr. Micawber, full of fire
and animation, 'but if a sufficient sum could be advanced, say at
five per cent interest, per annum, upon my personal liability - say
my notes of hand, at twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four months,
respectively, to allow time for something to turn up -'

'Could be?  Can be and shall be, on your own terms,' returned my
aunt, 'if you say the word.  Think of this now, both of you.  Here
are some people David knows, going out to Australia shortly.  If
you decide to go, why shouldn't you go in the same ship?  You may
help each other.  Think of this now, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber.  Take
your time, and weigh it well.'

'There is but one question, my dear ma'am, I could wish to ask,'
said Mrs. Micawber.  'The climate, I believe, is healthy?'

'Finest in the world!' said my aunt.

'Just so,' returned Mrs. Micawber.  'Then my question arises.  Now,
are the circumstances of the country such, that a man of Mr.
Micawber's abilities would have a fair chance of rising in the
social scale?  I will not say, at present, might he aspire to be
Governor, or anything of that sort; but would there be a reasonable
opening for his talents to develop themselves - that would be amply
sufficient - and find their own expansion?'

'No better opening anywhere,' said my aunt, 'for a man who conducts
himself well, and is industrious.'

'For a man who conducts himself well,' repeated Mrs. Micawber, with
her clearest business manner, 'and is industrious.  Precisely.  It
is evident to me that Australia is the legitimate sphere of action
for Mr. Micawber!'

'I entertain the conviction, my dear madam,' said Mr. Micawber,
'that it is, under existing circumstances, the land, the only land,
for myself and family; and that something of an extraordinary
nature will turn up on that shore.  It is no distance -
comparatively speaking; and though consideration is due to the
kindness of your proposal, I assure you that is a mere matter of
form.'

Shall I ever forget how, in a moment, he was the most sanguine of
men, looking on to fortune; or how Mrs. Micawber presently
discoursed about the habits of the kangaroo! Shall I ever recall
that street of Canterbury on a market-day, without recalling him,
as he walked back with us; expressing, in the hardy roving manner
he assumed, the unsettled habits of a temporary sojourner in the
land; and looking at the bullocks, as they came by, with the eye of
an Australian farmer!

CHAPTER 53
ANOTHER RETROSPECT

I must pause yet once again.  O, my child-wife, there is a figure
in the moving crowd before my memory, quiet and still, saying in
its innocent love and childish beauty, Stop to think of me - turn
to look upon the Little Blossom, as it flutters to the ground!

I do.  All else grows dim, and fades away.  I am again with Dora,
in our cottage.  I do not know how long she has been ill.  I am so
used to it in feeling, that I cannot count the time.  It is not
really long, in weeks or months; but, in my usage and experience,
it is a weary, weary while.

They have left off telling me to 'wait a few days more'.  I have
begun to fear, remotely, that the day may never shine, when I shall
see my child-wife running in the sunlight with her old friend Jip.

He is, as it were suddenly, grown very old.  It may be that he
misses in his mistress, something that enlivened him and made him
younger; but he mopes, and his sight is weak, and his limbs are
feeble, and my aunt is sorry that he objects to her no more, but
creeps near her as he lies on Dora's bed - she sitting at the
bedside - and mildly licks her hand.

Dora lies smiling on us, and is beautiful, and utters no hasty or
complaining word.  She says that we are very good to her; that her
dear old careful boy is tiring himself out, she knows; that my aunt
has no sleep, yet is always wakeful, active, and kind.  Sometimes,
the little bird-like ladies come to see her; and then we talk about
our wedding-day, and all that happy time.

What a strange rest and pause in my life there seems to be - and in
all life, within doors and without - when I sit in the quiet,
shaded, orderly room, with the blue eyes of my child-wife turned
towards me, and her little fingers twining round my hand! Many and
many an hour I sit thus; but, of all those times, three times come
the freshest on my mind.

It is morning; and Dora, made so trim by my aunt's hands, shows me
how her pretty hair will curl upon the pillow yet, an how long and
bright it is, and how she likes to have it loosely gathered in that
net she wears.

'Not that I am vain of it, now, you mocking boy,' she says, when I
smile; 'but because you used to say you thought it so beautiful;
and because, when I first began to think about you, I used to peep
in the glass, and wonder whether you would like very much to have
a lock of it.  Oh what a foolish fellow you were, Doady, when I
gave you one!'

'That was on the day when you were painting the flowers I had given
you, Dora, and when I told you how much in love I was.'

'Ah! but I didn't like to tell you,' says Dora, 'then, how I had
cried over them, because I believed you really liked me! When I can
run about again as I used to do, Doady, let us go and see those
places where we were such a silly couple, shall we?  And take some
of the old walks?  And not forget poor papa?'

'Yes, we will, and have some happy days.  So you must make haste to
get well, my dear.'

'Oh, I shall soon do that! I am so much better, you don't know!'

It is evening; and I sit in the same chair, by the same bed, with
the same face turned towards me.  We have been silent, and there is
a smile upon her face.  I have ceased to carry my light burden up
and down stairs now.  She lies here all the day.

'Doady!'

'My dear Dora!'

'You won't think what I am going to say, unreasonable, after what
you told me, such a little while ago, of Mr. Wickfield's not being
well?  I want to see Agnes.  Very much I want to see her.'

'I will write to her, my dear.'

'Will you?'

'Directly.'

'What a good, kind boy! Doady, take me on your arm.  Indeed, my
dear, it's not a whim.  It's not a foolish fancy.  I want, very
much indeed, to see her!'

'I am certain of it.  I have only to tell her so, and she is sure
to come.'

'You are very lonely when you go downstairs, now?' Dora whispers,
with her arm about my neck.

'How can I be otherwise, my own love, when I see your empty chair?'

'My empty chair!' She clings to me for a little while, in silence. 
'And you really miss me, Doady?' looking up, and brightly smiling. 
'Even poor, giddy, stupid me?'

'My heart, who is there upon earth that I could miss so much?'

'Oh, husband! I am so glad, yet so sorry!' creeping closer to me,
and folding me in both her arms.  She laughs and sobs, and then is
quiet, and quite happy.

'Quite!' she says.  'Only give Agnes my dear love, and tell her
that I want very, very, much to see her; and I have nothing left to
wish for.'

'Except to get well again, Dora.'

'Ah, Doady! Sometimes I think - you know I always was a silly
little thing! - that that will never be!'

'Don't say so, Dora! Dearest love, don't think so!'

'I won't, if I can help it, Doady.  But I am very happy; though my
dear boy is so lonely by himself, before his child-wife's empty
chair!'

It is night; and I am with her still.  Agnes has arrived; has been
among us for a whole day and an evening.  She, my aunt, and I, have
sat with Dora since the morning, all together.  We have not talked
much, but Dora has been perfectly contented and cheerful.  We are
now alone.

Do I know, now, that my child-wife will soon leave me?  They have
told me so; they have told me nothing new to my thoughts- but I am
far from sure that I have taken that truth to heart.  I cannot
master it.  I have withdrawn by myself, many times today, to weep. 
I have remembered Who wept for a parting between the living and the
dead.  I have bethought me of all that gracious and compassionate
history.  I have tried to resign myself, and to console myself; and
that, I hope, I may have done imperfectly; but what I cannot firmly
settle in my mind is, that the end will absolutely come.  I hold
her hand in mine, I hold her heart in mine, I see her love for me,
alive in all its strength.  I cannot shut out a pale lingering
shadow of belief that she will be spared.

'I am going to speak to you, Doady.  I am going to say something I
have often thought of saying, lately.  You won't mind?' with a
gentle look.

'Mind, my darling?'

'Because I don't know what you will think, or what you may have
thought sometimes.  Perhaps you have often thought the same. 
Doady, dear, I am afraid I was too young.'

I lay my face upon the pillow by her, and she looks into my eyes,
and speaks very softly.  Gradually, as she goes on, I feel, with a
stricken heart, that she is speaking of herself as past.

'I am afraid, dear, I was too young.  I don't mean in years only,
but in experience, and thoughts, and everything.  I was such a
silly little creature! I am afraid it would have been better, if we
had only loved each other as a boy and girl, and forgotten it.  I
have begun to think I was not fit to be a wife.'

I try to stay my tears, and to reply, 'Oh, Dora, love, as fit as I
to be a husband!'

'I don't know,' with the old shake of her curls.  'Perhaps! But if
I had been more fit to be married I might have made you more so,
too.  Besides, you are very clever, and I never was.'

'We have been very happy, my sweet Dora.'

'I was very happy, very.  But, as years went on, my dear boy would
have wearied of his child-wife.  She would have been less and less
a companion for him.  He would have been more and more sensible of
what was wanting in his home.  She wouldn't have improved.  It is
better as it is.'

'Oh, Dora, dearest, dearest, do not speak to me so.  Every word
seems a reproach!'

'No, not a syllable!' she answers, kissing me.  'Oh, my dear, you
never deserved it, and I loved you far too well to say a
reproachful word to you, in earnest - it was all the merit I had,
except being pretty - or you thought me so.  Is it lonely, down-
stairs, Doady?'

'Very! Very!'

'Don't cry! Is my chair there?'

'In its old place.'

'Oh, how my poor boy cries! Hush, hush! Now, make me one promise. 
I want to speak to Agnes.  When you go downstairs, tell Agnes so,
and send her up to me; and while I speak to her, let no one come -
not even aunt.  I want to speak to Agnes by herself.  I want to
speak to Agnes, quite alone.'

I promise that she shall, immediately; but I cannot leave her, for
my grief.

'I said that it was better as it is!' she whispers, as she holds me
in her arms.  'Oh, Doady, after more years, you never could have
loved your child-wife better than you do; and, after more years,
she would so have tried and disappointed you, that you might not
have been able to love her half so well! I know I was too young and
foolish.  It is much better as it is!'

Agnes is downstairs, when I go into the parlour; and I give her the
message.  She disappears, leaving me alone with Jip.

His Chinese house is by the fire; and he lies within it, on his bed
of flannel, querulously trying to sleep.  The bright moon is high
and clear.  As I look out on the night, my tears fall fast, and my
undisciplined heart is chastened heavily - heavily.

I sit down by the fire, thinking with a blind remorse of all those
secret feelings I have nourished since my marriage.  I think of
every little trifle between me and Dora, and feel the truth, that
trifles make the sum of life.  Ever rising from the sea of my
remembrance, is the image of the dear child as I knew her first,
graced by my young love, and by her own, with every fascination
wherein such love is rich.  Would it, indeed, have been better if
we had loved each other as a boy and a girl, and forgotten it? 
Undisciplined heart, reply!

How the time wears, I know not; until I am recalled by my
child-wife's old companion.  More restless than he was, he crawls
out of his house, and looks at me, and wanders to the door, and
whines to go upstairs.

'Not tonight, Jip! Not tonight!'

He comes very slowly back to me, licks my hand, and lifts his dim
eyes to my face.

'Oh, Jip! It may be, never again!'

He lies down at my feet, stretches himself out as if to sleep, and
with a plaintive cry, is dead.

'Oh, Agnes! Look, look, here!'

- That face, so full of pity, and of grief, that rain of tears,
that awful mute appeal to me, that solemn hand upraised towards
Heaven!

'Agnes?'

It is over.  Darkness comes before my eyes; and, for a time, all
things are blotted out of my remembrance.

CHAPTER 54
Mr. MICAWBER'S TRANSACTIONS

This is not the time at which I am to enter on the state of my mind
beneath its load of sorrow.  I came to think that the Future was
walled up before me, that the energy and action of my life were at
an end, that I never could find any refuge but in the grave.  I
came to think so, I say, but not in the first shock of my grief. 
It slowly grew to that.  If the events I go on to relate, had not
thickened around me, in the beginning to confuse, and in the end to
augment, my affliction, it is possible (though I think not
probable), that I might have fallen at once into this condition. 
As it was, an interval occurred before I fully knew my own
distress; an interval, in which I even supposed that its sharpest
pangs were past; and when my mind could soothe itself by resting on
all that was most innocent and beautiful, in the tender story that
was closed for ever.

When it was first proposed that I should go abroad, or how it came
to be agreed among us that I was to seek the restoration of my
peace in change and travel, I do not, even now, distinctly know. 
The spirit of Agnes so pervaded all we thought, and said, and did,
in that time of sorrow, that I assume I may refer the project to
her influence.  But her influence was so quiet that I know no more.

And now, indeed, I began to think that in my old association of her
with the stained-glass window in the church, a prophetic
foreshadowing of what she would be to me, in the calamity that was
to happen in the fullness of time, had found a way into my mind. 
In all that sorrow, from the moment, never to be forgotten, when
she stood before me with her upraised hand, she was like a sacred
presence in my lonely house.  When the Angel of Death alighted
there, my child-wife fell asleep - they told me so when I could
bear to hear it - on her bosom, with a smile.  From my swoon, I
first awoke to a consciousness of her compassionate tears, her
words of hope and peace, her gentle face bending down as from a
purer region nearer Heaven, over my undisciplined heart, and
softening its pain.

Let me go on.

I was to go abroad.  That seemed to have been determined among us
from the first.  The ground now covering all that could perish of
my departed wife, I waited only for what Mr. Micawber called the
'final pulverization of Heep'; and for the departure of the
emigrants.

At the request of Traddles, most affectionate and devoted of
friends in my trouble, we returned to Canterbury: I mean my aunt,
Agnes, and I.  We proceeded by appointment straight to Mr.
Micawber's house; where, and at Mr. Wickfield's, my friend had been
labouring ever since our explosive meeting.  When poor Mrs.
Micawber saw me come in, in my black clothes, she was sensibly
affected.  There was a great deal of good in Mrs. Micawber's heart,
which had not been dunned out of it in all those many years.

'Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber,' was my aunt's first salutation after
we were seated.  'Pray, have you thought about that emigration
proposal of mine?'

'My dear madam,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'perhaps I cannot better
express the conclusion at which Mrs. Micawber, your humble servant,
and I may add our children, have jointly and severally arrived,
than by borrowing the language of an illustrious poet, to reply
that our Boat is on the shore, and our Bark is on the sea.'

'That's right,' said my aunt.  'I augur all sort of good from your
sensible decision.'

'Madam, you do us a great deal of honour,' he rejoined.  He then
referred to a memorandum.  'With respect to the pecuniary
assistance enabling us to launch our frail canoe on the ocean of
enterprise, I have reconsidered that important business-point; and
would beg to propose my notes of hand - drawn, it is needless to
stipulate, on stamps of the amounts respectively required by the
various Acts of Parliament applying to such securities - at
eighteen, twenty-four, and thirty months.  The proposition I
originally submitted, was twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four; but I
am apprehensive that such an arrangement might not allow sufficient
time for the requisite amount of - Something - to turn up.  We
might not,' said Mr. Micawber, looking round the room as if it
represented several hundred acres of highly cultivated land, 'on
the first responsibility becoming due, have been successful in our
harvest, or we might not have got our harvest in.  Labour, I
believe, is sometimes difficult to obtain in that portion of our
colonial possessions where it will be our lot to combat with the
teeming soil.'

'Arrange it in any way you please, sir,' said my aunt.

'Madam,' he replied, 'Mrs. Micawber and myself are deeply sensible
of the very considerate kindness of our friends and patrons.  What
I wish is, to be perfectly business-like, and perfectly punctual. 
Turning over, as we are about to turn over, an entirely new leaf;
and falling back, as we are now in the act of falling back, for a
Spring of no common magnitude; it is important to my sense of
self-respect, besides being an example to my son, that these
arrangements should be concluded as between man and man.'

I don't know that Mr. Micawber attached any meaning to this last
phrase; I don't know that anybody ever does, or did; but he
appeared to relish it uncommonly, and repeated, with an impressive
cough, 'as between man and man'.

'I propose,' said Mr. Micawber, 'Bills - a convenience to the
mercantile world, for which, I believe, we are originally indebted
to the Jews, who appear to me to have had a devilish deal too much
to do with them ever since - because they are negotiable.  But if
a Bond, or any other description of security, would be preferred,
I should be happy to execute any such instrument.  As between man
and man.'

MY aunt observed, that in a case where both parties were willing to
agree to anything, she took it for granted there would be no
difficulty in settling this point.  Mr. Micawber was of her
opinion.

'In reference to our domestic preparations, madam,' said Mr.
Micawber, with some pride, 'for meeting the destiny to which we are
now understood to be self-devoted, I beg to report them.  My eldest
daughter attends at five every morning in a neighbouring
establishment, to acquire the process - if process it may be called
- of milking cows.  My younger children are instructed to observe,
as closely as circumstances will permit, the habits of the pigs and
poultry maintained in the poorer parts of this city: a pursuit from
which they have, on two occasions, been brought home, within an
inch of being run over.  I have myself directed some attention,
during the past week, to the art of baking; and my son Wilkins has
issued forth with a walking-stick and driven cattle, when
permitted, by the rugged hirelings who had them in charge, to
render any voluntary service in that direction - which I regret to
say, for the credit of our nature, was not often; he being
generally warned, with imprecations, to desist.'

'All very right indeed,' said my aunt, encouragingly.  'Mrs.
Micawber has been busy, too, I have no doubt.'

'My dear madam,' returned Mrs. Micawber, with her business-like
air.  'I am free to confess that I have not been actively engaged
in pursuits immediately connected with cultivation or with stock,
though well aware that both will claim my attention on a foreign
shore.  Such opportunities as I have been enabled to alienate from
my domestic duties, I have devoted to corresponding at some length
with my family.  For I own it seems to me, my dear Mr.
Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, who always fell back on me, I
suppose from old habit, to whomsoever else she might address her
discourse at starting, 'that the time is come when the past should
be buried in oblivion; when my family should take Mr. Micawber by
the hand, and Mr. Micawber should take my family by the hand; when
the lion should lie down with the lamb, and my family be on terms
with Mr. Micawber.'

I said I thought so too.

'This, at least, is the light, my dear Mr. Copperfield,' pursued
Mrs. Micawber, 'in which I view the subject.  When I lived at home
with my papa and mama, my papa was accustomed to ask, when any
point was under discussion in our limited circle, "In what light
does my Emma view the subject?" That my papa was too partial, I
know; still, on such a point as the frigid coldness which has ever
subsisted between Mr. Micawber and my family, I necessarily have
formed an opinion, delusive though it may be.'

'No doubt.  Of course you have, ma'am,' said my aunt.

'Precisely so,' assented Mrs. Micawber.  'Now, I may be wrong in my
conclusions; it is very likely that I am, but my individual
impression is, that the gulf between my family and Mr. Micawber may
be traced to an apprehension, on the part of my family, that Mr.
Micawber would require pecuniary accommodation.  I cannot help
thinking,' said Mrs. Micawber, with an air of deep sagacity, 'that
there are members of my family who have been apprehensive that Mr.
Micawber would solicit them for their names.  - I do not mean to be
conferred in Baptism upon our children, but to be inscribed on
Bills of Exchange, and negotiated in the Money Market.'

The look of penetration with which Mrs. Micawber announced this
discovery, as if no one had ever thought of it before, seemed
rather to astonish my aunt; who abruptly replied, 'Well, ma'am,
upon the whole, I shouldn't wonder if you were right!'

'Mr. Micawber being now on the eve of casting off the pecuniary
shackles that have so long enthralled him,' said Mrs. Micawber,
'and of commencing a new career in a country where there is
sufficient range for his abilities, - which, in my opinion, is
exceedingly important; Mr. Micawber's abilities peculiarly
requiring space, - it seems to me that my family should signalize
the occasion by coming forward.  What I could wish to see, would be
a meeting between Mr. Micawber and my family at a festive
entertainment, to be given at my family's expense; where Mr.
Micawber's health and prosperity being proposed, by some leading
member of my family, Mr. Micawber might have an opportunity of
developing his views.'

'My dear,' said Mr. Micawber, with some heat, 'it may be better for
me to state distinctly, at once, that if I were to develop my views
to that assembled group, they would possibly be found of an
offensive nature: my impression being that your family are, in the
aggregate, impertinent Snobs; and, in detail, unmitigated
Ruffians.'

'Micawber,' said Mrs. Micawber, shaking her head, 'no! You have
never understood them, and they have never understood you.'

Mr. Micawber coughed.

'They have never understood you, Micawber,' said his wife.  'They
may be incapable of it.  If so, that is their misfortune.  I can
pity their misfortune.'

'I am extremely sorry, my dear Emma,' said Mr. Micawber, relenting,
'to have been betrayed into any expressions that might, even
remotely, have the appearance of being strong expressions.  All I
would say is, that I can go abroad without your family coming
forward to favour me, - in short, with a parting Shove of their
cold shoulders; and that, upon the whole, I would rather leave
England with such impetus as I possess, than derive any
acceleration of it from that quarter.  At the same time, my dear,
if they should condescend to reply to your communications - which
our joint experience renders most improbable - far be it from me to
be a barrier to your wishes.'

The matter being thus amicably settled, Mr. Micawber gave Mrs.
Micawber his arm, and glancing at the heap of books and papers
lying before Traddles on the table, said they would leave us to
ourselves; which they ceremoniously did.

'My dear Copperfield,' said Traddles, leaning back in his chair
when they were gone, and looking at me with an affection that made
his eyes red, and his hair all kinds of shapes, 'I don't make any
excuse for troubling you with business, because I know you are
deeply interested in it, and it may divert your thoughts.  My dear
boy, I hope you are not worn out?'

'I am quite myself,' said I, after a pause.  'We have more cause to
think of my aunt than of anyone.  You know how much she has done.'

'Surely, surely,' answered Traddles.  'Who can forget it!'

'But even that is not all,' said I.  'During the last fortnight,
some new trouble has vexed her; and she has been in and out of
London every day.  Several times she has gone out early, and been
absent until evening.  Last night, Traddles, with this journey
before her, it was almost midnight before she came home.  You know
what her consideration for others is.  She will not tell me what
has happened to distress her.'

My aunt, very pale, and with deep lines in her face, sat immovable
until I had finished; when some stray tears found their way to her
cheeks, and she put her hand on mine.

'It's nothing, Trot; it's nothing.  There will be no more of it. 
You shall know by and by.  Now Agnes, my dear, let us attend to
these affairs.'

'I must do Mr. Micawber the justice to say,' Traddles began, 'that
although he would appear not to have worked to any good account for
himself, he is a most untiring man when he works for other people. 
I never saw such a fellow.  If he always goes on in the same way,
he must be, virtually, about two hundred years old, at present. 
The heat into which he has been continually putting himself; and
the distracted and impetuous manner in which he has been diving,
day and night, among papers and books; to say nothing of the
immense number of letters he has written me between this house and
Mr. Wickfield's, and often across the table when he has been
sitting opposite, and might much more easily have spoken; is quite
extraordinary.'

'Letters!' cried my aunt.  'I believe he dreams in letters!'

'There's Mr. Dick, too,' said Traddles, 'has been doing wonders! As
soon as he was released from overlooking Uriah Heep, whom he kept
in such charge as I never saw exceeded, he began to devote himself
to Mr. Wickfield.  And really his anxiety to be of use in the
investigations we have been making, and his real usefulness in
extracting, and copying, and fetching, and carrying, have been
quite stimulating to us.'

'Dick is a very remarkable man,' exclaimed my aunt; 'and I always
said he was.  Trot, you know it.'

'I am happy to say, Miss Wickfield,' pursued Traddles, at once with
great delicacy and with great earnestness, 'that in your absence
Mr. Wickfield has considerably improved.  Relieved of the incubus
that had fastened upon him for so long a time, and of the dreadful
apprehensions under which he had lived, he is hardly the same
person.  At times, even his impaired power of concentrating his
memory and attention on particular points of business, has
recovered itself very much; and he has been able to assist us in
making some things clear, that we should have found very difficult
indeed, if not hopeless, without him.  But what I have to do is to
come to results; which are short enough; not to gossip on all the
hopeful circumstances I have observed, or I shall never have done.'
His natural manner and agreeable simplicity made it transparent
that he said this to put us in good heart, and to enable Agnes to
hear her father mentioned with greater confidence; but it was not
the less pleasant for that.

'Now, let me see,' said Traddles, looking among the papers on the
table.  'Having counted our funds, and reduced to order a great
mass of unintentional confusion in the first place, and of wilful
confusion and falsification in the second, we take it to be clear
that Mr. Wickfield might now wind up his business, and his
agency-trust, and exhibit no deficiency or defalcation whatever.'

'Oh, thank Heaven!' cried Agnes, fervently.

'But,' said Traddles, 'the surplus that would be left as his means
of support - and I suppose the house to be sold, even in saying
this - would be so small, not exceeding in all probability some
hundreds of pounds, that perhaps, Miss Wickfield, it would be best
to consider whether he might not retain his agency of the estate to
which he has so long been receiver.  His friends might advise him,
you know; now he is free.  You yourself, Miss Wickfield -
Copperfield - I -'

'I have considered it, Trotwood,' said Agnes, looking to me, 'and
I feel that it ought not to be, and must not be; even on the
recommendation of a friend to whom I am so grateful, and owe so
much.'

'I will not say that I recommend it,' observed Traddles.  'I think
it right to suggest it.  No more.'

'I am happy to hear you say so,' answered Agnes, steadily, 'for it
gives me hope, almost assurance, that we think alike.  Dear Mr.
Traddles and dear Trotwood, papa once free with honour, what could
I wish for! I have always aspired, if I could have released him
from the toils in which he was held, to render back some little
portion of the love and care I owe him, and to devote my life to
him.  It has been, for years, the utmost height of my hopes.  To
take our future on myself, will be the next great happiness - the
next to his release from all trust and responsibility - that I can
know.'

'Have you thought how, Agnes?'

'Often! I am not afraid, dear Trotwood.  I am certain of success. 
So many people know me here, and think kindly of me, that I am
certain.  Don't mistrust me.  Our wants are not many.  If I rent
the dear old house, and keep a school, I shall be useful and
happy.'

The calm fervour of her cheerful voice brought back so vividly,
first the dear old house itself, and then my solitary home, that my
heart was too full for speech.  Traddles pretended for a little
while to be busily looking among the papers.

'Next, Miss Trotwood,' said Traddles, 'that property of yours.'

'Well, sir,' sighed my aunt.  'All I have got to say about it is,
that if it's gone, I can bear it; and if it's not gone, I shall be
glad to get it back.'

'It was originally, I think, eight thousand pounds, Consols?' said
Traddles.

'Right!' replied my aunt.

'I can't account for more than five,' said Traddles, with an air of
perplexity.

'- thousand, do you mean?' inquired my aunt, with uncommon
composure, 'or pounds?'

'Five thousand pounds,' said Traddles.

'It was all there was,' returned my aunt.  'I sold three, myself. 
One, I paid for your articles, Trot, my dear; and the other two I
have by me.  When I lost the rest, I thought it wise to say nothing
about that sum, but to keep it secretly for a rainy day.  I wanted
to see how you would come out of the trial, Trot; and you came out
nobly - persevering, self-reliant, self-denying! So did Dick. 
Don't speak to me, for I find my nerves a little shaken!'

Nobody would have thought so, to see her sitting upright, with her
arms folded; but she had wonderful self-command.

'Then I am delighted to say,' cried Traddles, beaming with joy,
'that we have recovered the whole money!'

'Don't congratulate me, anybody!' exclaimed my aunt.  'How so,
sir?'

'You believed it had been misappropriated by Mr. Wickfield?' said
Traddles.

'Of course I did,' said my aunt, 'and was therefore easily
silenced.  Agnes, not a word!'

'And indeed,' said Traddles, 'it was sold, by virtue of the power
of management he held from you; but I needn't say by whom sold, or
on whose actual signature.  It was afterwards pretended to Mr.
Wickfield, by that rascal, - and proved, too, by figures, - that he
had possessed himself of the money (on general instructions, he
said) to keep other deficiencies and difficulties from the light. 
Mr. Wickfield, being so weak and helpless in his hands as to pay
you, afterwards, several sums of interest on a pretended principal
which he knew did not exist, made himself, unhappily, a party to
the fraud.'

'And at last took the blame upon himself,' added my aunt; 'and
wrote me a mad letter, charging himself with robbery, and wrong
unheard of.  Upon which I paid him a visit early one morning,
called for a candle, burnt the letter, and told him if he ever
could right me and himself, to do it; and if he couldn't, to keep
his own counsel for his daughter's sake.  - If anybody speaks to
me, I'll leave the house!'

We all remained quiet; Agnes covering her face.

'Well, my dear friend,' said my aunt, after a pause, 'and you have
really extorted the money back from him?'

'Why, the fact is,' returned Traddles, 'Mr. Micawber had so
completely hemmed him in, and was always ready with so many new
points if an old one failed, that he could not escape from us.  A
most remarkable circumstance is, that I really don't think he
grasped this sum even so much for the gratification of his avarice,
which was inordinate, as in the hatred he felt for Copperfield.  He
said so to me, plainly.  He said he would even have spent as much,
to baulk or injure Copperfield.'

'Ha!' said my aunt, knitting her brows thoughtfully, and glancing
at Agnes.  'And what's become of him?'

'I don't know.  He left here,' said Traddles, 'with his mother, who
had been clamouring, and beseeching, and disclosing, the whole
time.  They went away by one of the London night coaches, and I
know no more about him; except that his malevolence to me at
parting was audacious.  He seemed to consider himself hardly less
indebted to me, than to Mr. Micawber; which I consider (as I told
him) quite a compliment.'

'Do you suppose he has any money, Traddles?' I asked.

'Oh dear, yes, I should think so,' he replied, shaking his head,
seriously.  'I should say he must have pocketed a good deal, in one
way or other.  But, I think you would find, Copperfield, if you had
an opportunity of observing his course, that money would never keep
that man out of mischief.  He is such an incarnate hypocrite, that
whatever object he pursues, he must pursue crookedly.  It's his
only compensation for the outward restraints he puts upon himself. 
Always creeping along the ground to some small end or other, he
will always magnify every object in the way; and consequently will
hate and suspect everybody that comes, in the most innocent manner,
between him and it.  So the crooked courses will become crookeder,
at any moment, for the least reason, or for none.  It's only
necessary to consider his history here,' said Traddles, 'to know
that.'

'He's a monster of meanness!' said my aunt.

'Really I don't know about that,' observed Traddles thoughtfully. 
'Many people can be very mean, when they give their minds to it.'

'And now, touching Mr. Micawber,' said my aunt.

'Well, really,' said Traddles, cheerfully, 'I must, once more, give
Mr. Micawber high praise.  But for his having been so patient and
persevering for so long a time, we never could have hoped to do
anything worth speaking of.  And I think we ought to consider that
Mr. Micawber did right, for right's sake, when we reflect what
terms he might have made with Uriah Heep himself, for his silence.'

'I think so too,' said I.

'Now, what would you give him?' inquired my aunt.

'Oh! Before you come to that,' said Traddles, a little
disconcerted, 'I am afraid I thought it discreet to omit (not being
able to carry everything before me) two points, in making this
lawless adjustment - for it's perfectly lawless from beginning to
end - of a difficult affair.  Those I.O.U.'s, and so forth, which
Mr. Micawber gave him for the advances he had -'

'Well! They must be paid,' said my aunt.

'Yes, but I don't know when they may be proceeded on, or where they
are,' rejoined Traddles, opening his eyes; 'and I anticipate, that,
between this time and his departure, Mr. Micawber will be
constantly arrested, or taken in execution.'

'Then he must be constantly set free again, and taken out of
execution,' said my aunt.  'What's the amount altogether?'

'Why, Mr. Micawber has entered the transactions - he calls them
transactions - with great form, in a book,' rejoined Traddles,
smiling; 'and he makes the amount a hundred and three pounds,
five.'

'Now, what shall we give him, that sum included?' said my aunt. 
'Agnes, my dear, you and I can talk about division of it
afterwards.  What should it be?  Five hundred pounds?'

Upon this, Traddles and I both struck in at once.  We both
recommended a small sum in money, and the payment, without
stipulation to Mr. Micawber, of the Uriah claims as they came in. 
We proposed that the family should have their passage and their
outfit, and a hundred pounds; and that Mr. Micawber's arrangement
for the repayment of the advances should be gravely entered into,
as it might be wholesome for him to suppose himself under that
responsibility.  To this, I added the suggestion, that I should
give some explanation of his character and history to Mr. Peggotty,
who I knew could be relied on; and that to Mr. Peggotty should be
quietly entrusted the discretion of advancing another hundred.  I
further proposed to interest Mr. Micawber in Mr. Peggotty, by
confiding so much of Mr. Peggotty's story to him as I might feel
justified in relating, or might think expedient; and to endeavour
to bring each of them to bear upon the other, for the common
advantage.  We all entered warmly into these views; and I may
mention at once, that the principals themselves did so, shortly
afterwards, with perfect good will and harmony.

Seeing that Traddles now glanced anxiously at my aunt again, I
reminded him of the second and last point to which he had adverted.

'You and your aunt will excuse me, Copperfield, if I touch upon a
painful theme, as I greatly fear I shall,' said Traddles,
hesitating; 'but I think it necessary to bring it to your
recollection.  On the day of Mr. Micawber's memorable denunciation
a threatening allusion was made by Uriah Heep to your aunt's -
husband.'

My aunt, retaining her stiff position, and apparent composure,
assented with a nod.

'Perhaps,' observed Traddles, 'it was mere purposeless
impertinence?'

'No,' returned my aunt.

'There was - pardon me - really such a person, and at all in his
power?' hinted Traddles.

'Yes, my good friend,' said my aunt.

Traddles, with a perceptible lengthening of his face, explained
that he had not been able to approach this subject; that it had
shared the fate of Mr. Micawber's liabilities, in not being
comprehended in the terms he had made; that we were no longer of
any authority with Uriah Heep; and that if he could do us, or any
of us, any injury or annoyance, no doubt he would.

My aunt remained quiet; until again some stray tears found their
way to her cheeks.
'You are quite right,' she said.  'It was very thoughtful to
mention it.'

'Can I - or Copperfield - do anything?' asked Traddles, gently.

'Nothing,' said my aunt.  'I thank you many times.  Trot, my dear,
a vain threat! Let us have Mr. and Mrs. Micawber back.  And don't
any of you speak to me!' With that she smoothed her dress, and sat,
with her upright carriage, looking at the door.

'Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber!' said my aunt, when they entered. 
'We have been discussing your emigration, with many apologies to
you for keeping you out of the room so long; and I'll tell you what
arrangements we propose.'

These she explained to the unbounded satisfaction of the family, -
children and all being then present, - and so much to the awakening
of Mr. Micawber's punctual habits in the opening stage of all bill
transactions, that he could not be dissuaded from immediately
rushing out, in the highest spirits, to buy the stamps for his
notes of hand.  But, his joy received a sudden check; for within
five minutes, he returned in the custody of a sheriff 's officer,
informing us, in a flood of tears, that all was lost.  We, being
quite prepared for this event, which was of course a proceeding of
Uriah Heep's, soon paid the money; and in five minutes more Mr.
Micawber was seated at the table, filling up the stamps with an
expression of perfect joy, which only that congenial employment, or
the making of punch, could impart in full completeness to his
shining face.  To see him at work on the stamps, with the relish of
an artist, touching them like pictures, looking at them sideways,
taking weighty notes of dates and amounts in his pocket-book, and
contemplating them when finished, with a high sense of their
precious value, was a sight indeed.

'Now, the best thing you can do, sir, if you'll allow me to advise
you,' said my aunt, after silently observing him, 'is to abjure
that occupation for evermore.'

'Madam,' replied Mr. Micawber, 'it is my intention to register such
a vow on the virgin page of the future.  Mrs. Micawber will attest
it.  I trust,' said Mr. Micawber, solemnly, 'that my son Wilkins
will ever bear in mind, that he had infinitely better put his fist
in the fire, than use it to handle the serpents that have poisoned
the life-blood of his unhappy parent!' Deeply affected, and changed
in a moment to the image of despair, Mr. Micawber regarded the
serpents with a look of gloomy abhorrence (in which his late
admiration of them was not quite subdued), folded them up and put
them in his pocket.

This closed the proceedings of the evening.  We were weary with
sorrow and fatigue, and my aunt and I were to return to London on
the morrow.  It was arranged that the Micawbers should follow us,
after effecting a sale of their goods to a broker; that Mr.
Wickfield's affairs should be brought to a settlement, with all
convenient speed, under the direction of Traddles; and that Agnes
should also come to London, pending those arrangements.  We passed
the night at the old house, which, freed from the presence of the
Heeps, seemed purged of a disease; and I lay in my old room, like
a shipwrecked wanderer come home.

We went back next day to my aunt's house - not to mine- and when
she and I sat alone, as of old, before going to bed, she said:

'Trot, do you really wish to know what I have had upon my mind
lately?'

'Indeed I do, aunt.  If there ever was a time when I felt unwilling
that you should have a sorrow or anxiety which I could not share,
it is now.'

'You have had sorrow enough, child,' said my aunt, affectionately,
'without the addition of my little miseries.  I could have no other
motive, Trot, in keeping anything from you.'

'I know that well,' said I.  'But tell me now.'

'Would you ride with me a little way tomorrow morning?' asked my
aunt.

'Of course.'

'At nine,' said she.  'I'll tell you then, my dear.'

At nine, accordingly, we went out in a little chariot, and drove to
London.  We drove a long way through the streets, until we came to
one of the large hospitals.  Standing hard by the building was a
plain hearse.  The driver recognized my aunt, and, in obedience to
a motion of her hand at the window, drove slowly off; we following.

'You understand it now, Trot,' said my aunt.  'He is gone!'

'Did he die in the hospital?'

'Yes.'

She sat immovable beside me; but, again I saw the stray tears on
her face.

'He was there once before,' said my aunt presently.  'He was ailing
a long time - a shattered, broken man, these many years.  When he
knew his state in this last illness, he asked them to send for me. 
He was sorry then.  Very sorry.'

'You went, I know, aunt.'

'I went.  I was with him a good deal afterwards.'

'He died the night before we went to Canterbury?' said I.
My aunt nodded.  'No one can harm him now,' she said.  'It was a
vain threat.'

We drove away, out of town, to the churchyard at Hornsey.  'Better
here than in the streets,' said my aunt.  'He was born here.'

We alighted; and followed the plain coffin to a corner I remember
well, where the service was read consigning it to the dust.

'Six-and-thirty years ago, this day, my dear,' said my aunt, as we
walked back to the chariot, 'I was married.  God forgive us all!'
We took our seats in silence; and so she sat beside me for a long
time, holding my hand.  At length she suddenly burst into tears,
and said:

'He was a fine-looking man when I married him, Trot - and he was
sadly changed!'

It did not last long.  After the relief of tears, she soon became
composed, and even cheerful.  Her nerves were a little shaken, she
said, or she would not have given way to it.  God forgive us all!

So we rode back to her little cottage at Highgate, where we found
the following short note, which had arrived by that morning's post
from Mr. Micawber:

          'Canterbury,

               'Friday.

'My dear Madam, and Copperfield,

'The fair land of promise lately looming on the horizon is again
enveloped in impenetrable mists, and for ever withdrawn from the
eyes of a drifting wretch whose Doom is sealed!

'Another writ has been issued (in His Majesty's High Court of
King's Bench at Westminster), in another cause of HEEP V. 
MICAWBER, and the defendant in that cause is the prey of the
sheriff having legal jurisdiction in this bailiwick.

     'Now's the day, and now's the hour,
     See the front of battle lower,
     See approach proud EDWARD'S power -
     Chains and slavery!

'Consigned to which, and to a speedy end (for mental torture is not
supportable beyond a certain point, and that point I feel I have
attained), my course is run.  Bless you, bless you! Some future
traveller, visiting, from motives of curiosity, not unmingled, let
us hope, with sympathy, the place of confinement allotted to
debtors in this city, may, and I trust will, Ponder, as he traces
on its wall, inscribed with a rusty nail,
                              'The obscure initials,

                                   'W. M.

'P.S.  I re-open this to say that our common friend, Mr. Thomas
Traddles (who has not yet left us, and is looking extremely well),
has paid the debt and costs, in the noble name of Miss Trotwood;
and that myself and family are at the height of earthly bliss.'

CHAPTER 55
TEMPEST

I now approach an event in my life, so indelible, so awful, so
bound by an infinite variety of ties to all that has preceded it,
in these pages, that, from the beginning of my narrative, I have
seen it growing larger and larger as I advanced, like a great tower
in a plain, and throwing its fore-cast shadow even on the incidents
of my childish days.

For years after it occurred, I dreamed of it often.  I have started
up so vividly impressed by it, that its fury has yet seemed raging
in my quiet room, in the still night.  I dream of it sometimes,
though at lengthened and uncertain intervals, to this hour.  I have
an association between it and a stormy wind, or the lightest
mention of a sea-shore, as strong as any of which my mind is
conscious.  As plainly as I behold what happened, I will try to
write it down.  I do not recall it, but see it done; for it happens
again before me.

The time drawing on rapidly for the sailing of the emigrant-ship,
my good old nurse (almost broken-hearted for me, when we first met)
came up to London.  I was constantly with her, and her brother, and
the Micawbers (they being very much together); but Emily I never
saw.

One evening when the time was close at hand, I was alone with
Peggotty and her brother.  Our conversation turned on Ham.  She
described to us how tenderly he had taken leave of her, and how
manfully and quietly he had borne himself.  Most of all, of late,
when she believed he was most tried.  It was a subject of which the
affectionate creature never tired; and our interest in hearing the
many examples which she, who was so much with him, had to relate,
was equal to hers in relating them.

MY aunt and I were at that time vacating the two cottages at
Highgate; I intending to go abroad, and she to return to her house
at Dover.  We had a temporary lodging in Covent Garden.  As I
walked home to it, after this evening's conversation, reflecting on
what had passed between Ham and myself when I was last at Yarmouth,
I wavered in the original purpose I had formed, of leaving a letter
for Emily when I should take leave of her uncle on board the ship,
and thought it would be better to write to her now.  She might
desire, I thought, after receiving my communication, to send some
parting word by me to her unhappy lover.  I ought to give her the
opportunity.

I therefore sat down in my room, before going to bed, and wrote to
her.  I told her that I had seen him, and that he had requested me
to tell her what I have already written in its place in these
sheets.  I faithfully repeated it.  I had no need to enlarge upon
it, if I had had the right.  Its deep fidelity and goodness were
not to be adorned by me or any man.  I left it out, to be sent
round in the morning; with a line to Mr. Peggotty, requesting him
to give it to her; and went to bed at daybreak.

I was weaker than I knew then; and, not falling asleep until the
sun was up, lay late, and unrefreshed, next day.  I was roused by
the silent presence of my aunt at my bedside.  I felt it in my
sleep, as I suppose we all do feel such things.

'Trot, my dear,' she said, when I opened my eyes, 'I couldn't make
up my mind to disturb you.  Mr. Peggotty is here; shall he come
up?'

I replied yes, and he soon appeared.

'Mas'r Davy,' he said, when we had shaken hands, 'I giv Em'ly your
letter, sir, and she writ this heer; and begged of me fur to ask
you to read it, and if you see no hurt in't, to be so kind as take
charge on't.'

'Have you read it?' said I.

He nodded sorrowfully.  I opened it, and read as follows:

'I have got your message.  Oh, what can I write, to thank you for
your good and blessed kindness to me!

'I have put the words close to my heart.  I shall keep them till I
die.  They are sharp thorns, but they are such comfort.  I have
prayed over them, oh, I have prayed so much.  When I find what you
are, and what uncle is, I think what God must be, and can cry to
him.

'Good-bye for ever.  Now, my dear, my friend, good-bye for ever in
this world.  In another world, if I am forgiven, I may wake a child
and come to you.  All thanks and blessings.  Farewell, evermore.'

This, blotted with tears, was the letter.

'May I tell her as you doen't see no hurt in't, and as you'll be so
kind as take charge on't, Mas'r Davy?' said Mr. Peggotty, when I
had read it.
'Unquestionably,' said I - 'but I am thinking -'

'Yes, Mas'r Davy?'

'I am thinking,' said I, 'that I'll go down again to Yarmouth. 
There's time, and to spare, for me to go and come back before the
ship sails.  My mind is constantly running on him, in his solitude;
to put this letter of her writing in his hand at this time, and to
enable you to tell her, in the moment of parting, that he has got
it, will be a kindness to both of them.  I solemnly accepted his
commission, dear good fellow, and cannot discharge it too
completely.  The journey is nothing to me.  I am restless, and
shall be better in motion.  I'll go down tonight.'

Though he anxiously endeavoured to dissuade me, I saw that he was
of my mind; and this, if I had required to be confirmed in my
intention, would have had the effect.  He went round to the coach
office, at my request, and took the box-seat for me on the mail. 
In the evening I started, by that conveyance, down the road I had
traversed under so many vicissitudes.

'Don't you think that,' I asked the coachman, in the first stage
out of London, 'a very remarkable sky?  I don't remember to have
seen one like it.'

'Nor I - not equal to it,' he replied.  'That's wind, sir. 
There'll be mischief done at sea, I expect, before long.'

It was a murky confusion - here and there blotted with a colour
like the colour of the smoke from damp fuel - of flying clouds,
tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in
the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the
deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to
plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of
nature, she had lost her way and were frightened.  There had been
a wind all day; and it was rising then, with an extraordinary great
sound.  In another hour it had much increased, and the sky was more
overcast, and blew hard.

But, as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely
over-spreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow,
harder and harder.  It still increased, until our horses could
scarcely face the wind.  Many times, in the dark part of the night
(it was then late in September, when the nights were not short),
the leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop; and we were often
in serious apprehension that the coach would be blown over. 
Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this storm, like showers of
steel; and, at those times, when there was any shelter of trees or
lee walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a sheer impossibility
of continuing the struggle.

When the day broke, it blew harder and harder.  I had been in
Yarmouth when the seamen said it blew great guns, but I had never
known the like of this, or anything approaching to it.  We came to
Ipswich - very late, having had to fight every inch of ground since
we were ten miles out of London; and found a cluster of people in
the market-place, who had risen from their beds in the night,
fearful of falling chimneys.  Some of these, congregating about the
inn-yard while we changed horses, told us of great sheets of lead
having been ripped off a high church-tower, and flung into a
by-street, which they then blocked up.  Others had to tell of
country people, coming in from neighbouring villages, who had seen
great trees lying torn out of the earth, and whole ricks scattered
about the roads and fields.  Still, there was no abatement in the
storm, but it blew harder.

As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which this
mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and
more terrific.  Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our
lips, and showered salt rain upon us.  The water was out, over
miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every
sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had its stress of little
breakers setting heavily towards us.  When we came within sight of
the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the
rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and
buildings.  When at last we got into the town, the people came out
to their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair, making a
wonder of the mail that had come through such a night.

I put up at the old inn, and went down to look at the sea;
staggering along the street, which was strewn with sand and
seaweed, and with flying blotches of sea-foam; afraid of falling
slates and tiles; and holding by people I met, at angry corners. 
Coming near the beach, I saw, not only the boatmen, but half the
people of the town, lurking behind buildings; some, now and then
braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea, and blown sheer
out of their course in trying to get zigzag back.

joining these groups, I found bewailing women whose husbands were
away in herring or oyster boats, which there was too much reason to
think might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for
safety.  Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their
heads, as they looked from water to sky, and muttering to one
another; ship-owners, excited and uneasy; children, huddling
together, and peering into older faces; even stout mariners,
disturbed and anxious, levelling their glasses at the sea from
behind places of shelter, as if they were surveying an enemy.

The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to
look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying
stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me.  As the high
watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into
surf, they looked as if the least would engulf the town.  As the
receding wave swept back with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out
deep caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the
earth.  When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed
themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment
of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath,
rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster. 
Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with
a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted
up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a
booming sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made,
to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place
away; the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and
buildings, rose and fell; the clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed
to see a rending and upheaving of all nature.

Not finding Ham among the people whom this memorable wind - for it
is still remembered down there, as the greatest ever known to blow
upon that coast - had brought together, I made my way to his house. 
It was shut; and as no one answered to my knocking, I went, by back
ways and by-lanes, to the yard where he worked.  I learned, there,
that he had gone to Lowestoft, to meet some sudden exigency of
ship-repairing in which his skill was required; but that he would
be back tomorrow morning, in good time.

I went back to the inn; and when I had washed and dressed, and
tried to sleep, but in vain, it was five o'clock in the afternoon. 
I had not sat five minutes by the coffee-room fire, when the
waiter, coming to stir it, as an excuse for talking, told me that
two colliers had gone down, with all hands, a few miles away; and
that some other ships had been seen labouring hard in the Roads,
and trying, in great distress, to keep off shore.  Mercy on them,
and on all poor sailors, said he, if we had another night like the
last!

I was very much depressed in spirits; very solitary; and felt an
uneasiness in Ham's not being there, disproportionate to the
occasion.  I was seriously affected, without knowing how much, by
late events; and my long exposure to the fierce wind had confused
me.  There was that jumble in my thoughts and recollections, that
I had lost the clear arrangement of time and distance.  Thus, if I
had gone out into the town, I should not have been surprised, I
think, to encounter someone who I knew must be then in London.  So
to speak, there was in these respects a curious inattention in my
mind.  Yet it was busy, too, with all the remembrances the place
naturally awakened; and they were particularly distinct and vivid.

In this state, the waiter's dismal intelligence about the ships
immediately connected itself, without any effort of my volition,
with my uneasiness about Ham.  I was persuaded that I had an
apprehension of his returning from Lowestoft by sea, and being
lost.  This grew so strong with me, that I resolved to go back to
the yard before I took my dinner, and ask the boat-builder if he
thought his attempting to return by sea at all likely?  If he gave
me the least reason to think so, I would go over to Lowestoft and
prevent it by bringing him with me.

I hastily ordered my dinner, and went back to the yard.  I was none
too soon; for the boat-builder, with a lantern in his hand, was
locking the yard-gate.  He quite laughed when I asked him the
question, and said there was no fear; no man in his senses, or out
of them, would put off in such a gale of wind, least of all Ham
Peggotty, who had been born to seafaring.

So sensible of this, beforehand, that I had really felt ashamed of
doing what I was nevertheless impelled to do, I went back to the
inn.  If such a wind could rise, I think it was rising.  The howl
and roar, the rattling of the doors and windows, the rumbling in
the chimneys, the apparent rocking of the very house that sheltered
me, and the prodigious tumult of the sea, were more fearful than in
the morning.  But there was now a great darkness besides; and that
invested the storm with new terrors, real and fanciful.

I could not eat, I could not sit still, I could not continue
steadfast to anything.  Something within me, faintly answering to
the storm without, tossed up the depths of my memory and made a
tumult in them.  Yet, in all the hurry of my thoughts, wild running
with the thundering sea, - the storm, and my uneasiness regarding
Ham were always in the fore-ground.

My dinner went away almost untasted, and I tried to refresh myself
with a glass or two of wine.  In vain.  I fell into a dull slumber
before the fire, without losing my consciousness, either of the
uproar out of doors, or of the place in which I was.  Both became
overshadowed by a new and indefinable horror; and when I awoke - or
rather when I shook off the lethargy that bound me in my chair- my
whole frame thrilled with objectless and unintelligible fear.

I walked to and fro, tried to read an old gazetteer, listened to
the awful noises: looked at faces, scenes, and figures in the fire. 
At length, the steady ticking of the undisturbed clock on the wall
tormented me to that degree that I resolved to go to bed.

It was reassuring, on such a night, to be told that some of the
inn-servants had agreed together to sit up until morning.  I went
to bed, exceedingly weary and heavy; but, on my lying down, all
such sensations vanished, as if by magic, and I was broad awake,
with every sense refined.

For hours I lay there, listening to the wind and water; imagining,
now, that I heard shrieks out at sea; now, that I distinctly heard
the firing of signal guns; and now, the fall of houses in the town. 
I got up, several times, and looked out; but could see nothing,
except the reflection in the window-panes of the faint candle I had
left burning, and of my own haggard face looking in at me from the
black void.

At length, my restlessness attained to such a pitch, that I hurried
on my clothes, and went downstairs.  In the large kitchen, where I
dimly saw bacon and ropes of onions hanging from the beams, the
watchers were clustered together, in various attitudes, about a
table, purposely moved away from the great chimney, and brought
near the door.  A pretty girl, who had her ears stopped with her
apron, and her eyes upon the door, screamed when I appeared,
supposing me to be a spirit; but the others had more presence of
mind, and were glad of an addition to their company.  One man,
referring to the topic they had been discussing, asked me whether
I thought the souls of the collier-crews who had gone down, were
out in the storm?

I remained there, I dare say, two hours.  Once, I opened the
yard-gate, and looked into the empty street.  The sand, the
sea-weed, and the flakes of foam, were driving by; and I was
obliged to call for assistance before I could shut the gate again,
and make it fast against the wind.

There was a dark gloom in my solitary chamber, when I at length
returned to it; but I was tired now, and, getting into bed again,
fell - off a tower and down a precipice - into the depths of sleep. 
I have an impression that for a long time, though I dreamed of
being elsewhere and in a variety of scenes, it was always blowing
in my dream.  At length, I lost that feeble hold upon reality, and
was engaged with two dear friends, but who they were I don't know,
at the siege of some town in a roar of cannonading.

The thunder of the cannon was so loud and incessant, that I could
not hear something I much desired to hear, until I made a great
exertion and awoke.  It was broad day - eight or nine o'clock; the
storm raging, in lieu of the batteries; and someone knocking and
calling at my door.

'What is the matter?' I cried.

'A wreck! Close by!'

I sprung out of bed, and asked, what wreck?

'A schooner, from Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine. 
Make haste, sir, if you want to see her! It's thought, down on the
beach, she'll go to pieces every moment.'

The excited voice went clamouring along the staircase; and I
wrapped myself in my clothes as quickly as I could, and ran into
the street.

Numbers of people were there before me, all running in one
direction, to the beach.  I ran the same way, outstripping a good
many, and soon came facing the wild sea.

The wind might by this time have lulled a little, though not more
sensibly than if the cannonading I had dreamed of, had been
diminished by the silencing of half-a-dozen guns out of hundreds. 
But the sea, having upon it the additional agitation of the whole
night, was infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last. 
Every appearance it had then presented, bore the expression of
being swelled; and the height to which the breakers rose, and,
looking over one another, bore one another down, and rolled in, in
interminable hosts, was most appalling.
In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves, and in
the crowd, and the unspeakable confusion, and my first breathless
efforts to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I
looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming
heads of the great waves.  A half-dressed boatman, standing next
me, pointed with his bare arm (a tattoo'd arrow on it, pointing in
the same direction) to the left.  Then, O great Heaven, I saw it,
close in upon us!

One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and
lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all
that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat - which she did without a
moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable - beat the
side as if it would stave it in.  Some efforts were even then being
made, to cut this portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship,
which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly
descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure
with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest.  But a great
cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the
shore at this moment; the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck,
made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks,
bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge.

The second mast was yet standing, with the rags of a rent sail, and
a wild confusion of broken cordage flapping to and fro.  The ship
had struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in my ear, and then
lifted in and struck again.  I understood him to add that she was
parting amidships, and I could readily suppose so, for the rolling
and beating were too tremendous for any human work to suffer long. 
As he spoke, there was another great cry of pity from the beach;
four men arose with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the
rigging of the remaining mast; uppermost, the active figure with
the curling hair.

There was a bell on board; and as the ship rolled and dashed, like
a desperate creature driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep of
her deck, as she turned on her beam-ends towards the shore, now
nothing but her keel, as she sprung wildly over and turned towards
the sea, the bell rang; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy
men, was borne towards us on the wind.  Again we lost her, and
again she rose.  Two men were gone.  The agony on the shore
increased.  Men groaned, and clasped their hands; women shrieked,
and turned away their faces.  Some ran wildly up and down along the
beach, crying for help where no help could be.  I found myself one
of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew, not
to let those two lost creatures perish before our eyes.

They were making out to me, in an agitated way - I don't know how,
for the little I could hear I was scarcely composed enough to
understand - that the lifeboat had been bravely manned an hour ago,
and could do nothing; and that as no man would be so desperate as
to attempt to wade off with a rope, and establish a communication
with the shore, there was nothing left to try; when I noticed that
some new sensation moved the people on the beach, and saw them
part, and Ham come breaking through them to the front.

I ran to him - as well as I know, to repeat my appeal for help. 
But, distracted though I was, by a sight so new to me and terrible,
the determination in his face, and his look out to sea - exactly
the same look as I remembered in connexion with the morning after
Emily's flight - awoke me to a knowledge of his danger.  I held him
back with both arms; and implored the men with whom I had been
speaking, not to listen to him, not to do murder, not to let him
stir from off that sand!

Another cry arose on shore; and looking to the wreck, we saw the
cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lower of the two men,
and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the
mast.

Against such a sight, and against such determination as that of the
calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the
people present, I might as hopefully have entreated the wind. 
'Mas'r Davy,' he said, cheerily grasping me by both hands, 'if my
time is come, 'tis come.  If 'tan't, I'll bide it.  Lord above
bless you, and bless all! Mates, make me ready! I'm a-going off!'

I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, where the
people around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived,
that he was bent on going, with help or without, and that I should
endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with
whom they rested.  I don't know what I answered, or what they
rejoined; but I saw hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes
from a capstan that was there, and penetrating into a circle of
figures that hid him from me.  Then, I saw him standing alone, in
a seaman's frock and trousers: a rope in his hand, or slung to his
wrist: another round his body: and several of the best men holding,
at a little distance, to the latter, which he laid out himself,
slack upon the shore, at his feet.

The wreck, even to my unpractised eye, was breaking up.  I saw that
she was parting in the middle, and that the life of the solitary
man upon the mast hung by a thread.  Still, he clung to it.  He had
a singular red cap on, - not like a sailor's cap, but of a finer
colour; and as the few yielding planks between him and destruction
rolled and bulged, and his anticipative death-knell rung, he was
seen by all of us to wave it.  I saw him do it now, and thought I
was going distracted, when his action brought an old remembrance to
my mind of a once dear friend.

Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the silence of suspended
breath behind him, and the storm before, until there was a great
retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at those who held the
rope which was made fast round his body, he dashed in after it, and
in a moment was buffeting with the water; rising with the hills,
falling with the valleys, lost beneath the foam; then drawn again
to land.  They hauled in hastily.

He was hurt.  I saw blood on his face, from where I stood; but he
took no thought of that.  He seemed hurriedly to give them some
directions for leaving him more free - or so I judged from the
motion of his arm - and was gone as before.

And now he made for the wreck, rising with the hills, falling with
the valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam, borne in towards the
shore, borne on towards the ship, striving hard and valiantly.  The
distance was nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the
strife deadly.  At length he neared the wreck.  He was so near,
that with one more of his vigorous strokes he would be clinging to
it, - when a high, green, vast hill-side of water, moving on
shoreward, from beyond the ship, he seemed to leap up into it with
a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!

Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cask had been
broken, in running to the spot where they were hauling in. 
Consternation was in every face.  They drew him to my very feet -
insensible - dead.  He was carried to the nearest house; and, no
one preventing me now, I remained near him, busy, while every means
of restoration were tried; but he had been beaten to death by the
great wave, and his generous heart was stilled for ever.

As I sat beside the bed, when hope was abandoned and all was done,
a fisherman, who had known me when Emily and I were children, and
ever since, whispered my name at the door.

'Sir,' said he, with tears starting to his weather-beaten face,
which, with his trembling lips, was ashy pale, 'will you come over
yonder?'

The old remembrance that had been recalled to me, was in his look. 
I asked him, terror-stricken, leaning on the arm he held out to
support me:

'Has a body come ashore?'

He said, 'Yes.'

'Do I know it?' I asked then.

He answered nothing.

But he led me to the shore.  And on that part of it where she and
I had looked for shells, two children - on that part of it where
some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, had
been scattered by the wind - among the ruins of the home he had
wronged - I saw him lying with his head upon his arm, as I had
often seen him lie at school.

CHAPTER 56
THE NEW WOUND, AND THE OLD

No need, O Steerforth, to have said, when we last spoke together,
in that hour which I so little deemed to be our parting-hour - no
need to have said, 'Think of me at my best!' I had done that ever;
and could I change now, looking on this sight!

They brought a hand-bier, and laid him on it, and covered him with
a flag, and took him up and bore him on towards the houses.  All
the men who carried him had known him, and gone sailing with him,
and seen him merry and bold.  They carried him through the wild
roar, a hush in the midst of all the tumult; and took him to the
cottage where Death was already.

But when they set the bier down on the threshold, they looked at
one another, and at me, and whispered.  I knew why.  They felt as
if it were not right to lay him down in the same quiet room.

We went into the town, and took our burden to the inn.  So soon as
I could at all collect my thoughts, I sent for Joram, and begged
him to provide me a conveyance in which it could be got to London
in the night.  I knew that the care of it, and the hard duty of
preparing his mother to receive it, could only rest with me; and I
was anxious to discharge that duty as faithfully as I could.

I chose the night for the journey, that there might be less
curiosity when I left the town.  But, although it was nearly
midnight when I came out of the yard in a chaise, followed by what
I had in charge, there were many people waiting.  At intervals,
along the town, and even a little way out upon the road, I saw
more: but at length only the bleak night and the open country were
around me, and the ashes of my youthful friendship.

Upon a mellow autumn day, about noon, when the ground was perfumed
by fallen leaves, and many more, in beautiful tints of yellow, red,
and brown, yet hung upon the trees, through which the sun was
shining, I arrived at Highgate.  I walked the last mile, thinking
as I went along of what I had to do; and left the carriage that had
followed me all through the night, awaiting orders to advance.

The house, when I came up to it, looked just the same.  Not a blind
was raised; no sign of life was in the dull paved court, with its
covered way leading to the disused door.  The wind had quite gone
down, and nothing moved.

I had not, at first, the courage to ring at the gate; and when I
did ring, my errand seemed to me to be expressed in the very sound
of the bell.  The little parlour-maid came out, with the key in her
hand; and looking earnestly at me as she unlocked the gate, said:

'I beg your pardon, sir.  Are you ill?'

'I have been much agitated, and am fatigued.'

'Is anything the matter, sir?  - Mr. James?  -'
'Hush!' said I.  'Yes, something has happened, that I have to break
to Mrs. Steerforth.  She is at home?'

The girl anxiously replied that her mistress was very seldom out
now, even in a carriage; that she kept her room; that she saw no
company, but would see me.  Her mistress was up, she said, and Miss
Dartle was with her.  What message should she take upstairs?

Giving her a strict charge to be careful of her manner, and only to
carry in my card and say I waited, I sat down in the drawing-room
(which we had now reached) until she should come back.  Its former
pleasant air of occupation was gone, and the shutters were half
closed.  The harp had not been used for many and many a day.  His
picture, as a boy, was there.  The cabinet in which his mother had
kept his letters was there.  I wondered if she ever read them now;
if she would ever read them more!

The house was so still that I heard the girl's light step upstairs. 
On her return, she brought a message, to the effect that Mrs.
Steerforth was an invalid and could not come down; but that if I
would excuse her being in her chamber, she would be glad to see me. 
In a few moments I stood before her.

She was in his room; not in her own.  I felt, of course, that she
had taken to occupy it, in remembrance of him; and that the many
tokens of his old sports and accomplishments, by which she was
surrounded, remained there, just as he had left them, for the same
reason.  She murmured, however, even in her reception of me, that
she was out of her own chamber because its aspect was unsuited to
her infirmity; and with her stately look repelled the least
suspicion of the truth.

At her chair, as usual, was Rosa Dartle.  From the first moment of
her dark eyes resting on me, I saw she knew I was the bearer of
evil tidings.  The scar sprung into view that instant.  She
withdrew herself a step behind the chair, to keep her own face out
of Mrs. Steerforth's observation; and scrutinized me with a
piercing gaze that never faltered, never shrunk.

'I am sorry to observe you are in mourning, sir,' said Mrs.
Steerforth.

'I am unhappily a widower,' said I.

'You are very young to know so great a loss,' she returned.  'I am
grieved to hear it.  I am grieved to hear it.  I hope Time will be
good to you.'

'I hope Time,' said I, looking at her, 'will be good to all of us. 
Dear Mrs. Steerforth, we must all trust to that, in our heaviest
misfortunes.'

The earnestness of my manner, and the tears in my eyes, alarmed
her.  The whole course of her thoughts appeared to stop, and
change.

I tried to command my voice in gently saying his name, but it
trembled.  She repeated it to herself, two or three times, in a low
tone.  Then, addressing me, she said, with enforced calmness:

'My son is ill.'

'Very ill.'

'You have seen him?'

'I have.'

'Are you reconciled?'

I could not say Yes, I could not say No.  She slightly turned her
head towards the spot where Rosa Dartle had been standing at her
elbow, and in that moment I said, by the motion of my lips, to
Rosa, 'Dead!'

That Mrs. Steerforth might not be induced to look behind her, and
read, plainly written, what she was not yet prepared to know, I met
her look quickly; but I had seen Rosa Dartle throw her hands up in
the air with vehemence of despair and horror, and then clasp them
on her face.

The handsome lady - so like, oh so like! - regarded me with a fixed
look, and put her hand to her forehead.  I besought her to be calm,
and prepare herself to bear what I had to tell; but I should rather
have entreated her to weep, for she sat like a stone figure.

'When I was last here,' I faltered, 'Miss Dartle told me he was
sailing here and there.  The night before last was a dreadful one
at sea.  If he were at sea that night, and near a dangerous coast,
as it is said he was; and if the vessel that was seen should really
be the ship which -'

'Rosa!' said Mrs. Steerforth, 'come to me!'

She came, but with no sympathy or gentleness.  Her eyes gleamed
like fire as she confronted his mother, and broke into a frightful
laugh.

'Now,' she said, 'is your pride appeased, you madwoman?  Now has he
made atonement to you - with his life! Do you hear?  - His life!'

Mrs. Steerforth, fallen back stiffly in her chair, and making no
sound but a moan, cast her eyes upon her with a wide stare.

'Aye!' cried Rosa, smiting herself passionately on the breast,
'look at me! Moan, and groan, and look at me! Look here!' striking
the scar, 'at your dead child's handiwork!'

The moan the mother uttered, from time to time, went to My heart. 
Always the same.  Always inarticulate and stifled.  Always
accompanied with an incapable motion of the head, but with no
change of face.  Always proceeding from a rigid mouth and closed
teeth, as if the jaw were locked and the face frozen up in pain.

'Do you remember when he did this?' she proceeded.  'Do you
remember when, in his inheritance of your nature, and in your
pampering of his pride and passion, he did this, and disfigured me
for life?  Look at me, marked until I die with his high
displeasure; and moan and groan for what you made him!'

'Miss Dartle,' I entreated her.  'For Heaven's sake -'

'I WILL speak!' she said, turning on me with her lightning eyes. 
'Be silent, you! Look at me, I say, proud mother of a proud, false
son! Moan for your nurture of him, moan for your corruption of him,
moan for your loss of him, moan for mine!'

She clenched her hand, and trembled through her spare, worn figure,
as if her passion were killing her by inches.

'You, resent his self-will!' she exclaimed.  'You, injured by his
haughty temper! You, who opposed to both, when your hair was grey,
the qualities which made both when you gave him birth! YOU, who
from his cradle reared him to be what he was, and stunted what he
should have been! Are you rewarded, now, for your years of
trouble?'

'Oh, Miss Dartle, shame! Oh cruel!'

'I tell you,' she returned, 'I WILL speak to her.  No power on
earth should stop me, while I was standing here! Have I been silent
all these years, and shall I not speak now?  I loved him better
than you ever loved him!' turning on her fiercely.  'I could have
loved him, and asked no return.  If I had been his wife, I could
have been the slave of his caprices for a word of love a year.  I
should have been.  Who knows it better than I?  You were exacting,
proud, punctilious, selfish.  My love would have been devoted -
would have trod your paltry whimpering under foot!'

With flashing eyes, she stamped upon the ground as if she actually
did it.

'Look here!' she said, striking the scar again, with a relentless
hand.  'When he grew into the better understanding of what he had
done, he saw it, and repented of it! I could sing to him, and talk
to him, and show the ardour that I felt in all he did, and attain
with labour to such knowledge as most interested him; and I
attracted him.  When he was freshest and truest, he loved me.  Yes,
he did! Many a time, when you were put off with a slight word, he
has taken Me to his heart!'

She said it with a taunting pride in the midst of her frenzy - for
it was little less - yet with an eager remembrance of it, in which
the smouldering embers of a gentler feeling kindled for the moment.

'I descended - as I might have known I should, but that he
fascinated me with his boyish courtship - into a doll, a trifle for
the occupation of an idle hour, to be dropped, and taken up, and
trifled with, as the inconstant humour took him.  When he grew
weary, I grew weary.  As his fancy died out, I would no more have
tried to strengthen any power I had, than I would have married him
on his being forced to take me for his wife.  We fell away from one
another without a word.  Perhaps you saw it, and were not sorry. 
Since then, I have been a mere disfigured piece of furniture
between you both; having no eyes, no ears, no feelings, no
remembrances.  Moan?  Moan for what you made him; not for your
love.  I tell you that the time was, when I loved him better than
you ever did!'

She stood with her bright angry eyes confronting the wide stare,
and the set face; and softened no more, when the moaning was
repeated, than if the face had been a picture.

'Miss Dartle,' said I, 'if you can be so obdurate as not to feel
for this afflicted mother -'

'Who feels for me?' she sharply retorted.  'She has sown this.  Let
her moan for the harvest that she reaps today!'

'And if his faults -' I began.

'Faults!' she cried, bursting into passionate tears.  'Who dares
malign him?  He had a soul worth millions of the friends to whom he
stooped!' 

'No one can have loved him better, no one can hold him in dearer
remembrance than I,' I replied.  'I meant to say, if you have no
compassion for his mother; or if his faults - you have been bitter
on them -'

'It's false,' she cried, tearing her black hair; 'I loved him!'

'- if his faults cannot,' I went on, 'be banished from your
remembrance, in such an hour; look at that figure, even as one you
have never seen before, and render it some help!'

All this time, the figure was unchanged, and looked unchangeable. 
Motionless, rigid, staring; moaning in the same dumb way from time
to time, with the same helpless motion of the head; but giving no
other sign of life.  Miss Dartle suddenly kneeled down before it,
and began to loosen the dress.

'A curse upon you!' she said, looking round at me, with a mingled
expression of rage and grief.  'It was in an evil hour that you
ever came here! A curse upon you! Go!'

After passing out of the room, I hurried back to ring the bell, the
sooner to alarm the servants.  She had then taken the impassive
figure in her arms, and, still upon her knees, was weeping over it,
kissing it, calling to it, rocking it to and fro upon her bosom
like a child, and trying every tender means to rouse the dormant
senses.  No longer afraid of leaving her, I noiselessly turned back
again; and alarmed the house as I went out.

Later in the day, I returned, and we laid him in his mother's room. 
She was just the same, they told me; Miss Dartle never left her;
doctors were in attendance, many things had been tried; but she lay
like a statue, except for the low sound now and then.

I went through the dreary house, and darkened the windows.  The
windows of the chamber where he lay, I darkened last.  I lifted up
the leaden hand, and held it to my heart; and all the world seemed
death and silence, broken only by his mother's moaning.

CHAPTER 57
THE EMIGRANTS

One thing more, I had to do, before yielding myself to the shock of
these emotions.  It was, to conceal what had occurred, from those
who were going away; and to dismiss them on their voyage in happy
ignorance.  In this, no time was to be lost.

I took Mr. Micawber aside that same night, and confided to him the
task of standing between Mr. Peggotty and intelligence of the late
catastrophe.  He zealously undertook to do so, and to intercept any
newspaper through which it might, without such precautions, reach
him.

'If it penetrates to him, sir,' said Mr. Micawber, striking himself
on the breast, 'it shall first pass through this body!'

Mr. Micawber, I must observe, in his adaptation of himself to a new
state of society, had acquired a bold buccaneering air, not
absolutely lawless, but defensive and prompt.  One might have
supposed him a child of the wilderness, long accustomed to live out
of the confines of civilization, and about to return to his native
wilds.

He had provided himself, among other things, with a complete suit
of oilskin, and a straw hat with a very low crown, pitched or
caulked on the outside.  In this rough clothing, with a common
mariner's telescope under his arm, and a shrewd trick of casting up
his eye at the sky as looking out for dirty weather, he was far
more nautical, after his manner, than Mr. Peggotty.  His whole
family, if I may so express it, were cleared for action.  I found
Mrs. Micawber in the closest and most uncompromising of bonnets,
made fast under the chin; and in a shawl which tied her up (as I
had been tied up, when my aunt first received me) like a bundle,
and was secured behind at the waist, in a strong knot.  Miss
Micawber I found made snug for stormy weather, in the same manner;
with nothing superfluous about her.  Master Micawber was hardly
visible in a Guernsey shirt, and the shaggiest suit of slops I ever
saw; and the children were done up, like preserved meats, in
impervious cases.  Both Mr. Micawber and his eldest son wore their
sleeves loosely turned back at the wrists, as being ready to lend
a hand in any direction, and to 'tumble up', or sing out, 'Yeo -
Heave - Yeo!' on the shortest notice.

Thus Traddles and I found them at nightfall, assembled on the
wooden steps, at that time known as Hungerford Stairs, watching the
departure of a boat with some of their property on board.  I had
told Traddles of the terrible event, and it had greatly shocked
him; but there could be no doubt of the kindness of keeping it a
secret, and he had come to help me in this last service.  It was
here that I took Mr. Micawber aside, and received his promise.

The Micawber family were lodged in a little, dirty, tumble-down
public-house, which in those days was close to the stairs, and
whose protruding wooden rooms overhung the river.  The family, as
emigrants, being objects of some interest in and about Hungerford,
attracted so many beholders, that we were glad to take refuge in
their room.  It was one of the wooden chambers upstairs, with the
tide flowing underneath.  My aunt and Agnes were there, busily
making some little extra comforts, in the way of dress, for the
children.  Peggotty was quietly assisting, with the old insensible
work-box, yard-measure, and bit of wax-candle before her, that had
now outlived so much.

It was not easy to answer her inquiries; still less to whisper Mr.
Peggotty, when Mr. Micawber brought him in, that I had given the
letter, and all was well.  But I did both, and made them happy.  If
I showed any trace of what I felt, my own sorrows were sufficient
to account for it.

'And when does the ship sail, Mr. Micawber?' asked my aunt.

Mr. Micawber considered it necessary to prepare either my aunt or
his wife, by degrees, and said, sooner than he had expected
yesterday.

'The boat brought you word, I suppose?' said my aunt.

'It did, ma'am,' he returned.

'Well?' said my aunt.  'And she sails -'

'Madam,' he replied, 'I am informed that we must positively be on
board before seven tomorrow morning.'

'Heyday!' said my aunt, 'that's soon.  Is it a sea-going fact, Mr.
Peggotty?'
''Tis so, ma'am.  She'll drop down the river with that theer tide. 
If Mas'r Davy and my sister comes aboard at Gravesen', arternoon o'
next day, they'll see the last on us.'

'And that we shall do,' said I, 'be sure!'

'Until then, and until we are at sea,' observed Mr. Micawber, with
a glance of intelligence at me, 'Mr. Peggotty and myself will
constantly keep a double look-out together, on our goods and
chattels.  Emma, my love,' said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat
in his magnificent way, 'my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles is so
obliging as to solicit, in my ear, that he should have the
privilege of ordering the ingredients necessary to the composition
of a moderate portion of that Beverage which is peculiarly
associated, in our minds, with the Roast Beef of Old England.  I
allude to - in short, Punch.  Under ordinary circumstances, I
should scruple to entreat the indulgence of Miss Trotwood and Miss
Wickfield, but-'

'I can only say for myself,' said my aunt, 'that I will drink all
happiness and success to you, Mr. Micawber, with the utmost
pleasure.'

'And I too!' said Agnes, with a smile.

Mr. Micawber immediately descended to the bar, where he appeared to
be quite at home; and in due time returned with a steaming jug.  I
could not but observe that he had been peeling the lemons with his
own clasp-knife, which, as became the knife of a practical settler,
was about a foot long; and which he wiped, not wholly without
ostentation, on the sleeve of his coat.  Mrs. Micawber and the two
elder members of the family I now found to be provided with similar
formidable instruments, while every child had its own wooden spoon
attached to its body by a strong line.  In a similar anticipation
of life afloat, and in the Bush, Mr. Micawber, instead of helping
Mrs. Micawber and his eldest son and daughter to punch, in
wine-glasses, which he might easily have done, for there was a
shelf-full in the room, served it out to them in a series of
villainous little tin pots; and I never saw him enjoy anything so
much as drinking out of his own particular pint pot, and putting it
in his pocket at the close of the evening.

'The luxuries of the old country,' said Mr. Micawber, with an
intense satisfaction in their renouncement, 'we abandon.  The
denizens of the forest cannot, of course, expect to participate in
the refinements of the land of the Free.'

Here, a boy came in to say that Mr. Micawber was wanted downstairs.

'I have a presentiment,' said Mrs. Micawber, setting down her tin
pot, 'that it is a member of my family!'

'If so, my dear,' observed Mr. Micawber, with his usual suddenness
of warmth on that subject, 'as the member of your family - whoever
he, she, or it, may be - has kept us waiting for a considerable
period, perhaps the Member may now wait MY convenience.'

'Micawber,' said his wife, in a low tone, 'at such a time as
this -'

'"It is not meet,"' said Mr. Micawber, rising, '"that every nice
offence should bear its comment!" Emma, I stand reproved.'

'The loss, Micawber,' observed his wife, 'has been my family's, not
yours.  If my family are at length sensible of the deprivation to
which their own conduct has, in the past, exposed them, and now
desire to extend the hand of fellowship, let it not be repulsed.'

'My dear,' he returned, 'so be it!'

'If not for their sakes; for mine, Micawber,' said his wife.

'Emma,' he returned, 'that view of the question is, at such a
moment, irresistible.  I cannot, even now, distinctly pledge myself
to fall upon your family's neck; but the member of your family, who
is now in attendance, shall have no genial warmth frozen by me.'

Mr. Micawber withdrew, and was absent some little time; in the
course of which Mrs. Micawber was not wholly free from an
apprehension that words might have arisen between him and the
Member.  At length the same boy reappeared, and presented me with
a note written in pencil, and headed, in a legal manner, 'Heep v. 
Micawber'.  From this document, I learned that Mr. Micawber being
again arrested, 'Was in a final paroxysm of despair; and that he
begged me to send him his knife and pint pot, by bearer, as they
might prove serviceable during the brief remainder of his
existence, in jail.  He also requested, as a last act of
friendship, that I would see his family to the Parish Workhouse,
and forget that such a Being ever lived.

Of course I answered this note by going down with the boy to pay
the money, where I found Mr. Micawber sitting in a corner, looking
darkly at the Sheriff 's Officer who had effected the capture.  On
his release, he embraced me with the utmost fervour; and made an
entry of the transaction in his pocket-book - being very
particular, I recollect, about a halfpenny I inadvertently omitted
from my statement of the total.

This momentous pocket-book was a timely reminder to him of another
transaction.  On our return to the room upstairs (where he
accounted for his absence by saying that it had been occasioned by
circumstances over which he had no control), he took out of it a
large sheet of paper, folded small, and quite covered with long
sums, carefully worked.  From the glimpse I had of them, I should
say that I never saw such sums out of a school ciphering-book. 
These, it seemed, were calculations of compound interest on what he
called 'the principal amount of forty-one, ten, eleven and a half',
for various periods.  After a careful consideration of these, and
an elaborate estimate of his resources, he had come to the
conclusion to select that sum which represented the amount with
compound interest to two years, fifteen calendar months, and
fourteen days, from that date.  For this he had drawn a
note-of-hand with great neatness, which he handed over to Traddles
on the spot, a discharge of his debt in full (as between man and
man), with many acknowledgements.

'I have still a presentiment,' said Mrs. Micawber, pensively
shaking her head, 'that my family will appear on board, before we
finally depart.'

Mr. Micawber evidently had his presentiment on the subject too, but
he put it in his tin pot and swallowed it.

'If you have any opportunity of sending letters home, on your
passage, Mrs. Micawber,' said my aunt, 'you must let us hear from
you, you know.'

'My dear Miss Trotwood,' she replied, 'I shall only be too happy to
think that anyone expects to hear from us.  I shall not fail to
correspond.  Mr. Copperfield, I trust, as an old and familiar
friend, will not object to receive occasional intelligence,
himself, from one who knew him when the twins were yet
unconscious?'

I said that I should hope to hear, whenever she had an opportunity
of writing.

'Please Heaven, there will be many such opportunities,' said Mr.
Micawber.  'The ocean, in these times, is a perfect fleet of ships;
and we can hardly fail to encounter many, in running over.  It is
merely crossing,' said Mr. Micawber, trifling with his eye-glass,
'merely crossing.  The distance is quite imaginary.'

I think, now, how odd it was, but how wonderfully like Mr.
Micawber, that, when he went from London to Canterbury, he should
have talked as if he were going to the farthest limits of the
earth; and, when he went from England to Australia, as if he were
going for a little trip across the channel.

'On the voyage, I shall endeavour,' said Mr. Micawber,
'occasionally to spin them a yarn; and the melody of my son Wilkins
will, I trust, be acceptable at the galley-fire.  When Mrs.
Micawber has her sea-legs on - an expression in which I hope there
is no conventional impropriety - she will give them, I dare say,
"Little Tafflin".  Porpoises and dolphins, I believe, will be
frequently observed athwart our Bows; and, either on the starboard
or the larboard quarter, objects of interest will be continually
descried.  In short,' said Mr. Micawber, with the old genteel air,
'the probability is, all will be found so exciting, alow and aloft,
that when the lookout, stationed in the main-top, cries Land-oh! we
shall be very considerably astonished!'

With that he flourished off the contents of his little tin pot, as
if he had made the voyage, and had passed a first-class examination
before the highest naval authorities.

' What I chiefly hope, my dear Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs.
Micawber, 'is, that in some branches of our family we may live
again in the old country.  Do not frown, Micawber! I do not now
refer to my own family, but to our children's children.  However
vigorous the sapling,' said Mrs. Micawber, shaking her head, 'I
cannot forget the parent-tree; and when our race attains to
eminence and fortune, I own I should wish that fortune to flow into
the coffers of Britannia.'

'My dear,' said Mr. Micawber, 'Britannia must take her chance.  I
am bound to say that she has never done much for me, and that I
have no particular wish upon the subject.'

'Micawber,' returned Mrs. Micawber, 'there, you are wrong.  You are
going out, Micawber, to this distant clime, to strengthen, not to
weaken, the connexion between yourself and Albion.'

'The connexion in question, my love,' rejoined Mr. Micawber, 'has
not laid me, I repeat, under that load of personal obligation, that
I am at all sensitive as to the formation of another connexion.'

'Micawber,' returned Mrs. Micawber.  'There, I again say, you are
wrong.  You do not know your power, Micawber.  It is that which
will strengthen, even in this step you are about to take, the
connexion between yourself and Albion.'

Mr. Micawber sat in his elbow-chair, with his eyebrows raised; half
receiving and half repudiating Mrs. Micawber's views as they were
stated, but very sensible of their foresight.

'My dear Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'I wish Mr. Micawber
to feel his position.  It appears to me highly important that Mr.
Micawber should, from the hour of his embarkation, feel his
position.  Your old knowledge of me, my dear Mr. Copperfield, will
have told you that I have not the sanguine disposition of Mr.
Micawber.  My disposition is, if I may say so, eminently practical. 
I know that this is a long voyage.  I know that it will involve
many privations and inconveniences.  I cannot shut my eyes to those
facts.  But I also know what Mr. Micawber is.  I know the latent
power of Mr. Micawber.  And therefore I consider it vitally
important that Mr. Micawber should feel his position.'

'My love,' he observed, 'perhaps you will allow me to remark that
it is barely possible that I DO feel my position at the present
moment.'

'I think not, Micawber,' she rejoined.  'Not fully.  My dear Mr.
Copperfield, Mr. Micawber's is not a common case.  Mr. Micawber is
going to a distant country expressly in order that he may be fully
understood and appreciated for the first time.  I wish Mr. Micawber
to take his stand upon that vessel's prow, and firmly say, "This
country I am come to conquer! Have you honours?  Have you riches? 
Have you posts of profitable pecuniary emolument?  Let them be
brought forward.  They are mine!"'

Mr. Micawber, glancing at us all, seemed to think there was a good
deal in this idea.

'I wish Mr. Micawber, if I make myself understood,' said Mrs.
Micawber, in her argumentative tone, 'to be the Caesar of his own
fortunes.  That, my dear Mr. Copperfield, appears to me to be his
true position.  From the first moment of this voyage, I wish Mr.
Micawber to stand upon that vessel's prow and say, "Enough of
delay: enough of disappointment: enough of limited means.  That was
in the old country.  This is the new.  Produce your reparation. 
Bring it forward!"'

Mr. Micawber folded his arms in a resolute manner, as if he were
then stationed on the figure-head.

'And doing that,' said Mrs. Micawber, '- feeling his position - am
I not right in saying that Mr. Micawber will strengthen, and not
weaken, his connexion with Britain?  An important public character
arising in that hemisphere, shall I be told that its influence will
not be felt at home?  Can I be so weak as to imagine that Mr.
Micawber, wielding the rod of talent and of power in Australia,
will be nothing in England?  I am but a woman; but I should be
unworthy of myself and of my papa, if I were guilty of such absurd
weakness.'

Mrs. Micawber's conviction that her arguments were unanswerable,
gave a moral elevation to her tone which I think I had never heard
in it before.

'And therefore it is,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'that I the more wish,
that, at a future period, we may live again on the parent soil. 
Mr. Micawber may be - I cannot disguise from myself that the
probability is, Mr. Micawber will be - a page of History; and he
ought then to be represented in the country which gave him birth,
and did NOT give him employment!'

'My love,' observed Mr. Micawber, 'it is impossible for me not to
be touched by your affection.  I am always willing to defer to your
good sense.  What will be - will be.  Heaven forbid that I should
grudge my native country any portion of the wealth that may be
accumulated by our descendants!'

'That's well,' said my aunt, nodding towards Mr. Peggotty, 'and I
drink my love to you all, and every blessing and success attend
you!'

Mr. Peggotty put down the two children he had been nursing, one on
each knee, to join Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in drinking to all of us
in return; and when he and the Micawbers cordially shook hands as
comrades, and his brown face brightened with a smile, I felt that
he would make his way, establish a good name, and be beloved, go
where he would.

Even the children were instructed, each to dip a wooden spoon into
Mr. Micawber's pot, and pledge us in its contents.  When this was
done, my aunt and Agnes rose, and parted from the emigrants.  It
was a sorrowful farewell.  They were all crying; the children hung
about Agnes to the last; and we left poor Mrs. Micawber in a very
distressed condition, sobbing and weeping by a dim candle, that
must have made the room look, from the river, like a miserable
light-house.

I went down again next morning to see that they were away.  They
had departed, in a boat, as early as five o'clock.  It was a
wonderful instance to me of the gap such partings make, that
although my association of them with the tumble-down public-house
and the wooden stairs dated only from last night, both seemed
dreary and deserted, now that they were gone.

In the afternoon of the next day, my old nurse and I went down to
Gravesend.  We found the ship in the river, surrounded by a crowd
of boats; a favourable wind blowing; the signal for sailing at her
mast-head.  I hired a boat directly, and we put off to her; and
getting through the little vortex of confusion of which she was the
centre, went on board.

Mr. Peggotty was waiting for us on deck.  He told me that Mr.
Micawber had just now been arrested again (and for the last time)
at the suit of Heep, and that, in compliance with a request I had
made to him, he had paid the money, which I repaid him.  He then
took us down between decks; and there, any lingering fears I had of
his having heard any rumours of what had happened, were dispelled
by Mr. Micawber's coming out of the gloom, taking his arm with an
air of friendship and protection, and telling me that they had
scarcely been asunder for a moment, since the night before last.

It was such a strange scene to me, and so confined and dark, that,
at first, I could make out hardly anything; but, by degrees, it
cleared, as my eyes became more accustomed to the gloom, and I
seemed to stand in a picture by OSTADE.  Among the great beams,
bulks, and ringbolts of the ship, and the emigrant-berths, and
chests, and bundles, and barrels, and heaps of miscellaneous
baggage -'lighted up, here and there, by dangling lanterns; and
elsewhere by the yellow daylight straying down a windsail or a
hatchway - were crowded groups of people, making new friendships,
taking leave of one another, talking, laughing, crying, eating and
drinking; some, already settled down into the possession of their
few feet of space, with their little households arranged, and tiny
children established on stools, or in dwarf elbow-chairs; others,
despairing of a resting-place, and wandering disconsolately.  From
babies who had but a week or two of life behind them, to crooked
old men and women who seemed to have but a week or two of life
before them; and from ploughmen bodily carrying out soil of England
on their boots, to smiths taking away samples of its soot and smoke
upon their skins; every age and occupation appeared to be crammed
into the narrow compass of the 'tween decks.

As my eye glanced round this place, I thought I saw sitting, by an
open port, with one of the Micawber children near her, a figure
like Emily's; it first attracted my attention, by another figure
parting from it with a kiss; and as it glided calmly away through
the disorder, reminding me of - Agnes! But in the rapid motion and
confusion, and in the unsettlement of my own thoughts, I lost it
again; and only knew that the time was come when all visitors were
being warned to leave the ship; that my nurse was crying on a chest
beside me; and that Mrs. Gummidge, assisted by some younger
stooping woman in black, was busily arranging Mr. Peggotty's goods.

'Is there any last wured, Mas'r Davy?' said he.  'Is there any one
forgotten thing afore we parts?'

'One thing!' said I.  'Martha!'

He touched the younger woman I have mentioned on the shoulder, and
Martha stood before me.

'Heaven bless you, you good man!' cried I.  'You take her with
you!'

She answered for him, with a burst of tears.  I could speak no more
at that time, but I wrung his hand; and if ever I have loved and
honoured any man, I loved and honoured that man in my soul.

The ship was clearing fast of strangers.  The greatest trial that
I had, remained.  I told him what the noble spirit that was gone,
had given me in charge to say at parting.  It moved him deeply. 
But when he charged me, in return, with many messages of affection
and regret for those deaf ears, he moved me more.

The time was come.  I embraced him, took my weeping nurse upon my
arm, and hurried away.  On deck, I took leave of poor Mrs.
Micawber.  She was looking distractedly about for her family, even
then; and her last words to me were, that she never would desert
Mr. Micawber.

We went over the side into our boat, and lay at a little distance,
to see the ship wafted on her course.  It was then calm, radiant
sunset.  She lay between us, and the red light; and every taper
line and spar was visible against the glow.  A sight at once so
beautiful, so mournful, and so hopeful, as the glorious ship,
lying, still, on the flushed water, with all the life on board her
crowded at the bulwarks, and there clustering, for a moment,
bare-headed and silent, I never saw.

Silent, only for a moment.  As the sails rose to the wind, and the
ship began to move, there broke from all the boats three resounding
cheers, which those on board took up, and echoed back, and which
were echoed and re-echoed.  My heart burst out when I heard the
sound, and beheld the waving of the hats and handkerchiefs - and
then I saw her!

Then I saw her, at her uncle's side, and trembling on his shoulder. 
He pointed to us with an eager hand; and she saw us, and waved her
last good-bye to me.  Aye, Emily, beautiful and drooping, cling to
him with the utmost trust of thy bruised heart; for he has clung to
thee, with all the might of his great love!

Surrounded by the rosy light, and standing high upon the deck,
apart together, she clinging to him, and he holding her, they
solemnly passed away.  The night had fallen on the Kentish hills
when we were rowed ashore - and fallen darkly upon me.

CHAPTER 58
ABSENCE

It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the
ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many
unavailing sorrows and regrets.

I went away from England; not knowing, even then, how great the
shock was, that I had to bear.  I left all who were dear to me, and
went away; and believed that I had borne it, and it was past.  As
a man upon a field of battle will receive a mortal hurt, and
scarcely know that he is struck, so I, when I was left alone with
my undisciplined heart, had no conception of the wound with which
it had to strive.

The knowledge came upon me, not quickly, but little by little, and
grain by grain.  The desolate feeling with which I went abroad,
deepened and widened hourly.  At first it was a heavy sense of loss
and sorrow, wherein I could distinguish little else.  By
imperceptible degrees, it became a hopeless consciousness of all
that I had lost - love, friendship, interest; of all that had been
shattered - my first trust, my first affection, the whole airy
castle of my life; of all that remained - a ruined blank and waste,
lying wide around me, unbroken, to the dark horizon.

If my grief were selfish, I did not know it to be so.  I mourned
for my child-wife, taken from her blooming world, so young.  I
mourned for him who might have won the love and admiration of
thousands, as he had won mine long ago.  I mourned for the broken
heart that had found rest in the stormy sea; and for the wandering
remnants of the simple home, where I had heard the night-wind
blowing, when I was a child.

From the accumulated sadness into which I fell, I had at length no
hope of ever issuing again.  I roamed from place to place, carrying
my burden with me everywhere.  I felt its whole weight now; and I
drooped beneath it, and I said in my heart that it could never be
lightened.

When this despondency was at its worst, I believed that I should
die.  Sometimes, I thought that I would like to die at home; and
actually turned back on my road, that I might get there soon.  At
other times, I passed on farther away, -from city to city, seeking
I know not what, and trying to leave I know not what behind.

It is not in my power to retrace, one by one, all the weary phases
of distress of mind through which I passed.  There are some dreams
that can only be imperfectly and vaguely described; and when I
oblige myself to look back on this time of my life, I seem to be
recalling such a dream.  I see myself passing on among the
novelties of foreign towns, palaces, cathedrals, temples, pictures,
castles, tombs, fantastic streets - the old abiding places of
History and Fancy - as a dreamer might; bearing my painful load
through all, and hardly conscious of the objects as they fade
before me.  Listlessness to everything, but brooding sorrow, was
the night that fell on my undisciplined heart.  Let me look up from
it - as at last I did, thank Heaven! - and from its long, sad,
wretched dream, to dawn.

For many months I travelled with this ever-darkening cloud upon my
mind.  Some blind reasons that I had for not returning home -
reasons then struggling within me, vainly, for more distinct
expression - kept me on my pilgrimage.  Sometimes, I had proceeded
restlessly from place to place, stopping nowhere; sometimes, I had
lingered long in one spot.  I had had no purpose, no sustaining
soul within me, anywhere.

I was in Switzerland.  I had come out of Italy, over one of the
great passes of the Alps, and had since wandered with a guide among
the by-ways of the mountains.  If those awful solitudes had spoken
to my heart, I did not know it.  I had found sublimity and wonder
in the dread heights and precipices, in the roaring torrents, and
the wastes of ice and snow; but as yet, they had taught me nothing
else.

I came, one evening before sunset, down into a valley, where I was
to rest.  In the course of my descent to it, by the winding track
along the mountain-side, from which I saw it shining far below, I
think some long-unwonted sense of beauty and tranquillity, some
softening influence awakened by its peace, moved faintly in my
breast.  I remember pausing once, with a kind of sorrow that was
not all oppressive, not quite despairing.  I remember almost hoping
that some better change was possible within me.

I came into the valley, as the evening sun was shining on the
remote heights of snow, that closed it in, like eternal clouds. 
The bases of the mountains forming the gorge in which the little
village lay, were richly green; and high above this gentler
vegetation, grew forests of dark fir, cleaving the wintry
snow-drift, wedge-like, and stemming the avalanche.  Above these,
were range upon range of craggy steeps, grey rock, bright ice, and
smooth verdure-specks of pasture, all gradually blending with the
crowning snow.  Dotted here and there on the mountain's-side, each
tiny dot a home, were lonely wooden cottages, so dwarfed by the
towering heights that they appeared too small for toys.  So did
even the clustered village in the valley, with its wooden bridge
across the stream, where the stream tumbled over broken rocks, and
roared away among the trees.  In the quiet air, there was a sound
of distant singing - shepherd voices; but, as one bright evening
cloud floated midway along the mountain's-side, I could almost have
believed it came from there, and was not earthly music.  All at
once, in this serenity, great Nature spoke to me; and soothed me to
lay down my weary head upon the grass, and weep as I had not wept
yet, since Dora died!

I had found a packet of letters awaiting me but a few minutes
before, and had strolled out of the village to read them while my
supper was making ready.  Other packets had missed me, and I had
received none for a long time.  Beyond a line or two, to say that
I was well, and had arrived at such a place, I had not had
fortitude or constancy to write a letter since I left home.

The packet was in my hand.  I opened it, and read the writing of
Agnes.

She was happy and useful, was prospering as she had hoped.  That
was all she told me of herself.  The rest referred to me.

She gave me no advice; she urged no duty on me; she only told me,
in her own fervent manner, what her trust in me was.  She knew (she
said) how such a nature as mine would turn affliction to good.  She
knew how trial and emotion would exalt and strengthen it.  She was
sure that in my every purpose I should gain a firmer and a higher
tendency, through the grief I had undergone.  She, who so gloried
in my fame, and so looked forward to its augmentation, well knew
that I would labour on.  She knew that in me, sorrow could not be
weakness, but must be strength.  As the endurance of my childish
days had done its part to make me what I was, so greater calamities
would nerve me on, to be yet better than I was; and so, as they had
taught me, would I teach others.  She commended me to God, who had
taken my innocent darling to His rest; and in her sisterly
affection cherished me always, and was always at my side go where
I would; proud of what I had done, but infinitely prouder yet of
what I was reserved to do.

I put the letter in my breast, and thought what had I been an hour
ago! When I heard the voices die away, and saw the quiet evening
cloud grow dim, and all the colours in the valley fade, and the
golden snow upon the mountain-tops become a remote part of the pale
night sky, yet felt that the night was passing from my mind, and
all its shadows clearing, there was no name for the love I bore
her, dearer to me, henceforward, than ever until then.

I read her letter many times.  I wrote to her before I slept.  I
told her that I had been in sore need of her help; that without her
I was not, and I never had been, what she thought me; but that she
inspired me to be that, and I would try.

I did try.  In three months more, a year would have passed since
the beginning of my sorrow.  I determined to make no resolutions
until the expiration of those three months, but to try.  I lived in
that valley, and its neighbourhood, all the time.

The three months gone, I resolved to remain away from home for some
time longer; to settle myself for the present in Switzerland, which
was growing dear to me in the remembrance of that evening; to
resume my pen; to work.

I resorted humbly whither Agnes had commended me; I sought out
Nature, never sought in vain; and I admitted to my breast the human
interest I had lately shrunk from.  It was not long, before I had
almost as many friends in the valley as in Yarmouth: and when I
left it, before the winter set in, for Geneva, and came back in the
spring, their cordial greetings had a homely sound to me, although
they were not conveyed in English words.

I worked early and late, patiently and hard.  I wrote a Story, with
a purpose growing, not remotely, out of my experience, and sent it
to Traddles, and he arranged for its publication very
advantageously for me; and the tidings of my growing reputation
began to reach me from travellers whom I encountered by chance. 
After some rest and change, I fell to work, in my old ardent way,
on a new fancy, which took strong possession of me.  As I advanced
in the execution of this task, I felt it more and more, and roused
my utmost energies to do it well.  This was my third work of
fiction.  It was not half written, when, in an interval of rest, I
thought of returning home.

For a long time, though studying and working patiently, I had
accustomed myself to robust exercise.  My health, severely impaired
when I left England, was quite restored.  I had seen much.  I had
been in many countries, and I hope I had improved my store of
knowledge.

I have now recalled all that I think it needful to recall here, of
this term of absence - with one reservation.  I have made it, thus
far, with no purpose of suppressing any of my thoughts; for, as I
have elsewhere said, this narrative is my written memory.  I have
desired to keep the most secret current of my mind apart, and to
the last.  I enter on it now.  I cannot so completely penetrate the
mystery of my own heart, as to know when I began to think that I
might have set its earliest and brightest hopes on Agnes.  I cannot
say at what stage of my grief it first became associated with the
reflection, that, in my wayward boyhood, I had thrown away the
treasure of her love.  I believe I may have heard some whisper of
that distant thought, in the old unhappy loss or want of something
never to be realized, of which I had been sensible.  But the
thought came into my mind as a new reproach and new regret, when I
was left so sad and lonely in the world.

If, at that time, I had been much with her, I should, in the
weakness of my desolation, have betrayed this.  It was what I
remotely dreaded when I was first impelled to stay away from
England.  I could not have borne to lose the smallest portion of
her sisterly affection; yet, in that betrayal, I should have set a
constraint between us hitherto unknown.

I could not forget that the feeling with which she now regarded me
had grown up in my own free choice and course.  That if she had
ever loved me with another love - and I sometimes thought the time
was when she might have done so - I had cast it away.  It was
nothing, now, that I had accustomed myself to think of her, when we
were both mere children, as one who was far removed from my wild
fancies.  I had bestowed my passionate tenderness upon another
object; and what I might have done, I had not done; and what Agnes
was to me, I and her own noble heart had made her.

In the beginning of the change that gradually worked in me, when I
tried to get a better understanding of myself and be a better man,
I did glance, through some indefinite probation, to a period when
I might possibly hope to cancel the mistaken past, and to be so
blessed as to marry her.  But, as time wore on, this shadowy
prospect faded, and departed from me.  If she had ever loved me,
then, I should hold her the more sacred; remembering the
confidences I had reposed in her, her knowledge of my errant heart,
the sacrifice she must have made to be my friend and sister, and
the victory she had won.  If she had never loved me, could I
believe that she would love me now?

I had always felt my weakness, in comparison with her constancy and
fortitude; and now I felt it more and more.  Whatever I might have
been to her, or she to me, if I had been more worthy of her long
ago, I was not now, and she was not.  The time was past.  I had let
it go by, and had deservedly lost her.

That I suffered much in these contentions, that they filled me with
unhappiness and remorse, and yet that I had a sustaining sense that
it was required of me, in right and honour, to keep away from
myself, with shame, the thought of turning to the dear girl in the
withering of my hopes, from whom I had frivolously turned when they
were bright and fresh - which consideration was at the root of
every thought I had concerning her - is all equally true.  I made
no effort to conceal from myself, now, that I loved her, that I was
devoted to her; but I brought the assurance home to myself, that it
was now too late, and that our long-subsisting relation must be
undisturbed.

I had thought, much and often, of my Dora's shadowing out to me
what might have happened, in those years that were destined not to
try us; I had considered how the things that never happen, are
often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are
accomplished.  The very years she spoke of, were realities now, for
my correction; and would have been, one day, a little later
perhaps, though we had parted in our earliest folly.  I endeavoured
to convert what might have been between myself and Agnes, into a
means of making me more self-denying, more resolved, more conscious
of myself, and my defects and errors.  Thus, through the reflection
that it might have been, I arrived at the conviction that it could
never be.

These, with their perplexities and inconsistencies, were the
shifting quicksands of my mind, from the time of my departure to
the time of my return home, three years afterwards.  Three years
had elapsed since the sailing of the emigrant ship; when, at that
same hour of sunset, and in the same place, I stood on the deck of
the packet vessel that brought me home, looking on the rosy water
where I had seen the image of that ship reflected.

Three years.  Long in the aggregate, though short as they went by. 
And home was very dear to me, and Agnes too - but she was not mine
- she was never to be mine.  She might have been, but that was
past!

CHAPTER 59
RETURN

I landed in London on a wintry autumn evening.  It was dark and
raining, and I saw more fog and mud in a minute than I had seen in
a year.  I walked from the Custom House to the Monument before I
found a coach; and although the very house-fronts, looking on the
swollen gutters, were like old friends to me, I could not but admit
that they were very dingy friends.

I have often remarked - I suppose everybody has - that one's going
away from a familiar place, would seem to be the signal for change
in it.  As I looked out of the coach window, and observed that an
old house on Fish-street Hill, which had stood untouched by
painter, carpenter, or bricklayer, for a century, had been pulled
down in my absence; and that a neighbouring street, of
time-honoured insalubrity and inconvenience, was being drained and
widened; I half expected to find St. Paul's Cathedral looking
older.

For some changes in the fortunes of my friends, I was prepared.  My
aunt had long been re-established at Dover, and Traddles had begun
to get into some little practice at the Bar, in the very first term
after my departure.  He had chambers in Gray's Inn, now; and had
told me, in his last letters, that he was not without hopes of
being soon united to the dearest girl in the world.

They expected me home before Christmas; but had no idea of my
returning so soon.  I had purposely misled them, that I might have
the pleasure of taking them by surprise.  And yet, I was perverse
enough to feel a chill and disappointment in receiving no welcome,
and rattling, alone and silent, through the misty streets.

The well-known shops, however, with their cheerful lights, did
something for me; and when I alighted at the door of the Gray's Inn
Coffee-house, I had recovered my spirits.  It recalled, at first,
that so-different time when I had put up at the Golden Cross, and
reminded me of the changes that had come to pass since then; but
that was natural.

'Do you know where Mr. Traddles lives in the Inn?' I asked the
waiter, as I warmed myself by the coffee-room fire.

'Holborn Court, sir.  Number two.'

'Mr. Traddles has a rising reputation among the lawyers, I
believe?' said I.

'Well, sir,' returned the waiter, 'probably he has, sir; but I am
not aware of it myself.'

This waiter, who was middle-aged and spare, looked for help to a
waiter of more authority - a stout, potential old man, with a
double chin, in black breeches and stockings, who came out of a
place like a churchwarden's pew, at the end of the coffee-room,
where he kept company with a cash-box, a Directory, a Law-list, and
other books and papers.

'Mr. Traddles,' said the spare waiter.  'Number two in the Court.'

The potential waiter waved him away, and turned, gravely, to me.

'I was inquiring,' said I, 'whether Mr. Traddles, at number two in
the Court, has not a rising reputation among the lawyers?'

'Never heard his name,' said the waiter, in a rich husky voice.

I felt quite apologetic for Traddles.

'He's a young man, sure?' said the portentous waiter, fixing his
eyes severely on me.  'How long has he been in the Inn?'

'Not above three years,' said I.

The waiter, who I supposed had lived in his churchwarden's pew for
forty years, could not pursue such an insignificant subject.  He
asked me what I would have for dinner?

I felt I was in England again, and really was quite cast down on
Traddles's account.  There seemed to be no hope for him.  I meekly
ordered a bit of fish and a steak, and stood before the fire musing
on his obscurity.

As I followed the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help
thinking that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the
flower he was, was an arduous place to rise in.  It had such a
prescriptive, stiff-necked, long-established, solemn, elderly air. 
I glanced about the room, which had had its sanded floor sanded, no
doubt, in exactly the same manner when the chief waiter was a boy
- if he ever was a boy, which appeared improbable; and at the
shining tables, where I saw myself reflected, in unruffled depths
of old mahogany; and at the lamps, without a flaw in their trimming
or cleaning; and at the comfortable green curtains, with their pure
brass rods, snugly enclosing the boxes; and at the two large coal
fires, brightly burning; and at the rows of decanters, burly as if
with the consciousness of pipes of expensive old port wine below;
and both England, and the law, appeared to me to be very difficult
indeed to be taken by storm.  I went up to my bedroom to change my
wet clothes; and the vast extent of that old wainscoted apartment
(which was over the archway leading to the Inn, I remember), and
the sedate immensity of the four-post bedstead, and the indomitable
gravity of the chests of drawers, all seemed to unite in sternly
frowning on the fortunes of Traddles, or on any such daring youth. 
I came down again to my dinner; and even the slow comfort of the
meal, and the orderly silence of the place - which was bare of
guests, the Long Vacation not yet being over - were eloquent on the
audacity of Traddles, and his small hopes of a livelihood for
twenty years to come.

I had seen nothing like this since I went away, and it quite dashed
my hopes for my friend.  The chief waiter had had enough of me.  He
came near me no more; but devoted himself to an old gentleman in
long gaiters, to meet whom a pint of special port seemed to come
out of the cellar of its own accord, for he gave no order.  The
second waiter informed me, in a whisper, that this old gentleman
was a retired conveyancer living in the Square, and worth a mint of
money, which it was expected he would leave to his laundress's
daughter; likewise that it was rumoured that he had a service of
plate in a bureau, all tarnished with lying by, though more than
one spoon and a fork had never yet been beheld in his chambers by
mortal vision.  By this time, I quite gave Traddles up for lost;
and settled in my own mind that there was no hope for him.

Being very anxious to see the dear old fellow, nevertheless, I
dispatched my dinner, in a manner not at all calculated to raise me
in the opinion of the chief waiter, and hurried out by the back
way.  Number two in the Court was soon reached; and an inscription
on the door-post informing me that Mr. Traddles occupied a set of
chambers on the top storey, I ascended the staircase.  A crazy old
staircase I found it to be, feebly lighted on each landing by a
club- headed little oil wick, dying away in a little dungeon of
dirty glass.

In the course of my stumbling upstairs, I fancied I heard a
pleasant sound of laughter; and not the laughter of an attorney or
barrister, or attorney's clerk or barrister's clerk, but of two or
three merry girls.  Happening, however, as I stopped to listen, to
put my foot in a hole where the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn
had left a plank deficient, I fell down with some noise, and when
I recovered my footing all was silent.

Groping my way more carefully, for the rest of the journey, my
heart beat high when I found the outer door, which had Mr. TRADDLES
painted on it, open.  I knocked.  A considerable scuffling within
ensued, but nothing else.  I therefore knocked again.

A small sharp-looking lad, half-footboy and half-clerk, who was
very much out of breath, but who looked at me as if he defied me to
prove it legally, presented himself.

'Is Mr. Traddles within?' I said.

'Yes, sir, but he's engaged.'

'I want to see him.'

After a moment's survey of me, the sharp-looking lad decided to let
me in; and opening the door wider for that purpose, admitted me,
first, into a little closet of a hall, and next into a little
sitting-room; where I came into the presence of my old friend (also
out of breath), seated at a table, and bending over papers.

'Good God!' cried Traddles, looking up.  'It's Copperfield!' and
rushed into my arms, where I held him tight.

'All well, my dear Traddles?'

'All well, my dear, dear Copperfield, and nothing but good news!'

We cried with pleasure, both of us.

'My dear fellow,' said Traddles, rumpling his hair in his
excitement, which was a most unnecessary operation, 'my dearest
Copperfield, my long-lost and most welcome friend, how glad I am to
see you! How brown you are! How glad I am! Upon my life and honour,
I never was so rejoiced, my beloved Copperfield, never!'

I was equally at a loss to express my emotions.  I was quite unable
to speak, at first.

'My dear fellow!' said Traddles.  'And grown so famous! My glorious
Copperfield! Good gracious me, WHEN did you come, WHERE have you
come from, WHAT have you been doing?'

Never pausing for an answer to anything he said, Traddles, who had
clapped me into an easy-chair by the fire, all this time
impetuously stirred the fire with one hand, and pulled at my
neck-kerchief with the other, under some wild delusion that it was
a great-coat.  Without putting down the poker, he now hugged me
again; and I hugged him; and, both laughing, and both wiping our
eyes, we both sat down, and shook hands across the hearth.

'To think,' said Traddles, 'that you should have been so nearly
coming home as you must have been, my dear old boy, and not at the
ceremony!'

'What ceremony, my dear Traddles?'

'Good gracious me!' cried Traddles, opening his eyes in his old
way.  'Didn't you get my last letter?'

'Certainly not, if it referred to any ceremony.'

'Why, my dear Copperfield,' said Traddles, sticking his hair
upright with both hands, and then putting his hands on my knees, 'I
am married!'

'Married!' I cried joyfully.

'Lord bless me, yes,!' said Traddles - 'by the Reverend Horace - to
Sophy - down in Devonshire.  Why, my dear boy, she's behind the
window curtain! Look here!'

To my amazement, the dearest girl in the world came at that same
instant, laughing and blushing, from her place of concealment.  And
a more cheerful, amiable, honest, happy, bright-looking bride, I
believe (as I could not help saying on the spot) the world never
saw.  I kissed her as an old acquaintance should, and wished them
joy with all my might of heart.

'Dear me,' said Traddles, 'what a delightful re-union this is! You
are so extremely brown, my dear Copperfield! God bless my soul, how
happy I am!'

'And so am I,' said I.

'And I am sure I am!' said the blushing and laughing Sophy.

'We are all as happy as possible!' said Traddles.  'Even the girls
are happy.  Dear me, I declare I forgot them!'

'Forgot?' said I.

'The girls,' said Traddles.  'Sophy's sisters.  They are staying
with us.  They have come to have a peep at London.  The fact is,
when - was it you that tumbled upstairs, Copperfield?'

'It was,' said I, laughing.

'Well then, when you tumbled upstairs,' said Traddles, 'I was
romping with the girls.  In point of fact, we were playing at Puss
in the Corner.  But as that wouldn't do in Westminster Hall, and as
it wouldn't look quite professional if they were seen by a client,
they decamped.  And they are now - listening, I have no doubt,'
said Traddles, glancing at the door of another room.

'I am sorry,' said I, laughing afresh, 'to have occasioned such a
dispersion.'

'Upon my word,' rejoined Traddles, greatly delighted, 'if you had
seen them running away, and running back again, after you had
knocked, to pick up the combs they had dropped out of their hair,
and going on in the maddest manner, you wouldn't have said so.  My
love, will you fetch the girls?'

Sophy tripped away, and we heard her received in the adjoining room
with a peal of laughter.

'Really musical, isn't it, my dear Copperfield?' said Traddles. 
'It's very agreeable to hear.  It quite lights up these old rooms. 
To an unfortunate bachelor of a fellow who has lived alone all his
life, you know, it's positively delicious.  It's charming.  Poor
things, they have had a great loss in Sophy - who, I do assure you,
Copperfield is, and ever was, the dearest girl! - and it gratifies
me beyond expression to find them in such good spirits.  The
society of girls is a very delightful thing, Copperfield.  It's not
professional, but it's very delightful.'

Observing that he slightly faltered, and comprehending that in the
goodness of his heart he was fearful of giving me some pain by what
he had said, I expressed my concurrence with a heartiness that
evidently relieved and pleased him greatly.

'But then,' said Traddles, 'our domestic arrangements are, to say
the truth, quite unprofessional altogether, my dear Copperfield. 
Even Sophy's being here, is unprofessional.  And we have no other
place of abode.  We have put to sea in a cockboat, but we are quite
prepared to rough it.  And Sophy's an extraordinary manager! You'll
be surprised how those girls are stowed away.  I am sure I hardly
know how it's done!'

'Are many of the young ladies with you?' I inquired.

'The eldest, the Beauty is here,' said Traddles, in a low
confidential voice, 'Caroline.  And Sarah's here - the one I
mentioned to you as having something the matter with her spine, you
know.  Immensely better! And the two youngest that Sophy educated
are with us.  And Louisa's here.'

'Indeed!' cried I.

'Yes,' said Traddles.  'Now the whole set - I mean the chambers -
is only three rooms; but Sophy arranges for the girls in the most
wonderful way, and they sleep as comfortably as possible.  Three in
that room,' said Traddles, pointing.  'Two in that.'

I could not help glancing round, in search of the accommodation
remaining for Mr. and Mrs. Traddles.  Traddles understood me.

'Well!' said Traddles, 'we are prepared to rough it, as I said just
now, and we did improvise a bed last week, upon the floor here. 
But there's a little room in the roof - a very nice room, when
you're up there - which Sophy papered herself, to surprise me; and
that's our room at present.  It's a capital little gipsy sort of
place.  There's quite a view from it.'

'And you are happily married at last, my dear Traddles!' said I. 
'How rejoiced I am!'

'Thank you, my dear Copperfield,' said Traddles, as we shook hands
once more.  'Yes, I am as happy as it's possible to be.  There's
your old friend, you see,' said Traddles, nodding triumphantly at
the flower-pot and stand; 'and there's the table with the marble
top! All the other furniture is plain and serviceable, you
perceive.  And as to plate, Lord bless you, we haven't so much as
a tea-spoon.'

'All to be earned?' said I, cheerfully.

'Exactly so,' replied Traddles, 'all to be earned.  Of course we
have something in the shape of tea-spoons, because we stir our tea. 
But they're Britannia metal."

'The silver will be the brighter when it comes,' said I.

'The very thing we say!' cried Traddles.  'You see, my dear
Copperfield,' falling again into the low confidential tone, 'after
I had delivered my argument in DOE dem.  JIPES versus WIGZIELL,
which did me great service with the profession, I went down into
Devonshire, and had some serious conversation in private with the
Reverend Horace.  I dwelt upon the fact that Sophy - who I do
assure you, Copperfield, is the dearest girl! -'

'I am certain she is!' said I.

'She is, indeed!' rejoined Traddles.  'But I am afraid I am
wandering from the subject.  Did I mention the Reverend Horace?'

'You said that you dwelt upon the fact -'

'True! Upon the fact that Sophy and I had been engaged for a long
period, and that Sophy, with the permission of her parents, was
more than content to take me - in short,' said Traddles, with his
old frank smile, 'on our present Britannia-metal footing.  Very
well.  I then proposed to the Reverend Horace - who is a most
excellent clergyman, Copperfield, and ought to be a Bishop; or at
least ought to have enough to live upon, without pinching himself
- that if I could turn the corner, say of two hundred and fifty
pounds, in one year; and could see my way pretty clearly to that,
or something better, next year; and could plainly furnish a little
place like this, besides; then, and in that case, Sophy and I
should be united.  I took the liberty of representing that we had
been patient for a good many years; and that the circumstance of
Sophy's being extraordinarily useful at home, ought not to operate
with her affectionate parents, against her establishment in life -
don't you see?'

'Certainly it ought not,' said I.

'I am glad you think so, Copperfield,' rejoined Traddles, 'because,
without any imputation on the Reverend Horace, I do think parents,
and brothers, and so forth, are sometimes rather selfish in such
cases.  Well! I also pointed out, that my most earnest desire was,
to be useful to the family; and that if I got on in the world, and
anything should happen to him - I refer to the Reverend Horace -'

'I understand,' said I.

'- Or to Mrs. Crewler - it would be the utmost gratification of my
wishes, to be a parent to the girls.  He replied in a most
admirable manner, exceedingly flattering to my feelings, and
undertook to obtain the consent of Mrs. Crewler to this
arrangement.  They had a dreadful time of it with her.  It mounted
from her legs into her chest, and then into her head -'

'What mounted?' I asked.

'Her grief,' replied Traddles, with a serious look.  'Her feelings
generally.  As I mentioned on a former occasion, she is a very
superior woman, but has lost the use of her limbs.  Whatever occurs
to harass her, usually settles in her legs; but on this occasion it
mounted to the chest, and then to the head, and, in short, pervaded
the whole system in a most alarming manner.  However, they brought
her through it by unremitting and affectionate attention; and we
were married yesterday six weeks.  You have no idea what a Monster
I felt, Copperfield, when I saw the whole family crying and
fainting away in every direction! Mrs. Crewler couldn't see me
before we left - couldn't forgive me, then, for depriving her of
her child - but she is a good creature, and has done so since.  I
had a delightful letter from her, only this morning.'

'And in short, my dear friend,' said I, 'you feel as blest as you
deserve to feel!'

'Oh! That's your partiality!' laughed Traddles.  'But, indeed, I am
in a most enviable state.  I work hard, and read Law insatiably. 
I get up at five every morning, and don't mind it at all.  I hide
the girls in the daytime, and make merry with them in the evening. 
And I assure you I am quite sorry that they are going home on
Tuesday, which is the day before the first day of Michaelmas Term. 
But here,' said Traddles, breaking off in his confidence, and
speaking aloud, 'ARE the girls! Mr. Copperfield, Miss Crewler -
Miss Sarah - Miss Louisa - Margaret and Lucy!'

They were a perfect nest of roses; they looked so wholesome and
fresh.  They were all pretty, and Miss Caroline was very handsome;
but there was a loving, cheerful, fireside quality in Sophy's
bright looks, which was better than that, and which assured me that
my friend had chosen well.  We all sat round the fire; while the
sharp boy, who I now divined had lost his breath in putting the
papers out, cleared them away again, and produced the tea-things. 
After that, he retired for the night, shutting the outer door upon
us with a bang.  Mrs. Traddles, with perfect pleasure and composure
beaming from her household eyes, having made the tea, then quietly
made the toast as she sat in a corner by the fire.

She had seen Agnes, she told me while she was toasting.  'Tom' had
taken her down into Kent for a wedding trip, and there she had seen
my aunt, too; and both my aunt and Agnes were well, and they had
all talked of nothing but me.  'Tom' had never had me out of his
thoughts, she really believed, all the time I had been away.  'Tom'
was the authority for everything.  'Tom' was evidently the idol of
her life; never to be shaken on his pedestal by any commotion;
always to be believed in, and done homage to with the whole faith
of her heart, come what might.

The deference which both she and Traddles showed towards the
Beauty, pleased me very much.  I don't know that I thought it very
reasonable; but I thought it very delightful, and essentially a
part of their character.  If Traddles ever for an instant missed
the tea-spoons that were still to be won, I have no doubt it was
when he handed the Beauty her tea.  If his sweet-tempered wife
could have got up any self-assertion against anyone, I am satisfied
it could only have been because she was the Beauty's sister.  A few
slight indications of a rather petted and capricious manner, which
I observed in the Beauty, were manifestly considered, by Traddles
and his wife, as her birthright and natural endowment.  If she had
been born a Queen Bee, and they labouring Bees, they could not have
been more satisfied of that.

But their self-forgetfulness charmed me.  Their pride in these
girls, and their submission of themselves to all their whims, was
the pleasantest little testimony to their own worth I could have
desired to see.  If Traddles were addressed as 'a darling', once in
the course of that evening; and besought to bring something here,
or carry something there, or take something up, or put something
down, or find something, or fetch something, he was so addressed,
by one or other of his sisters-in-law, at least twelve times in an
hour.  Neither could they do anything without Sophy.  Somebody's
hair fell down, and nobody but Sophy could put it up.  Somebody
forgot how a particular tune went, and nobody but Sophy could hum
that tune right.  Somebody wanted to recall the name of a place in
Devonshire, and only Sophy knew it.  Something was wanted to be
written home, and Sophy alone could be trusted to write before
breakfast in the morning.  Somebody broke down in a piece of
knitting, and no one but Sophy was able to put the defaulter in the
right direction.  They were entire mistresses of the place, and
Sophy and Traddles waited on them.  How many children Sophy could
have taken care of in her time, I can't imagine; but she seemed to
be famous for knowing every sort of song that ever was addressed to
a child in the English tongue; and she sang dozens to order with
the clearest little voice in the world, one after another (every
sister issuing directions for a different tune, and the Beauty
generally striking in last), so that I was quite fascinated.  The
best of all was, that, in the midst of their exactions, all the
sisters had a great tenderness and respect both for Sophy and
Traddles.  I am sure, when I took my leave, and Traddles was coming
out to walk with me to the coffee-house, I thought I had never seen
an obstinate head of hair, or any other head of hair, rolling about
in such a shower of kisses.

Altogether, it was a scene I could not help dwelling on with
pleasure, for a long time after I got back and had wished Traddles
good night.  If I had beheld a thousand roses blowing in a top set
of chambers, in that withered Gray's Inn, they could not have
brightened it half so much.  The idea of those Devonshire girls,
among the dry law-stationers and the attorneys' offices; and of the
tea and toast, and children's songs, in that grim atmosphere of
pounce and parchment, red-tape, dusty wafers, ink-jars, brief and
draft paper, law reports, writs, declarations, and bills of costs;
seemed almost as pleasantly fanciful as if I had dreamed that the
Sultan's famous family had been admitted on the roll of attorneys,
and had brought the talking bird, the singing tree, and the golden
water into Gray's Inn Hall.  Somehow, I found that I had taken
leave of Traddles for the night, and come back to the coffee-house,
with a great change in my despondency about him.  I began to think
he would get on, in spite of all the many orders of chief waiters
in England.

Drawing a chair before one of the coffee-room fires to think about
him at my leisure, I gradually fell from the consideration of his
happiness to tracing prospects in the live-coals, and to thinking,
as they broke and changed, of the principal vicissitudes and
separations that had marked my life.  I had not seen a coal fire,
since I had left England three years ago: though many a wood fire
had I watched, as it crumbled into hoary ashes, and mingled with
the feathery heap upon the hearth, which not inaptly figured to me,
in my despondency, my own dead hopes.

I could think of the past now, gravely, but not bitterly; and could
contemplate the future in a brave spirit.  Home, in its best sense,
was for me no more.  She in whom I might have inspired a dearer
love, I had taught to be my sister.  She would marry, and would
have new claimants on her tenderness; and in doing it, would never
know the love for her that had grown up in my heart.  It was right
that I should pay the forfeit of my headlong passion.  What I
reaped, I had sown.

I was thinking.  And had I truly disciplined my heart to this, and
could I resolutely bear it, and calmly hold the place in her home
which she had calmly held in mine, - when I found my eyes resting
on a countenance that might have arisen out of the fire, in its
association with my early remembrances.

Little Mr. Chillip the Doctor, to whose good offices I was indebted
in the very first chapter of this history, sat reading a newspaper
in the shadow of an opposite corner.  He was tolerably stricken in
years by this time; but, being a mild, meek, calm little man, had
worn so easily, that I thought he looked at that moment just as he
might have looked when he sat in our parlour, waiting for me to be
born.

Mr. Chillip had left Blunderstone six or seven years ago, and I had
never seen him since.  He sat placidly perusing the newspaper, with
his little head on one side, and a glass of warm sherry negus at
his elbow.  He was so extremely conciliatory in his manner that he
seemed to apologize to the very newspaper for taking the liberty of
reading it.

I walked up to where he was sitting, and said, 'How do you do, Mr.
Chillip?'

He was greatly fluttered by this unexpected address from a
stranger, and replied, in his slow way, 'I thank you, sir, you are
very good.  Thank you, sir.  I hope YOU are well.'

'You don't remember me?' said I.

'Well, sir,' returned Mr. Chillip, smiling very meekly, and shaking
his head as he surveyed me, 'I have a kind of an impression that
something in your countenance is familiar to me, sir; but I
couldn't lay my hand upon your name, really.'

'And yet you knew it, long before I knew it myself,' I returned.

'Did I indeed, sir?' said Mr. Chillip.  'Is it possible that I had
the honour, sir, of officiating when -?'

'Yes,' said I.

'Dear me!' cried Mr. Chillip.  'But no doubt you are a good deal
changed since then, sir?'

'Probably,' said I.

'Well, sir,' observed Mr. Chillip, 'I hope you'll excuse me, if I
am compelled to ask the favour of your name?'

On my telling him my name, he was really moved.  He quite shook
hands with me - which was a violent proceeding for him, his usual
course being to slide a tepid little fish-slice, an inch or two in
advance of his hip, and evince the greatest discomposure when
anybody grappled with it.  Even now, he put his hand in his
coat-pocket as soon as he could disengage it, and seemed relieved
when he had got it safe back.

'Dear me, sir!' said Mr. Chillip, surveying me with his head on one
side.  'And it's Mr. Copperfield, is it?  Well, sir, I think I
should have known you, if I had taken the liberty of looking more
closely at you.  There's a strong resemblance between you and your
poor father, sir.'

'I never had the happiness of seeing my father,' I observed.

'Very true, sir,' said Mr. Chillip, in a soothing tone.  'And very
much to be deplored it was, on all accounts! We are not ignorant,
sir,' said Mr. Chillip, slowly shaking his little head again, 'down
in our part of the country, of your fame.  There must be great
excitement here, sir,' said Mr. Chillip, tapping himself on the
forehead with his forefinger.  'You must find it a trying
occupation, sir!'

'What is your part of the country now?' I asked, seating myself
near him.

'I am established within a few miles of Bury St. Edmund's, sir,'
said Mr. Chillip.  'Mrs. Chillip, coming into a little property in
that neighbourhood, under her father's will, I bought a practice
down there, in which you will be glad to hear I am doing well.  My
daughter is growing quite a tall lass now, sir,' said Mr. Chillip,
giving his little head another little shake.  'Her mother let down
two tucks in her frocks only last week.  Such is time, you see,
sir!'

As the little man put his now empty glass to his lips, when he made
this reflection, I proposed to him to have it refilled, and I would
keep him company with another.  'Well, sir,' he returned, in his
slow way, 'it's more than I am accustomed to; but I can't deny
myself the pleasure of your conversation.  It seems but yesterday
that I had the honour of attending you in the measles.  You came
through them charmingly, sir!'

I acknowledged this compliment, and ordered the negus, which was
soon produced.  'Quite an uncommon dissipation!' said Mr. Chillip,
stirring it, 'but I can't resist so extraordinary an occasion.  You
have no family, sir?'

I shook my head.

'I was aware that you sustained a bereavement, sir, some time ago,'
said Mr. Chillip.  'I heard it from your father-in-law's sister. 
Very decided character there, sir?'

'Why, yes,' said I, 'decided enough.  Where did you see her, Mr.
Chillip?'

'Are you not aware, sir,' returned Mr. Chillip, with his placidest
smile, 'that your father-in-law is again a neighbour of mine?'

'No,' said I.

'He is indeed, sir!' said Mr. Chillip.  'Married a young lady of
that part, with a very good little property, poor thing.  - And
this action of the brain now, sir?  Don't you find it fatigue you?'
said Mr. Chillip, looking at me like an admiring Robin.

I waived that question, and returned to the Murdstones.  'I was
aware of his being married again.  Do you attend the family?' I
asked.

'Not regularly.  I have been called in,' he replied.  'Strong
phrenological developments of the organ of firmness, in Mr.
Murdstone and his sister, sir.'

I replied with such an expressive look, that Mr. Chillip was
emboldened by that, and the negus together, to give his head
several short shakes, and thoughtfully exclaim, 'Ah, dear me! We
remember old times, Mr. Copperfield!'

'And the brother and sister are pursuing their old course, are
they?' said I.

'Well, sir,' replied Mr. Chillip, 'a medical man, being so much in
families, ought to have neither eyes nor ears for anything but his
profession.  Still, I must say, they are very severe, sir: both as
to this life and the next.'

'The next will be regulated without much reference to them, I dare
say,' I returned: 'what are they doing as to this?'

Mr. Chillip shook his head, stirred his negus, and sipped it.

'She was a charming woman, sir!' he observed in a plaintive manner.

'The present Mrs. Murdstone?'

A charming woman indeed, sir,' said Mr. Chillip; 'as amiable, I am
sure, as it was possible to be! Mrs. Chillip's opinion is, that her
spirit has been entirely broken since her marriage, and that she is
all but melancholy mad.  And the ladies,' observed Mr. Chillip,
timorously, 'are great observers, sir.'

'I suppose she was to be subdued and broken to their detestable
mould, Heaven help her!' said I.  'And she has been.'

'Well, sir, there were violent quarrels at first, I assure you,'
said Mr. Chillip; 'but she is quite a shadow now.  Would it be
considered forward if I was to say to you, sir, in confidence, that
since the sister came to help, the brother and sister between them
have nearly reduced her to a state of imbecility?'

I told him I could easily believe it.

'I have no hesitation in saying,' said Mr. Chillip, fortifying
himself with another sip of negus, 'between you and me, sir, that
her mother died of it - or that tyranny, gloom, and worry have made
Mrs. Murdstone nearly imbecile.  She was a lively young woman, sir,
before marriage, and their gloom and austerity destroyed her.  They
go about with her, now, more like her keepers than her husband and
sister-in-law.  That was Mrs. Chillip's remark to me, only last
week.  And I assure you, sir, the ladies are great observers.  Mrs.
Chillip herself is a great observer!'

'Does he gloomily profess to be (I am ashamed to use the word in
such association) religious still?' I inquired.

'You anticipate, sir,' said Mr. Chillip, his eyelids getting quite
red with the unwonted stimulus in which he was indulging.  'One of
Mrs. Chillip's most impressive remarks.  Mrs. Chillip,' he
proceeded, in the calmest and slowest manner, 'quite electrified
me, by pointing out that Mr. Murdstone sets up an image of himself,
and calls it the Divine Nature.  You might have knocked me down on
the flat of my back, sir, with the feather of a pen, I assure you,
when Mrs. Chillip said so.  The ladies are great observers, sir?'

'Intuitively,' said I, to his extreme delight.

'I am very happy to receive such support in my opinion, sir,' he
rejoined.  'It is not often that I venture to give a non-medical
opinion, I assure you.  Mr. Murdstone delivers public addresses
sometimes, and it is said, - in short, sir, it is said by Mrs.
Chillip, - that the darker tyrant he has lately been, the more
ferocious is his doctrine.'

'I believe Mrs. Chillip to be perfectly right,' said I.

'Mrs. Chillip does go so far as to say,' pursued the meekest of
little men, much encouraged, 'that what such people miscall their
religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.  And do
you know I must say, sir,' he continued, mildly laying his head on
one side, 'that I DON'T find authority for Mr. and Miss Murdstone
in the New Testament?'

'I never found it either!' said I.

'In the meantime, sir,' said Mr. Chillip, 'they are much disliked;
and as they are very free in consigning everybody who dislikes them
to perdition, we really have a good deal of perdition going on in
our neighbourhood! However, as Mrs. Chillip says, sir, they undergo
a continual punishment; for they are turned inward, to feed upon
their own hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding.  Now,
sir, about that brain of yours, if you'll excuse my returning to
it.  Don't you expose it to a good deal of excitement, sir?'

I found it not difficult, in the excitement of Mr. Chillip's own
brain, under his potations of negus, to divert his attention from
this topic to his own affairs, on which, for the next half-hour, he
was quite loquacious; giving me to understand, among other pieces
of information, that he was then at the Gray's Inn Coffee-house to
lay his professional evidence before a Commission of Lunacy,
touching the state of mind of a patient who had become deranged
from excessive drinking.
'And I assure you, sir,' he said, 'I am extremely nervous on such
occasions.  I could not support being what is called Bullied, sir. 
It would quite unman me.  Do you know it was some time before I
recovered the conduct of that alarming lady, on the night of your
birth, Mr. Copperfield?'

I told him that I was going down to my aunt, the Dragon of that
night, early in the morning; and that she was one of the most
tender-hearted and excellent of women, as he would know full well
if he knew her better.  The mere notion of the possibility of his
ever seeing her again, appeared to terrify him.  He replied with a
small pale smile, 'Is she so, indeed, sir?  Really?' and almost
immediately called for a candle, and went to bed, as if he were not
quite safe anywhere else.  He did not actually stagger under the
negus; but I should think his placid little pulse must have made
two or three more beats in a minute, than it had done since the
great night of my aunt's disappointment, when she struck at him
with her bonnet.

Thoroughly tired, I went to bed too, at midnight; passed the next
day on the Dover coach; burst safe and sound into my aunt's old
parlour while she was at tea (she wore spectacles now); and was
received by her, and Mr. Dick, and dear old Peggotty, who acted as
housekeeper, with open arms and tears of joy.  My aunt was mightily
amused, when we began to talk composedly, by my account of my
meeting with Mr. Chillip, and of his holding her in such dread
remembrance; and both she and Peggotty had a great deal to say
about my poor mother's second husband, and 'that murdering woman of
a sister', - on whom I think no pain or penalty would have induced
my aunt to bestow any Christian or Proper Name, or any other
designation.

CHAPTER 60
AGNES

My aunt and I, when we were left alone, talked far into the night. 
How the emigrants never wrote home, otherwise than cheerfully and
hopefully; how Mr. Micawber had actually remitted divers small sums
of money, on account of those 'pecuniary liabilities', in reference
to which he had been so business-like as between man and man; how
Janet, returning into my aunt's service when she came back to
Dover, had finally carried out her renunciation of mankind by
entering into wedlock with a thriving tavern-keeper; and how my
aunt had finally set her seal on the same great principle, by
aiding and abetting the bride, and crowning the marriage-ceremony
with her presence; were among our topics - already more or less
familiar to me through the letters I had had.  Mr. Dick, as usual,
was not forgotten.  My aunt informed me how he incessantly occupied
himself in copying everything he could lay his hands on, and kept
King Charles the First at a respectful distance by that semblance
of employment; how it was one of the main joys and rewards of her
life that he was free and happy, instead of pining in monotonous
restraint; and how (as a novel general conclusion) nobody but she
could ever fully know what he was.

'And when, Trot,' said my aunt, patting the back of my hand, as we
sat in our old way before the fire, 'when are you going over to
Canterbury?'

'I shall get a horse, and ride over tomorrow morning, aunt, unless
you will go with me?'

'No!' said my aunt, in her short abrupt way.  'I mean to stay where
I am.'

Then, I should ride, I said.  I could not have come through
Canterbury today without stopping, if I had been coming to anyone
but her.

She was pleased, but answered, 'Tut, Trot; MY old bones would have
kept till tomorrow!' and softly patted my hand again, as I sat
looking thoughtfully at the fire.

Thoughtfully, for I could not be here once more, and so near Agnes,
without the revival of those regrets with which I had so long been
occupied.  Softened regrets they might be, teaching me what I had
failed to learn when my younger life was all before me, but not the
less regrets.  'Oh, Trot,' I seemed to hear my aunt say once more;
and I understood her better now - 'Blind, blind, blind!'

We both kept silence for some minutes.  When I raised my eyes, I
found that she was steadily observant of me.  Perhaps she had
followed the current of my mind; for it seemed to me an easy one to
track now, wilful as it had been once.

'You will find her father a white-haired old man,' said my aunt,
'though a better man in all other respects - a reclaimed man. 
Neither will you find him measuring all human interests, and joys,
and sorrows, with his one poor little inch-rule now.  Trust me,
child, such things must shrink very much, before they can be
measured off in that way.'

'Indeed they must,' said I.

'You will find her,' pursued my aunt, 'as good, as beautiful, as
earnest, as disinterested, as she has always been.  If I knew
higher praise, Trot, I would bestow it on her.'

There was no higher praise for her; no higher reproach for me.  Oh,
how had I strayed so far away!

'If she trains the young girls whom she has about her, to be like
herself,' said my aunt, earnest even to the filling of her eyes
with tears, 'Heaven knows, her life will be well employed! Useful
and happy, as she said that day! How could she be otherwise than
useful and happy!'

'Has Agnes any -' I was thinking aloud, rather than speaking.

'Well?  Hey?  Any what?' said my aunt, sharply.

'Any lover,' said I.

'A score,' cried my aunt, with a kind of indignant pride.  'She
might have married twenty times, my dear, since you have been
gone!'

'No doubt,' said I.  'No doubt.  But has she any lover who is
worthy of her?  Agnes could care for no other.'

My aunt sat musing for a little while, with her chin upon her hand. 
Slowly raising her eyes to mine, she said:

'I suspect she has an attachment, Trot.'

'A prosperous one?' said I.

'Trot,' returned my aunt gravely, 'I can't say.  I have no right to
tell you even so much.  She has never confided it to me, but I
suspect it.'

She looked so attentively and anxiously at me (I even saw her
tremble), that I felt now, more than ever, that she had followed my
late thoughts.  I summoned all the resolutions I had made, in all
those many days and nights, and all those many conflicts of my
heart.

'If it should be so,' I began, 'and I hope it is-'

'I don't know that it is,' said my aunt curtly.  'You must not be
ruled by my suspicions.  You must keep them secret.  They are very
slight, perhaps.  I have no right to speak.'

'If it should be so,' I repeated, 'Agnes will tell me at her own
good time.  A sister to whom I have confided so much, aunt, will
not be reluctant to confide in me.'

My aunt withdrew her eyes from mine, as slowly as she had turned
them upon me; and covered them thoughtfully with her hand.  By and
by she put her other hand on my shoulder; and so we both sat,
looking into the past, without saying another word, until we parted
for the night.

I rode away, early in the morning, for the scene of my old
school-days.  I cannot say that I was yet quite happy, in the hope
that I was gaining a victory over myself; even in the prospect of
so soon looking on her face again.

The well-remembered ground was soon traversed, and I came into the
quiet streets, where every stone was a boy's book to me.  I went on
foot to the old house, and went away with a heart too full to
enter.  I returned; and looking, as I passed, through the low
window of the turret-room where first Uriah Heep, and afterwards
Mr. Micawber, had been wont to sit, saw that it was a little
parlour now, and that there was no office.  Otherwise the staid old
house was, as to its cleanliness and order, still just as it had
been when I first saw it.  I requested the new maid who admitted
me, to tell Miss Wickfield that a gentleman who waited on her from
a friend abroad, was there; and I was shown up the grave old
staircase (cautioned of the steps I knew so well), into the
unchanged drawing-room.  The books that Agnes and I had read
together, were on their shelves; and the desk where I had laboured
at my lessons, many a night, stood yet at the same old corner of
the table.  All the little changes that had crept in when the Heeps
were there, were changed again.  Everything was as it used to be,
in the happy time.

I stood in a window, and looked across the ancient street at the
opposite houses, recalling how I had watched them on wet
afternoons, when I first came there; and how I had used to
speculate about the people who appeared at any of the windows, and
had followed them with my eyes up and down stairs, while women went
clicking along the pavement in pattens, and the dull rain fell in
slanting lines, and poured out of the water-spout yonder, and
flowed into the road.  The feeling with which I used to watch the
tramps, as they came into the town on those wet evenings, at dusk,
and limped past, with their bundles drooping over their shoulders
at the ends of sticks, came freshly back to me; fraught, as then,
with the smell of damp earth, and wet leaves and briar, and the
sensation of the very airs that blew upon me in my own toilsome
journey.

The opening of the little door in the panelled wall made me start
and turn.  Her beautiful serene eyes met mine as she came towards
me.  She stopped and laid her hand upon her bosom, and I caught her
in my arms.

'Agnes! my dear girl! I have come too suddenly upon you.'

'No, no! I am so rejoiced to see you, Trotwood!'

'Dear Agnes, the happiness it is to me, to see you once again!'

I folded her to my heart, and, for a little while, we were both
silent.  Presently we sat down, side by side; and her angel-face
was turned upon me with the welcome I had dreamed of, waking and
sleeping, for whole years.

She was so true, she was so beautiful, she was so good, - I owed
her so much gratitude, she was so dear to me, that I could find no
utterance for what I felt.  I tried to bless her, tried to thank
her, tried to tell her (as I had often done in letters) what an
influence she had upon me; but all my efforts were in vain.  My
love and joy were dumb.

With her own sweet tranquillity, she calmed my agitation; led me
back to the time of our parting; spoke to me of Emily, whom she had
visited, in secret, many times; spoke to me tenderly of Dora's
grave.  With the unerring instinct of her noble heart, she touched
the chords of my memory so softly and harmoniously, that not one
jarred within me; I could listen to the sorrowful, distant music,
and desire to shrink from nothing it awoke.  How could I, when,
blended with it all, was her dear self, the better angel of my
life?

'And you, Agnes,' I said, by and by.  'Tell me of yourself.  You
have hardly ever told me of your own life, in all this lapse of
time!'

'What should I tell?' she answered, with her radiant smile.  'Papa
is well.  You see us here, quiet in our own home; our anxieties set
at rest, our home restored to us; and knowing that, dear Trotwood,
you know all.'

'All, Agnes?' said I.

She looked at me, with some fluttering wonder in her face.

'Is there nothing else, Sister?' I said.

Her colour, which had just now faded, returned, and faded again. 
She smiled; with a quiet sadness, I thought; and shook her head.

I had sought to lead her to what my aunt had hinted at; for,
sharply painful to me as it must be to receive that confidence, I
was to discipline my heart, and do my duty to her.  I saw, however,
that she was uneasy, and I let it pass.

'You have much to do, dear Agnes?'

'With my school?' said she, looking up again, in all her bright
composure.

'Yes.  It is laborious, is it not?'

'The labour is so pleasant,' she returned, 'that it is scarcely
grateful in me to call it by that name.'

'Nothing good is difficult to you,' said I.

Her colour came and went once more; and once more, as she bent her
head, I saw the same sad smile.

'You will wait and see papa,' said Agnes, cheerfully, 'and pass the
day with us?  Perhaps you will sleep in your own room?  We always
call it yours.'

I could not do that, having promised to ride back to my aunt's at
night; but I would pass the day there, joyfully.

'I must be a prisoner for a little while,' said Agnes, 'but here
are the old books, Trotwood, and the old music.'

'Even the old flowers are here,' said I, looking round; 'or the old
kinds.'

'I have found a pleasure,' returned Agnes, smiling, 'while you have
been absent, in keeping everything as it used to be when we were
children.  For we were very happy then, I think.'

'Heaven knows we were!' said I.

'And every little thing that has reminded me of my brother,' said
Agnes, with her cordial eyes turned cheerfully upon me, 'has been
a welcome companion.  Even this,' showing me the basket-trifle,
full of keys, still hanging at her side, 'seems to jingle a kind of
old tune!'

She smiled again, and went out at the door by which she had come.

It was for me to guard this sisterly affection with religious care. 
It was all that I had left myself, and it was a treasure.  If I
once shook the foundations of the sacred confidence and usage, in
virtue of which it was given to me, it was lost, and could never be
recovered.  I set this steadily before myself.  The better I loved
her, the more it behoved me never to forget it.

I walked through the streets; and, once more seeing my old
adversary the butcher - now a constable, with his staff hanging up
in the shop - went down to look at the place where I had fought
him; and there meditated on Miss Shepherd and the eldest Miss
Larkins, and all the idle loves and likings, and dislikings, of
that time.  Nothing seemed to have survived that time but Agnes;
and she, ever a star above me, was brighter and higher.

When I returned, Mr. Wickfield had come home, from a garden he had,
a couple of miles or so out of town, where he now employed himself
almost every day.  I found him as my aunt had described him.  We
sat down to dinner, with some half-dozen little girls; and he
seemed but the shadow of his handsome picture on the wall.

The tranquillity and peace belonging, of old, to that quiet ground
in my memory, pervaded it again.  When dinner was done, Mr.
Wickfield taking no wine, and I desiring none, we went up-stairs;
where Agnes and her little charges sang and played, and worked. 
After tea the children left us; and we three sat together, talking
of the bygone days.

'My part in them,' said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his white head, 'has
much matter for regret - for deep regret, and deep contrition,
Trotwood, you well know.  But I would not cancel it, if it were in
my power.'

I could readily believe that, looking at the face beside him.

'I should cancel with it,' he pursued, 'such patience and devotion,
such fidelity, such a child's love, as I must not forget, no! even
to forget myself.'

'I understand you, sir,' I softly said.  'I hold it - I have always
held it - in veneration.'

'But no one knows, not even you,' he returned, 'how much she has
done, how much she has undergone, how hard she has striven.  Dear
Agnes!'

She had put her hand entreatingly on his arm, to stop him; and was
very, very pale.

'Well, well!' he said with a sigh, dismissing, as I then saw, some
trial she had borne, or was yet to bear, in connexion with what my
aunt had told me.  'Well! I have never told you, Trotwood, of her
mother.  Has anyone?'

'Never, sir.'

'It's not much - though it was much to suffer.  She married me in
opposition to her father's wish, and he renounced her.  She prayed
him to forgive her, before my Agnes came into this world.  He was
a very hard man, and her mother had long been dead.  He repulsed
her.  He broke her heart.'

Agnes leaned upon his shoulder, and stole her arm about his neck.

'She had an affectionate and gentle heart,' he said; 'and it was
broken.  I knew its tender nature very well.  No one could, if I
did not.  She loved me dearly, but was never happy.  She was always
labouring, in secret, under this distress; and being delicate and
downcast at the time of his last repulse - for it was not the
first, by many - pined away and died.  She left me Agnes, two weeks
old; and the grey hair that you recollect me with, when you first
came.'  He kissed Agnes on her cheek.

'My love for my dear child was a diseased love, but my mind was all
unhealthy then.  I say no more of that.  I am not speaking of
myself, Trotwood, but of her mother, and of her.  If I give you any
clue to what I am, or to what I have been, you will unravel it, I
know.  What Agnes is, I need not say.  I have always read something
of her poor mother's story, in her character; and so I tell it you
tonight, when we three are again together, after such great
changes.  I have told it all.'

His bowed head, and her angel-face and filial duty, derived a more
pathetic meaning from it than they had had before.  If I had wanted
anything by which to mark this night of our re-union, I should have
found it in this.

Agnes rose up from her father's side, before long; and going softly
to her piano, played some of the old airs to which we had often
listened in that place.

'Have you any intention of going away again?' Agnes asked me, as I
was standing by.

'What does my sister say to that?'

'I hope not.'

'Then I have no such intention, Agnes.'

'I think you ought not, Trotwood, since you ask me,' she said,
mildly.  'Your growing reputation and success enlarge your power of
doing good; and if I could spare my brother,' with her eyes upon
me, 'perhaps the time could not.'

'What I am, you have made me, Agnes.  You should know best.'

'I made you, Trotwood?'

'Yes! Agnes, my dear girl!' I said, bending over her.  'I tried to
tell you, when we met today, something that has been in my thoughts
since Dora died.  You remember, when you came down to me in our
little room - pointing upward, Agnes?'

'Oh, Trotwood!' she returned, her eyes filled with tears.  'So
loving, so confiding, and so young! Can I ever forget?'

'As you were then, my sister, I have often thought since, you have
ever been to me.  Ever pointing upward, Agnes; ever leading me to
something better; ever directing me to higher things!'

She only shook her head; through her tears I saw the same sad quiet
smile.

'And I am so grateful to you for it, Agnes, so bound to you, that
there is no name for the affection of my heart.  I want you to
know, yet don't know how to tell you, that all my life long I shall
look up to you, and be guided by you, as I have been through the
darkness that is past.  Whatever betides, whatever new ties you may
form, whatever changes may come between us, I shall always look to
you, and love you, as I do now, and have always done.  You will
always be my solace and resource, as you have always been.  Until
I die, my dearest sister, I shall see you always before me,
pointing upward!'

She put her hand in mine, and told me she was proud of me, and of
what I said; although I praised her very far beyond her worth. 
Then she went on softly playing, but without removing her eyes from
me.
'Do you know, what I have heard tonight, Agnes,' said I, strangely
seems to be a part of the feeling with which I regarded you when I
saw you first - with which I sat beside you in my rough
school-days?'

'You knew I had no mother,' she replied with a smile, 'and felt
kindly towards me.'

'More than that, Agnes, I knew, almost as if I had known this
story, that there was something inexplicably gentle and softened,
surrounding you; something that might have been sorrowful in
someone else (as I can now understand it was), but was not so in
you.'

She softly played on, looking at me still.

'Will you laugh at my cherishing such fancies, Agnes?'

'No!'

'Or at my saying that I really believe I felt, even then, that you
could be faithfully affectionate against all discouragement, and
never cease to be so, until you ceased to live?  - Will you laugh
at such a dream?'

'Oh, no! Oh, no!'

For an instant, a distressful shadow crossed her face; but, even in
the start it gave me, it was gone; and she was playing on, and
looking at me with her own calm smile.

As I rode back in the lonely night, the wind going by me like a
restless memory, I thought of this, and feared she was not happy. 
I was not happy; but, thus far, I had faithfully set the seal upon
the Past, and, thinking of her, pointing upward, thought of her as
pointing to that sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I
might yet love her with a love unknown on earth, and tell her what
the strife had been within me when I loved her here.

CHAPTER 61
I AM SHOWN TWO INTERESTING PENITENTS

For a time - at all events until my book should be completed, which
would be the work of several months - I took up my abode in my
aunt's house at Dover; and there, sitting in the window from which
I had looked out at the moon upon the sea, when that roof first
gave me shelter, I quietly pursued my task.

In pursuance of my intention of referring to my own fictions only
when their course should incidentally connect itself with the
progress of my story, I do not enter on the aspirations, the
delights, anxieties, and triumphs of my art.  That I truly devoted
myself to it with my strongest earnestness, and bestowed upon it
every energy of my soul, I have already said.  If the books I have
written be of any worth, they will supply the rest.  I shall
otherwise have written to poor purpose, and the rest will be of
interest to no one.

Occasionally, I went to London; to lose myself in the swarm of life
there, or to consult with Traddles on some business point.  He had
managed for me, in my absence, with the soundest judgement; and my
worldly affairs were prospering.  As my notoriety began to bring
upon me an enormous quantity of letters from people of whom I had
no knowledge - chiefly about nothing, and extremely difficult to
answer - I agreed with Traddles to have my name painted up on his
door.  There, the devoted postman on that beat delivered bushels of
letters for me; and there, at intervals, I laboured through them,
like a Home Secretary of State without the salary.

Among this correspondence, there dropped in, every now and then, an
obliging proposal from one of the numerous outsiders always lurking
about the Commons, to practise under cover of my name (if I would
take the necessary steps remaining to make a proctor of myself),
and pay me a percentage on the profits.  But I declined these
offers; being already aware that there were plenty of such covert
practitioners in existence, and considering the Commons quite bad
enough, without my doing anything to make it worse.

The girls had gone home, when my name burst into bloom on
Traddles's door; and the sharp boy looked, all day, as if he had
never heard of Sophy, shut up in a back room, glancing down from
her work into a sooty little strip of garden with a pump in it. 
But there I always found her, the same bright housewife; often
humming her Devonshire ballads when no strange foot was coming up
the stairs, and blunting the sharp boy in his official closet with
melody.

I wondered, at first, why I so often found Sophy writing in a
copy-book; and why she always shut it up when I appeared, and
hurried it into the table-drawer.  But the secret soon came out. 
One day, Traddles (who had just come home through the drizzling
sleet from Court) took a paper out of his desk, and asked me what
I thought of that handwriting?

'Oh, DON'T, Tom!' cried Sophy, who was warming his slippers before
the fire.

'My dear,' returned Tom, in a delighted state, 'why not?  What do
you say to that writing, Copperfield?'

'It's extraordinarily legal and formal,' said I.  'I don't think I
ever saw such a stiff hand.'

'Not like a lady's hand, is it?' said Traddles.

'A lady's!' I repeated.  'Bricks and mortar are more like a lady's
hand!'

Traddles broke into a rapturous laugh, and informed me that it was
Sophy's writing; that Sophy had vowed and declared he would need a
copying-clerk soon, and she would be that clerk; that she had
acquired this hand from a pattern; and that she could throw off -
I forget how many folios an hour.  Sophy was very much confused by
my being told all this, and said that when 'Tom' was made a judge
he wouldn't be so ready to proclaim it.  Which 'Tom' denied;
averring that he should always be equally proud of it, under all
circumstances.

'What a thoroughly good and charming wife she is, my dear
Traddles!' said I, when she had gone away, laughing.

'My dear Copperfield,' returned Traddles, 'she is, without any
exception, the dearest girl! The way she manages this place; her
punctuality, domestic knowledge, economy, and order; her
cheerfulness, Copperfield!'

'Indeed, you have reason to commend her!' I returned.  'You are a
happy fellow.  I believe you make yourselves, and each other, two
of the happiest people in the world.'

'I am sure we ARE two of the happiest people,' returned Traddles. 
'I admit that, at all events.  Bless my soul, when I see her
getting up by candle-light on these dark mornings, busying herself
in the day's arrangements, going out to market before the clerks
come into the Inn, caring for no weather, devising the most capital
little dinners out of the plainest materials, making puddings and
pies, keeping everything in its right place, always so neat and
ornamental herself, sitting up at night with me if it's ever so
late, sweet-tempered and encouraging always, and all for me, I
positively sometimes can't believe it, Copperfield!'

He was tender of the very slippers she had been warming, as he put
them on, and stretched his feet enjoyingly upon the fender.

'I positively sometimes can't believe it,' said Traddles.  'Then
our pleasures! Dear me, they are inexpensive, but they are quite
wonderful! When we are at home here, of an evening, and shut the
outer door, and draw those curtains - which she made - where could
we be more snug?  When it's fine, and we go out for a walk in the
evening, the streets abound in enjoyment for us.  We look into the
glittering windows of the jewellers' shops; and I show Sophy which
of the diamond-eyed serpents, coiled up on white satin rising
grounds, I would give her if I could afford it; and Sophy shows me
which of the gold watches that are capped and jewelled and
engine-turned, and possessed of the horizontal lever-
escape-movement, and all sorts of things, she would buy for me if
she could afford it; and we pick out the spoons and forks,
fish-slices, butter-knives, and sugar-tongs, we should both prefer
if we could both afford it; and really we go away as if we had got
them! Then, when we stroll into the squares, and great streets, and
see a house to let, sometimes we look up at it, and say, how would
THAT do, if I was made a judge?  And we parcel it out - such a room
for us, such rooms for the girls, and so forth; until we settle to
our satisfaction that it would do, or it wouldn't do, as the case
may be.  Sometimes, we go at half-price to the pit of the theatre
- the very smell of which is cheap, in my opinion, at the money -
and there we thoroughly enjoy the play: which Sophy believes every
word of, and so do I.  In walking home, perhaps we buy a little bit
of something at a cook's-shop, or a little lobster at the
fishmongers, and bring it here, and make a splendid supper,
chatting about what we have seen.  Now, you know, Copperfield, if
I was Lord Chancellor, we couldn't do this!'

'You would do something, whatever you were, my dear Traddles,'
thought I, 'that would be pleasant and amiable.  And by the way,'
I said aloud, 'I suppose you never draw any skeletons now?'

'Really,' replied Traddles, laughing, and reddening, 'I can't
wholly deny that I do, my dear Copperfield.  For being in one of
the back rows of the King's Bench the other day, with a pen in my
hand, the fancy came into my head to try how I had preserved that
accomplishment.  And I am afraid there's a skeleton - in a wig - on
the ledge of the desk.'

After we had both laughed heartily, Traddles wound up by looking
with a smile at the fire, and saying, in his forgiving way, 'Old
Creakle!'

'I have a letter from that old - Rascal here,' said I.  For I never
was less disposed to forgive him the way he used to batter
Traddles, than when I saw Traddles so ready to forgive him himself.

'From Creakle the schoolmaster?' exclaimed Traddles.  'No!'

'Among the persons who are attracted to me in my rising fame and
fortune,' said I, looking over my letters, 'and who discover that
they were always much attached to me, is the self-same Creakle.  He
is not a schoolmaster now, Traddles.  He is retired.  He is a
Middlesex Magistrate.'

I thought Traddles might be surprised to hear it, but he was not so
at all.

'How do you suppose he comes to be a Middlesex Magistrate?' said I.

'Oh dear me!' replied Traddles, 'it would be very difficult to
answer that question.  Perhaps he voted for somebody, or lent money
to somebody, or bought something of somebody, or otherwise obliged
somebody, or jobbed for somebody, who knew somebody who got the
lieutenant of the county to nominate him for the commission.'

'On the commission he is, at any rate,' said I.  'And he writes to
me here, that he will be glad to show me, in operation, the only
true system of prison discipline; the only unchallengeable way of
making sincere and lasting converts and penitents - which, you
know, is by solitary confinement.  What do you say?'

'To the system?' inquired Traddles, looking grave.

'No.  To my accepting the offer, and your going with me?'

'I don't object,' said Traddles.

'Then I'll write to say so.  You remember (to say nothing of our
treatment) this same Creakle turning his son out of doors, I
suppose, and the life he used to lead his wife and daughter?'

'Perfectly,' said Traddles.

'Yet, if you'll read his letter, you'll find he is the tenderest of
men to prisoners convicted of the whole calendar of felonies,' said
I; 'though I can't find that his tenderness extends to any other
class of created beings.'

Traddles shrugged his shoulders, and was not at all surprised.  I
had not expected him to be, and was not surprised myself; or my
observation of similar practical satires would have been but
scanty.  We arranged the time of our visit, and I wrote accordingly
to Mr. Creakle that evening.

On the appointed day - I think it was the next day, but no matter
- Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr. Creakle was
powerful.  It was an immense and solid building, erected at a vast
expense.  I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate,
what an uproar would have been made in the country, if any deluded
man had proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the
erection of an industrial school for the young, or a house of
refuge for the deserving old.

In an office that might have been on the ground-floor of the Tower
of Babel, it was so massively constructed, we were presented to our
old schoolmaster; who was one of a group, composed of two or three
of the busier sort of magistrates, and some visitors they had
brought.  He received me, like a man who had formed my mind in
bygone years, and had always loved me tenderly.  On my introducing
Traddles, Mr. Creakle expressed, in like manner, but in an inferior
degree, that he had always been Traddles's guide, philosopher, and
friend.  Our venerable instructor was a great deal older, and not
improved in appearance.  His face was as fiery as ever; his eyes
were as small, and rather deeper set.  The scanty, wet-looking grey
hair, by which I remembered him, was almost gone; and the thick
veins in his bald head were none the more agreeable to look at.

After some conversation among these gentlemen, from which I might
have supposed that there was nothing in the world to be
legitimately taken into account but the supreme comfort of
prisoners, at any expense, and nothing on the wide earth to be done
outside prison-doors, we began our inspection.  It being then just
dinner-time, we went, first into the great kitchen, where every
prisoner's dinner was in course of being set out separately (to be
handed to him in his cell), with the regularity and precision of
clock-work.  I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered whether it
occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast between
these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not to
say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk
of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five
hundred ever dined half so well.  But I learned that the 'system'
required high living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once
for all, I found that on that head and on all others, 'the system'
put an end to all doubts, and disposed of all anomalies.  Nobody
appeared to have the least idea that there was any other system,
but THE system, to be considered.

As we were going through some of the magnificent passages, I
inquired of Mr. Creakle and his friends what were supposed to be
the main advantages of this all-governing and universally
over-riding system?  I found them to be the perfect isolation of
prisoners - so that no one man in confinement there, knew anything
about another; and the reduction of prisoners to a wholesome state
of mind, leading to sincere contrition and repentance.

Now, it struck me, when we began to visit individuals in their
cells, and to traverse the passages in which those cells were, and
to have the manner of the going to chapel and so forth, explained
to us, that there was a strong probability of the prisoners knowing
a good deal about each other, and of their carrying on a pretty
complete system of intercourse.  This, at the time I write, has
been proved, I believe, to be the case; but, as it would have been
flat blasphemy against the system to have hinted such a doubt then,
I looked out for the penitence as diligently as I could.

And here again, I had great misgivings.  I found as prevalent a
fashion in the form of the penitence, as I had left outside in the
forms of the coats and waistcoats in the windows of the tailors'
shops.  I found a vast amount of profession, varying very little in
character: varying very little (which I thought exceedingly
suspicious), even in words.  I found a great many foxes,
disparaging whole vineyards of inaccessible grapes; but I found
very few foxes whom I would have trusted within reach of a bunch. 
Above all, I found that the most professing men were the greatest
objects of interest; and that their conceit, their vanity, their
want of excitement, and their love of deception (which many of them
possessed to an almost incredible extent, as their histories
showed), all prompted to these professions, and were all gratified
by them.

However, I heard so repeatedly, in the course of our goings to and
fro, of a certain Number Twenty Seven, who was the Favourite, and
who really appeared to be a Model Prisoner, that I resolved to
suspend my judgement until I should see Twenty Seven.  Twenty
Eight, I understood, was also a bright particular star; but it was
his misfortune to have his glory a little dimmed by the
extraordinary lustre of Twenty Seven.  I heard so much of Twenty
Seven, of his pious admonitions to everybody around him, and of the
beautiful letters he constantly wrote to his mother (whom he seemed
to consider in a very bad way), that I became quite impatient to
see him.

I had to restrain my impatience for some time, on account of Twenty
Seven being reserved for a concluding effect.  But, at last, we
came to the door of his cell; and Mr. Creakle, looking through a
little hole in it, reported to us, in a state of the greatest
admiration, that he was reading a Hymn Book.

There was such a rush of heads immediately, to see Number Twenty
Seven reading his Hymn Book, that the little hole was blocked up,
six or seven heads deep.  To remedy this inconvenience, and give us
an opportunity of conversing with Twenty Seven in all his purity,
Mr. Creakle directed the door of the cell to be unlocked, and
Twenty Seven to be invited out into the passage.  This was done;
and whom should Traddles and I then behold, to our amazement, in
this converted Number Twenty Seven, but Uriah Heep!

He knew us directly; and said, as he came out - with the old
writhe, -

'How do you do, Mr. Copperfield?  How do you do, Mr. Traddles?'

This recognition caused a general admiration in the party.  I
rather thought that everyone was struck by his not being proud, and
taking notice of us.

'Well, Twenty Seven,' said Mr. Creakle, mournfully admiring him. 
'How do you find yourself today?'

'I am very umble, sir!' replied Uriah Heep.

'You are always so, Twenty Seven,' said Mr. Creakle.

Here, another gentleman asked, with extreme anxiety: 'Are you quite
comfortable?'

'Yes, I thank you, sir!' said Uriah Heep, looking in that
direction.  'Far more comfortable here, than ever I was outside. 
I see my follies, now, sir.  That's what makes me comfortable.'

Several gentlemen were much affected; and a third questioner,
forcing himself to the front, inquired with extreme feeling: 'How
do you find the beef?'

'Thank you, sir,' replied Uriah, glancing in the new direction of
this voice, 'it was tougher yesterday than I could wish; but it's
my duty to bear.  I have committed follies, gentlemen,' said Uriah,
looking round with a meek smile, 'and I ought to bear the
consequences without repining.'
A murmur, partly of gratification at Twenty Seven's celestial state
of mind, and partly of indignation against the Contractor who had
given him any cause of complaint (a note of which was immediately
made by Mr. Creakle), having subsided, Twenty Seven stood in the
midst of us, as if he felt himself the principal object of merit in
a highly meritorious museum.  That we, the neophytes, might have an
excess of light shining upon us all at once, orders were given to
let out Twenty Eight.

I had been so much astonished already, that I only felt a kind of
resigned wonder when Mr. Littimer walked forth, reading a good
book!

'Twenty Eight,' said a gentleman in spectacles, who had not yet
spoken, 'you complained last week, my good fellow, of the cocoa. 
How has it been since?'

'I thank you, sir,' said Mr. Littimer, 'it has been better made. 
If I might take the liberty of saying so, sir, I don't think the
milk which is boiled with it is quite genuine; but I am aware, sir,
that there is a great adulteration of milk, in London, and that the
article in a pure state is difficult to be obtained.'

It appeared to me that the gentleman in spectacles backed his
Twenty Eight against Mr. Creakle's Twenty Seven, for each of them
took his own man in hand.

'What is your state of mind, Twenty Eight?' said the questioner in
spectacles.

'I thank you, sir,' returned Mr. Littimer; 'I see my follies now,
sir.  I am a good deal troubled when I think of the sins of my
former companions, sir; but I trust they may find forgiveness.'

'You are quite happy yourself?' said the questioner, nodding
encouragement.

'I am much obliged to you, sir,' returned Mr. Littimer.  'Perfectly
so.'

'Is there anything at all on your mind now?' said the questioner. 
'If so, mention it, Twenty Eight.'

'Sir,' said Mr. Littimer, without looking up, 'if my eyes have not
deceived me, there is a gentleman present who was acquainted with
me in my former life.  It may be profitable to that gentleman to
know, sir, that I attribute my past follies, entirely to having
lived a thoughtless life in the service of young men; and to having
allowed myself to be led by them into weaknesses, which I had not
the strength to resist.  I hope that gentleman will take warning,
sir, and will not be offended at my freedom.  It is for his good. 
I am conscious of my own past follies.  I hope he may repent of all
the wickedness and sin to which he has been a party.'

I observed that several gentlemen were shading their eyes, each
with one hand, as if they had just come into church.

'This does you credit, Twenty Eight,' returned the questioner.  'I
should have expected it of you.  Is there anything else?'

'Sir,' returned Mr. Littimer, slightly lifting up his eyebrows, but
not his eyes, 'there was a young woman who fell into dissolute
courses, that I endeavoured to save, sir, but could not rescue.  I
beg that gentleman, if he has it in his power, to inform that young
woman from me that I forgive her her bad conduct towards myself,
and that I call her to repentance - if he will be so good.'

'I have no doubt, Twenty Eight,' returned the questioner, 'that the
gentleman you refer to feels very strongly - as we all must - what
you have so properly said.  We will not detain you.'

'I thank you, sir,' said Mr. Littimer.  'Gentlemen, I wish you a
good day, and hoping you and your families will also see your
wickedness, and amend!'

With this, Number Twenty Eight retired, after a glance between him
and Uriah; as if they were not altogether unknown to each other,
through some medium of communication; and a murmur went round the
group, as his door shut upon him, that he was a most respectable
man, and a beautiful case.

'Now, Twenty Seven,' said Mr. Creakle, entering on a clear stage
with his man, 'is there anything that anyone can do for you?  If
so, mention it.'

'I would umbly ask, sir,' returned Uriah, with a jerk of his
malevolent head, 'for leave to write again to mother.'

'It shall certainly be granted,' said Mr. Creakle.

'Thank you, sir! I am anxious about mother.  I am afraid she ain't
safe.'

Somebody incautiously asked, what from?  But there was a
scandalized whisper of 'Hush!'

'Immortally safe, sir,' returned Uriah, writhing in the direction
of the voice.  'I should wish mother to be got into my state.  I
never should have been got into my present state if I hadn't come
here.  I wish mother had come here.  It would be better for
everybody, if they got took up, and was brought here.'

This sentiment gave unbounded satisfaction - greater satisfaction,
I think, than anything that had passed yet.

'Before I come here,' said Uriah, stealing a look at us, as if he
would have blighted the outer world to which we belonged, if he
could, 'I was given to follies; but now I am sensible of my
follies.  There's a deal of sin outside.  There's a deal of sin in
mother.  There's nothing but sin everywhere - except here.'

'You are quite changed?' said Mr. Creakle.

'Oh dear, yes, sir!' cried this hopeful penitent.

'You wouldn't relapse, if you were going out?' asked somebody else.

'Oh de-ar no, sir!'

'Well!' said Mr. Creakle, 'this is very gratifying.  You have
addressed Mr. Copperfield, Twenty Seven.  Do you wish to say
anything further to him?'

'You knew me, a long time before I came here and was changed, Mr.
Copperfield,' said Uriah, looking at me; and a more villainous look
I never saw, even on his visage.  'You knew me when, in spite of my
follies, I was umble among them that was proud, and meek among them
that was violent - you was violent to me yourself, Mr. Copperfield. 
Once, you struck me a blow in the face, you know.'

General commiseration.  Several indignant glances directed at me.

'But I forgive you, Mr. Copperfield,' said Uriah, making his
forgiving nature the subject of a most impious and awful parallel,
which I shall not record.  'I forgive everybody.  It would ill
become me to bear malice.  I freely forgive you, and I hope you'll
curb your passions in future.  I hope Mr. W. will repent, and Miss
W., and all of that sinful lot.  You've been visited with
affliction, and I hope it may do you good; but you'd better have
come here.  Mr. W. had better have come here, and Miss W. too.  The
best wish I could give you, Mr. Copperfield, and give all of you
gentlemen, is, that you could be took up and brought here.  When I
think of my past follies, and my present state, I am sure it would
be best for you.  I pity all who ain't brought here!'

He sneaked back into his cell, amidst a little chorus of
approbation; and both Traddles and I experienced a great relief
when he was locked in.

It was a characteristic feature in this repentance, that I was fain
to ask what these two men had done, to be there at all.  That
appeared to be the last thing about which they had anything to say. 
I addressed myself to one of the two warders, who, I suspected from
certain latent indications in their faces, knew pretty well what
all this stir was worth.

'Do you know,' said I, as we walked along the passage, 'what felony
was Number Twenty Seven's last "folly"?'

The answer was that it was a Bank case.

'A fraud on the Bank of England?' I asked.
'Yes, sir.  Fraud, forgery, and conspiracy.  He and some others. 
He set the others on.  It was a deep plot for a large sum. 
Sentence, transportation for life.  Twenty Seven was the knowingest
bird of the lot, and had very nearly kept himself safe; but not
quite.  The Bank was just able to put salt upon his tail - and only
just.'

'Do you know Twenty Eight's offence?'

'Twenty Eight,' returned my informant, speaking throughout in a low
tone, and looking over his shoulder as we walked along the passage,
to guard himself from being overheard, in such an unlawful
reference to these Immaculates, by Creakle and the rest; 'Twenty
Eight (also transportation) got a place, and robbed a young master
of a matter of two hundred and fifty pounds in money and valuables,
the night before they were going abroad.  I particularly recollect
his case, from his being took by a dwarf.'

'A what?'

'A little woman.  I have forgot her name?'

'Not Mowcher?'

'That's it! He had eluded pursuit, and was going to America in a
flaxen wig, and whiskers, and such a complete disguise as never you
see in all your born days; when the little woman, being in
Southampton, met him walking along the street - picked him out with
her sharp eye in a moment - ran betwixt his legs to upset him - and
held on to him like grim Death.'

'Excellent Miss Mowcher!' cried I.

'You'd have said so, if you had seen her, standing on a chair in
the witness-box at the trial, as I did,' said my friend.  'He cut
her face right open, and pounded her in the most brutal manner,
when she took him; but she never loosed her hold till he was locked
up.  She held so tight to him, in fact, that the officers were
obliged to take 'em both together.  She gave her evidence in the
gamest way, and was highly complimented by the Bench, and cheered
right home to her lodgings.  She said in Court that she'd have took
him single-handed (on account of what she knew concerning him), if
he had been Samson.  And it's my belief she would!'

It was mine too, and I highly respected Miss Mowcher for it.

We had now seen all there was to see.  It would have been in vain
to represent to such a man as the Worshipful Mr. Creakle, that
Twenty Seven and Twenty Eight were perfectly consistent and
unchanged; that exactly what they were then, they had always been;
that the hypocritical knaves were just the subjects to make that
sort of profession in such a place; that they knew its market-value
at least as well as we did, in the immediate service it would do
them when they were expatriated; in a word, that it was a rotten,
hollow, painfully suggestive piece of business altogether.  We left
them to their system and themselves, and went home wondering.

'Perhaps it's a good thing, Traddles,' said I, 'to have an unsound
Hobby ridden hard; for it's the sooner ridden to death.'

'I hope so,' replied Traddles.

CHAPTER 62
A LIGHT SHINES ON MY WAY

The year came round to Christmas-time, and I had been at home above
two months.  I had seen Agnes frequently.  However loud the general
voice might be in giving me encouragement, and however fervent the
emotions and endeavours to which it roused me, I heard her lightest
word of praise as I heard nothing else.

At least once a week, and sometimes oftener, I rode over there, and
passed the evening.  I usually rode back at night; for the old
unhappy sense was always hovering about me now - most sorrowfully
when I left her - and I was glad to be up and out, rather than
wandering over the past in weary wakefulness or miserable dreams. 
I wore away the longest part of many wild sad nights, in those
rides; reviving, as I went, the thoughts that had occupied me in my
long absence.

Or, if I were to say rather that I listened to the echoes of those
thoughts, I should better express the truth.  They spoke to me from
afar off.  I had put them at a distance, and accepted my inevitable
place.  When I read to Agnes what I wrote; when I saw her listening
face; moved her to smiles or tears; and heard her cordial voice so
earnest on the shadowy events of that imaginative world in which I
lived; I thought what a fate mine might have been - but only
thought so, as I had thought after I was married to Dora, what I
could have wished my wife to be.

My duty to Agnes, who loved me with a love, which, if I disquieted,
I wronged most selfishly and poorly, and could never restore; my
matured assurance that I, who had worked out my own destiny, and
won what I had impetuously set my heart on, had no right to murmur,
and must bear; comprised what I felt and what I had learned.  But
I loved her: and now it even became some consolation to me, vaguely
to conceive a distant day when I might blamelessly avow it; when
all this should be over; when I could say 'Agnes, so it was when I
came home; and now I am old, and I never have loved since!'

She did not once show me any change in herself.  What she always
had been to me, she still was; wholly unaltered.

Between my aunt and me there had been something, in this connexion,
since the night of my return, which I cannot call a restraint, or
an avoidance of the subject, so much as an implied understanding
that we thought of it together, but did not shape our thoughts into
words.  When, according to our old custom, we sat before the fire
at night, we often fell into this train; as naturally, and as
consciously to each other, as if we had unreservedly said so.  But
we preserved an unbroken silence.  I believed that she had read, or
partly read, my thoughts that night; and that she fully
comprehended why I gave mine no more distinct expression.

This Christmas-time being come, and Agnes having reposed no new
confidence in me, a doubt that had several times arisen in my mind
- whether she could have that perception of the true state of my
breast, which restrained her with the apprehension of giving me
pain - began to oppress me heavily.  If that were so, my sacrifice
was nothing; my plainest obligation to her unfulfilled; and every
poor action I had shrunk from, I was hourly doing.  I resolved to
set this right beyond all doubt; - if such a barrier were between
us, to break it down at once with a determined hand.

It was - what lasting reason have I to remember it! - a cold,
harsh, winter day.  There had been snow, some hours before; and it
lay, not deep, but hard-frozen on the ground.  Out at sea, beyond
my window, the wind blew ruggedly from the north.  I had been
thinking of it, sweeping over those mountain wastes of snow in
Switzerland, then inaccessible to any human foot; and had been
speculating which was the lonelier, those solitary regions, or a
deserted ocean.

'Riding today, Trot?' said my aunt, putting her head in at the
door.

'Yes,' said I, 'I am going over to Canterbury.  It's a good day for
a ride.'

'I hope your horse may think so too,' said my aunt; 'but at present
he is holding down his head and his ears, standing before the door
there, as if he thought his stable preferable.'

My aunt, I may observe, allowed my horse on the forbidden ground,
but had not at all relented towards the donkeys.

'He will be fresh enough, presently!' said I.

'The ride will do his master good, at all events,' observed my
aunt, glancing at the papers on my table.  'Ah, child, you pass a
good many hours here! I never thought, when I used to read books,
what work it was to write them.'

'It's work enough to read them, sometimes,' I returned.  'As to the
writing, it has its own charms, aunt.'

'Ah! I see!' said my aunt.  'Ambition, love of approbation,
sympathy, and much more, I suppose?  Well: go along with you!'

'Do you know anything more,' said I, standing composedly before her
- she had patted me on the shoulder, and sat down in my chair - 'of
that attachment of Agnes?'

She looked up in my face a little while, before replying:

'I think I do, Trot.'

'Are you confirmed in your impression?' I inquired.

'I think I am, Trot.'

She looked so steadfastly at me: with a kind of doubt, or pity, or
suspense in her affection: that I summoned the stronger
determination to show her a perfectly cheerful face.

'And what is more, Trot -' said my aunt.

'Yes!'

'I think Agnes is going to be married.'

'God bless her!' said I, cheerfully.

'God bless her!' said my aunt, 'and her husband too!'

I echoed it, parted from my aunt, and went lightly downstairs,
mounted, and rode away.  There was greater reason than before to do
what I had resolved to do.

How well I recollect the wintry ride! The frozen particles of ice,
brushed from the blades of grass by the wind, and borne across my
face; the hard clatter of the horse's hoofs, beating a tune upon
the ground; the stiff-tilled soil; the snowdrift, lightly eddying
in the chalk-pit as the breeze ruffled it; the smoking team with
the waggon of old hay, stopping to breathe on the hill-top, and
shaking their bells musically; the whitened slopes and sweeps of
Down-land lying against the dark sky, as if they were drawn on a
huge slate!

I found Agnes alone.  The little girls had gone to their own homes
now, and she was alone by the fire, reading.  She put down her book
on seeing me come in; and having welcomed me as usual, took her
work-basket and sat in one of the old-fashioned windows.

I sat beside her on the window-seat, and we talked of what I was
doing, and when it would be done, and of the progress I had made
since my last visit.  Agnes was very cheerful; and laughingly
predicted that I should soon become too famous to be talked to, on
such subjects.

'So I make the most of the present time, you see,' said Agnes, 'and
talk to you while I may.'

As I looked at her beautiful face, observant of her work, she
raised her mild clear eyes, and saw that I was looking at her.

'You are thoughtful today, Trotwood!'

'Agnes, shall I tell you what about?  I came to tell you.'

She put aside her work, as she was used to do when we were
seriously discussing anything; and gave me her whole attention.

'My dear Agnes, do you doubt my being true to you?'

'No!' she answered, with a look of astonishment.

'Do you doubt my being what I always have been to you?'

'No!' she answered, as before.

'Do you remember that I tried to tell you, when I came home, what
a debt of gratitude I owed you, dearest Agnes, and how fervently I
felt towards you?'

'I remember it,' she said, gently, 'very well.'

'You have a secret,' said I.  'Let me share it, Agnes.'

She cast down her eyes, and trembled.

'I could hardly fail to know, even if I had not heard - but from
other lips than yours, Agnes, which seems strange - that there is
someone upon whom you have bestowed the treasure of your love.  Do
not shut me out of what concerns your happiness so nearly! If you
can trust me, as you say you can, and as I know you may, let me be
your friend, your brother, in this matter, of all others!'

With an appealing, almost a reproachful, glance, she rose from the
window; and hurrying across the room as if without knowing where,
put her hands before her face, and burst into such tears as smote
me to the heart.

And yet they awakened something in me, bringing promise to my
heart.  Without my knowing why, these tears allied themselves with
the quietly sad smile which was so fixed in my remembrance, and
shook me more with hope than fear or sorrow.

'Agnes! Sister! Dearest! What have I done?'

'Let me go away, Trotwood.  I am not well.  I am not myself.  I
will speak to you by and by - another time.  I will write to you. 
Don't speak to me now.  Don't! don't!'

I sought to recollect what she had said, when I had spoken to her
on that former night, of her affection needing no return.  It
seemed a very world that I must search through in a moment.
'Agnes, I cannot bear to see you so, and think that I have been the
cause.  My dearest girl, dearer to me than anything in life, if you
are unhappy, let me share your unhappiness.  If you are in need of
help or counsel, let me try to give it to you.  If you have indeed
a burden on your heart, let me try to lighten it.  For whom do I
live now, Agnes, if it is not for you!'

'Oh, spare me! I am not myself! Another time!' was all I could
distinguish.

Was it a selfish error that was leading me away?  Or, having once
a clue to hope, was there something opening to me that I had not
dared to think of?

'I must say more.  I cannot let you leave me so! For Heaven's sake,
Agnes, let us not mistake each other after all these years, and all
that has come and gone with them! I must speak plainly.  If you
have any lingering thought that I could envy the happiness you will
confer; that I could not resign you to a dearer protector, of your
own choosing; that I could not, from my removed place, be a
contented witness of your joy; dismiss it, for I don't deserve it!
I have not suffered quite in vain.  You have not taught me quite in
vain.  There is no alloy of self in what I feel for you.'

She was quiet now.  In a little time, she turned her pale face
towards me, and said in a low voice, broken here and there, but
very clear:

'I owe it to your pure friendship for me, Trotwood - which, indeed,
I do not doubt - to tell you, you are mistaken.  I can do no more. 
If I have sometimes, in the course of years, wanted help and
counsel, they have come to me.  If I have sometimes been unhappy,
the feeling has passed away.  If I have ever had a burden on my
heart, it has been lightened for me.  If I have any secret, it is
- no new one; and is - not what you suppose.  I cannot reveal it,
or divide it.  It has long been mine, and must remain mine.'

'Agnes! Stay! A moment!'

She was going away, but I detained her.  I clasped my arm about her
waist.  'In the course of years!' 'It is not a new one!' New
thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the
colours of my life were changing.

'Dearest Agnes! Whom I so respect and honour - whom I so devotedly
love! When I came here today, I thought that nothing could have
wrested this confession from me.  I thought I could have kept it in
my bosom all our lives, till we were old.  But, Agnes, if I have
indeed any new-born hope that I may ever call you something more
than Sister, widely different from Sister! -'

Her tears fell fast; but they were not like those she had lately
shed, and I saw my hope brighten in them.

'Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more
mindful of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together,
I think my heedless fancy never would have wandered from you.  But
you were so much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish
hope and disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely
upon in everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the
time the first and greater one of loving you as I do!'

Still weeping, but not sadly - joyfully! And clasped in my arms as
she had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!

'When I loved Dora - fondly, Agnes, as you know -'

'Yes!' she cried, earnestly.  'I am glad to know it!'

'When I loved her - even then, my love would have been incomplete,
without your sympathy.  I had it, and it was perfected.  And when
I lost her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!'

Closer in my arms, nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my
shoulder, her sweet eyes shining through her tears, on mine!

'I went away, dear Agnes, loving you.  I stayed away, loving you. 
I returned home, loving you!'

And now, I tried to tell her of the struggle I had had, and the
conclusion I had come to.  I tried to lay my mind before her,
truly, and entirely.  I tried to show her how I had hoped I had
come into the better knowledge of myself and of her; how I had
resigned myself to what that better knowledge brought; and how I
had come there, even that day, in my fidelity to this.  If she did
so love me (I said) that she could take me for her husband, she
could do so, on no deserving of mine, except upon the truth of my
love for her, and the trouble in which it had ripened to be what it
was; and hence it was that I revealed it.  And O, Agnes, even out
of thy true eyes, in that same time, the spirit of my child-wife
looked upon me, saying it was well; and winning me, through thee,
to tenderest recollections of the Blossom that had withered in its
bloom!

'I am so blest, Trotwood - my heart is so overcharged - but there
is one thing I must say.'

'Dearest, what?'

She laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders, and looked calmly in
my face.

'Do you know, yet, what it is?'

'I am afraid to speculate on what it is.  Tell me, my dear.'

'I have loved you all my life!'

O, we were happy, we were happy! Our tears were not for the trials
(hers so much the greater) through which we had come to be thus,
but for the rapture of being thus, never to be divided more!

We walked, that winter evening, in the fields together; and the
blessed calm within us seemed to be partaken by the frosty air. 
The early stars began to shine while we were lingering on, and
looking up to them, we thanked our GOD for having guided us to this
tranquillity.

We stood together in the same old-fashioned window at night, when
the moon was shining; Agnes with her quiet eyes raised up to it; I
following her glance.  Long miles of road then opened out before my
mind; and, toiling on, I saw a ragged way-worn boy, forsaken and
neglected, who should come to call even the heart now beating
against mine, his own.

It was nearly dinner-time next day when we appeared before my aunt. 
She was up in my study, Peggotty said: which it was her pride to
keep in readiness and order for me.  We found her, in her
spectacles, sitting by the fire.

'Goodness me!' said my aunt, peering through the dusk, 'who's this
you're bringing home?'

'Agnes,' said I.

As we had arranged to say nothing at first, my aunt was not a
little discomfited.  She darted a hopeful glance at me, when I said
'Agnes'; but seeing that I looked as usual, she took off her
spectacles in despair, and rubbed her nose with them.

She greeted Agnes heartily, nevertheless; and we were soon in the
lighted parlour downstairs, at dinner.  My aunt put on her
spectacles twice or thrice, to take another look at me, but as
often took them off again, disappointed, and rubbed her nose with
them.  Much to the discomfiture of Mr. Dick, who knew this to be a
bad symptom.

'By the by, aunt,' said I, after dinner; 'I have been speaking to
Agnes about what you told me.'

'Then, Trot,' said my aunt, turning scarlet, 'you did wrong, and
broke your promise.'

'You are not angry, aunt, I trust?  I am sure you won't be, when
you learn that Agnes is not unhappy in any attachment.'

'Stuff and nonsense!' said my aunt.

As my aunt appeared to be annoyed, I thought the best way was to
cut her annoyance short.  I took Agnes in my arm to the back of her
chair, and we both leaned over her.  My aunt, with one clap of her
hands, and one look through her spectacles, immediately went into
hysterics, for the first and only time in all my knowledge of her.

The hysterics called up Peggotty.  The moment my aunt was restored,
she flew at Peggotty, and calling her a silly old creature, hugged
her with all her might.  After that, she hugged Mr. Dick (who was
highly honoured, but a good deal surprised); and after that, told
them why.  Then, we were all happy together.

I could not discover whether my aunt, in her last short
conversation with me, had fallen on a pious fraud, or had really
mistaken the state of my mind.  It was quite enough, she said, that
she had told me Agnes was going to be married; and that I now knew
better than anyone how true it was.

We were married within a fortnight.  Traddles and Sophy, and Doctor
and Mrs. Strong, were the only guests at our quiet wedding.  We
left them full of joy; and drove away together.  Clasped in my
embrace, I held the source of every worthy aspiration I had ever
had; the centre of myself, the circle of my life, my own, my wife;
my love of whom was founded on a rock!

'Dearest husband!' said Agnes.  'Now that I may call you by that
name, I have one thing more to tell you.'

'Let me hear it, love.'

'It grows out of the night when Dora died.  She sent you for me.'

'She did.'

'She told me that she left me something.  Can you think what it
was?'

I believed I could.  I drew the wife who had so long loved me,
closer to my side.

'She told me that she made a last request to me, and left me a last
charge.'

'And it was -'

'That only I would occupy this vacant place.'

And Agnes laid her head upon my breast, and wept; and I wept with
her, though we were so happy.

CHAPTER 63
A VISITOR

What I have purposed to record is nearly finished; but there is yet
an incident conspicuous in my memory, on which it often rests with
delight, and without which one thread in the web I have spun would
have a ravelled end.

I had advanced in fame and fortune, my domestic joy was perfect, I
had been married ten happy years.  Agnes and I were sitting by the
fire, in our house in London, one night in spring, and three of our
children were playing in the room, when I was told that a stranger
wished to see me.

He had been asked if he came on business, and had answered No; he
had come for the pleasure of seeing me, and had come a long way. 
He was an old man, my servant said, and looked like a farmer.

As this sounded mysterious to the children, and moreover was like
the beginning of a favourite story Agnes used to tell them,
introductory to the arrival of a wicked old Fairy in a cloak who
hated everybody, it produced some commotion.  One of our boys laid
his head in his mother's lap to be out of harm's way, and little
Agnes (our eldest child) left her doll in a chair to represent her,
and thrust out her little heap of golden curls from between the
window-curtains, to see what happened next.

'Let him come in here!' said I.

There soon appeared, pausing in the dark doorway as he entered, a
hale, grey-haired old man.  Little Agnes, attracted by his looks,
had run to bring him in, and I had not yet clearly seen his face,
when my wife, starting up, cried out to me, in a pleased and
agitated voice, that it was Mr. Peggotty!

It WAS Mr. Peggotty.  An old man now, but in a ruddy, hearty,
strong old age.  When our first emotion was over, and he sat before
the fire with the children on his knees, and the blaze shining on
his face, he looked, to me, as vigorous and robust, withal as
handsome, an old man, as ever I had seen.

'Mas'r Davy,' said he.  And the old name in the old tone fell so
naturally on my ear! 'Mas'r Davy, 'tis a joyful hour as I see you,
once more, 'long with your own trew wife!'

'A joyful hour indeed, old friend!' cried I.

'And these heer pretty ones,' said Mr. Peggotty.  'To look at these
heer flowers! Why, Mas'r Davy, you was but the heighth of the
littlest of these, when I first see you! When Em'ly warn't no
bigger, and our poor lad were BUT a lad!'

'Time has changed me more than it has changed you since then,' said
I.  'But let these dear rogues go to bed; and as no house in
England but this must hold you, tell me where to send for your
luggage (is the old black bag among it, that went so far, I
wonder!), and then, over a glass of Yarmouth grog, we will have the
tidings of ten years!'

'Are you alone?' asked Agnes.

'Yes, ma'am,' he said, kissing her hand, 'quite alone.'

We sat him between us, not knowing how to give him welcome enough;
and as I began to listen to his old familiar voice, I could have
fancied he was still pursuing his long journey in search of his
darling niece.

'It's a mort of water,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'fur to come across, and
on'y stay a matter of fower weeks.  But water ('specially when 'tis
salt) comes nat'ral to me; and friends is dear, and I am heer.  -
Which is verse,' said Mr. Peggotty, surprised to find it out,
'though I hadn't such intentions.'

'Are you going back those many thousand miles, so soon?' asked
Agnes.

'Yes, ma'am,' he returned.  'I giv the promise to Em'ly, afore I
come away.  You see, I doen't grow younger as the years comes
round, and if I hadn't sailed as 'twas, most like I shouldn't never
have done 't.  And it's allus been on my mind, as I must come and
see Mas'r Davy and your own sweet blooming self, in your wedded
happiness, afore I got to be too old.'

He looked at us, as if he could never feast his eyes on us
sufficiently.  Agnes laughingly put back some scattered locks of
his grey hair, that he might see us better.

'And now tell us,' said I, 'everything relating to your fortunes.'

'Our fortuns, Mas'r Davy,' he rejoined, 'is soon told.  We haven't
fared nohows, but fared to thrive.  We've allus thrived.  We've
worked as we ought to 't, and maybe we lived a leetle hard at first
or so, but we have allus thrived.  What with sheep-farming, and
what with stock-farming, and what with one thing and what with
t'other, we are as well to do, as well could be.  Theer's been
kiender a blessing fell upon us,' said Mr. Peggotty, reverentially
inclining his head, 'and we've done nowt but prosper.  That is, in
the long run.  If not yesterday, why then today.  If not today, why
then tomorrow.'

'And Emily?' said Agnes and I, both together.

'Em'ly,' said he, 'arter you left her, ma'am - and I never heerd
her saying of her prayers at night, t'other side the canvas screen,
when we was settled in the Bush, but what I heerd your name - and
arter she and me lost sight of Mas'r Davy, that theer shining
sundown - was that low, at first, that, if she had know'd then what
Mas'r Davy kep from us so kind and thowtful, 'tis my opinion she'd
have drooped away.  But theer was some poor folks aboard as had
illness among 'em, and she took care of them; and theer was the
children in our company, and she took care of them; and so she got
to be busy, and to be doing good, and that helped her.'

'When did she first hear of it?' I asked.

'I kep it from her arter I heerd on 't,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'going
on nigh a year.  We was living then in a solitary place, but among
the beautifullest trees, and with the roses a-covering our Beein to
the roof.  Theer come along one day, when I was out a-working on
the land, a traveller from our own Norfolk or Suffolk in England (I
doen't rightly mind which), and of course we took him in, and giv
him to eat and drink, and made him welcome.  We all do that, all
the colony over.  He'd got an old newspaper with him, and some
other account in print of the storm.  That's how she know'd it. 
When I came home at night, I found she know'd it.'

He dropped his voice as he said these words, and the gravity I so
well remembered overspread his face.

'Did it change her much?' we asked.

'Aye, for a good long time,' he said, shaking his head; 'if not to
this present hour.  But I think the solitoode done her good.  And
she had a deal to mind in the way of poultry and the like, and
minded of it, and come through.  I wonder,' he said thoughtfully,
'if you could see my Em'ly now, Mas'r Davy, whether you'd know
her!'

'Is she so altered?' I inquired.

'I doen't know.  I see her ev'ry day, and doen't know; But,
odd-times, I have thowt so.  A slight figure,' said Mr. Peggotty,
looking at the fire, 'kiender worn; soft, sorrowful, blue eyes; a
delicate face; a pritty head, leaning a little down; a quiet voice
and way - timid a'most.  That's Em'ly!'

We silently observed him as he sat, still looking at the fire.

'Some thinks,' he said, 'as her affection was ill-bestowed; some,
as her marriage was broken off by death.  No one knows how 'tis. 
She might have married well, a mort of times, "but, uncle," she
says to me, "that's gone for ever." Cheerful along with me; retired
when others is by; fond of going any distance fur to teach a child,
or fur to tend a sick person, or fur to do some kindness tow'rds a
young girl's wedding (and she's done a many, but has never seen
one); fondly loving of her uncle; patient; liked by young and old;
sowt out by all that has any trouble.  That's Em'ly!'

He drew his hand across his face, and with a half-suppressed sigh
looked up from the fire.

'Is Martha with you yet?' I asked.

'Martha,' he replied, 'got married, Mas'r Davy, in the second year. 
A young man, a farm-labourer, as come by us on his way to market
with his mas'r's drays - a journey of over five hundred mile, theer
and back - made offers fur to take her fur his wife (wives is very
scarce theer), and then to set up fur their two selves in the Bush. 
She spoke to me fur to tell him her trew story.  I did.  They was
married, and they live fower hundred mile away from any voices but
their own and the singing birds.'

'Mrs. Gummidge?' I suggested.

It was a pleasant key to touch, for Mr. Peggotty suddenly burst
into a roar of laughter, and rubbed his hands up and down his legs,
as he had been accustomed to do when he enjoyed himself in the
long-shipwrecked boat.

'Would you believe it!' he said.  'Why, someun even made offer fur
to marry her! If a ship's cook that was turning settler, Mas'r
Davy, didn't make offers fur to marry Missis Gummidge, I'm Gormed
- and I can't say no fairer than that!'

I never saw Agnes laugh so.  This sudden ecstasy on the part of Mr.
Peggotty was so delightful to her, that she could not leave off
laughing; and the more she laughed the more she made me laugh, and
the greater Mr. Peggotty's ecstasy became, and the more he rubbed
his legs.

'And what did Mrs. Gummidge say?' I asked, when I was grave enough.

'If you'll believe me,' returned Mr. Peggotty, 'Missis Gummidge,
'stead of saying "thank you, I'm much obleeged to you, I ain't
a-going fur to change my condition at my time of life," up'd with
a bucket as was standing by, and laid it over that theer ship's
cook's head 'till he sung out fur help, and I went in and reskied
of him.'

Mr. Peggotty burst into a great roar of laughter, and Agnes and I
both kept him company.

'But I must say this, for the good creetur,' he resumed, wiping his
face, when we were quite exhausted; 'she has been all she said
she'd be to us, and more.  She's the willingest, the trewest, the
honestest-helping woman, Mas'r Davy, as ever draw'd the breath of
life.  I have never know'd her to be lone and lorn, for a single
minute, not even when the colony was all afore us, and we was new
to it.  And thinking of the old 'un is a thing she never done, I do
assure you, since she left England!'

'Now, last, not least, Mr. Micawber,' said I.  'He has paid off
every obligation he incurred here - even to Traddles's bill, you
remember my dear Agnes - and therefore we may take it for granted
that he is doing well.  But what is the latest news of him?'

Mr. Peggotty, with a smile, put his hand in his breast-pocket, and
produced a flat-folded, paper parcel, from which he took out, with
much care, a little odd-looking newspaper.

'You are to understan', Mas'r Davy,' said he, 'as we have left the
Bush now, being so well to do; and have gone right away round to
Port Middlebay Harbour, wheer theer's what we call a town.'

'Mr. Micawber was in the Bush near you?' said I.

'Bless you, yes,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'and turned to with a will. 
I never wish to meet a better gen'l'man for turning to with a will. 
I've seen that theer bald head of his a perspiring in the sun,
Mas'r Davy, till I a'most thowt it would have melted away.  And now
he's a Magistrate.'

'A Magistrate, eh?' said I.

Mr. Peggotty pointed to a certain paragraph in the newspaper, where
I read aloud as follows, from the Port Middlebay Times:

'The public dinner to our distinguished fellow-colonist and
townsman, WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, Port Middlebay District
Magistrate, came off yesterday in the large room of the Hotel,
which was crowded to suffocation.  It is estimated that not fewer
than forty-seven persons must have been accommodated with dinner at
one time, exclusive of the company in the passage and on the
stairs.  The beauty, fashion, and exclusiveness of Port Middlebay,
flocked to do honour to one so deservedly esteemed, so highly
talented, and so widely popular.  Doctor Mell (of Colonial
Salem-House Grammar School, Port Middlebay) presided, and on his
right sat the distinguished guest.  After the removal of the cloth,
and the singing of Non Nobis (beautifully executed, and in which we
were at no loss to distinguish the bell-like notes of that gifted
amateur, WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, JUNIOR), the usual loyal and
patriotic toasts were severally given and rapturously received. 
Doctor Mell, in a speech replete with feeling, then proposed "Our
distinguished Guest, the ornament of our town.  May he never leave
us but to better himself, and may his success among us be such as
to render his bettering himself impossible!" The cheering with
which the toast was received defies description.  Again and again
it rose and fell, like the waves of ocean.  At length all was
hushed, and WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, presented himself to return
thanks.  Far be it from us, in the present comparatively imperfect
state of the resources of our establishment, to endeavour to follow
our distinguished townsman through the smoothly-flowing periods of
his polished and highly-ornate address! Suffice it to observe, that
it was a masterpiece of eloquence; and that those passages in which
he more particularly traced his own successful career to its
source, and warned the younger portion of his auditory from the
shoals of ever incurring pecuniary liabilities which they were
unable to liquidate, brought a tear into the manliest eye present. 
The remaining toasts were DOCTOR MELL; Mrs. MICAWBER (who
gracefully bowed her acknowledgements from the side-door, where a
galaxy of beauty was elevated on chairs, at once to witness and
adorn the gratifying scene), Mrs. RIDGER BEGS (late Miss Micawber);
Mrs. MELL; WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, JUNIOR (who convulsed the
assembly by humorously remarking that he found himself unable to
return thanks in a speech, but would do so, with their permission,
in a song); Mrs. MICAWBER'S FAMILY (well known, it is needless to
remark, in the mother-country), &c.  &c.  &c.  At the conclusion of
the proceedings the tables were cleared as if by art-magic for
dancing.  Among the votaries of TERPSICHORE, who disported
themselves until Sol gave warning for departure, Wilkins Micawber,
Esquire, Junior, and the lovely and accomplished Miss Helena,
fourth daughter of Doctor Mell, were particularly remarkable.'

I was looking back to the name of Doctor Mell, pleased to have
discovered, in these happier circumstances, Mr. Mell, formerly poor
pinched usher to my Middlesex magistrate, when Mr. Peggotty
pointing to another part of the paper, my eyes rested on my own
name, and I read thus:

'          TO DAVID COPPERFIELD, ESQUIRE,

               'THE EMINENT AUTHOR.

'My Dear Sir,

'Years have elapsed, since I had an opportunity of ocularly
perusing the lineaments, now familiar to the imaginations of a
considerable portion of the civilized world.

'But, my dear Sir, though estranged (by the force of circumstances
over which I have had no control) from the personal society of the
friend and companion of my youth, I have not been unmindful of his
soaring flight.  Nor have I been debarred,

     Though seas between us braid ha' roared,

(BURNS) from participating in the intellectual feasts he has spread
before us.

'I cannot, therefore, allow of the departure from this place of an
individual whom we mutually respect and esteem, without, my dear
Sir, taking this public opportunity of thanking you, on my own
behalf, and, I may undertake to add, on that of the whole of the
Inhabitants of Port Middlebay, for the gratification of which you
are the ministering agent.

'Go on, my dear Sir! You are not unknown here, you are not
unappreciated.  Though "remote", we are neither "unfriended",
"melancholy", nor (I may add) "slow".  Go on, my dear Sir, in your
Eagle course! The inhabitants of Port Middlebay may at least aspire
to watch it, with delight, with entertainment, with instruction!

'Among the eyes elevated towards you from this portion of the
globe, will ever be found, while it has light and life,

               'The
                    'Eye
                         'Appertaining to

                              'WILKINS MICAWBER,
                                   'Magistrate.'

I found, on glancing at the remaining contents of the newspaper,
that Mr. Micawber was a diligent and esteemed correspondent of that
journal.  There was another letter from him in the same paper,
touching a bridge; there was an advertisement of a collection of
similar letters by him, to be shortly republished, in a neat
volume, 'with considerable additions'; and, unless I am very much
mistaken, the Leading Article was his also.

We talked much of Mr. Micawber, on many other evenings while Mr.
Peggotty remained with us.  He lived with us during the whole term
of his stay, - which, I think, was something less than a month, -
and his sister and my aunt came to London to see him.  Agnes and I
parted from him aboard-ship, when he sailed; and we shall never
part from him more, on earth.

But before he left, he went with me to Yarmouth, to see a little
tablet I had put up in the churchyard to the memory of Ham.  While
I was copying the plain inscription for him at his request, I saw
him stoop, and gather a tuft of grass from the grave and a little
earth.

'For Em'ly,' he said, as he put it in his breast.  'I promised,
Mas'r Davy.'

CHAPTER 64
A LAST RETROSPECT

And now my written story ends.  I look back, once more - for the
last time - before I close these leaves.

I see myself, with Agnes at my side, journeying along the road of
life.  I see our children and our friends around us; and I hear the
roar of many voices, not indifferent to me as I travel on.

What faces are the most distinct to me in the fleeting crowd?  Lo,
these; all turning to me as I ask my thoughts the question!

Here is my aunt, in stronger spectacles, an old woman of four-score
years and more, but upright yet, and a steady walker of six miles
at a stretch in winter weather.

Always with her, here comes Peggotty, my good old nurse, likewise
in spectacles, accustomed to do needle-work at night very close to
the lamp, but never sitting down to it without a bit of wax candle,
a yard-measure in a little house, and a work-box with a picture of
St. Paul's upon the lid.

The cheeks and arms of Peggotty, so hard and red in my childish
days, when I wondered why the birds didn't peck her in preference
to apples, are shrivelled now; and her eyes, that used to darken
their whole neighbourhood in her face, are fainter (though they
glitter still); but her rough forefinger, which I once associated
with a pocket nutmeg-grater, is just the same, and when I see my
least child catching at it as it totters from my aunt to her, I
think of our little parlour at home, when I could scarcely walk. 
My aunt's old disappointment is set right, now.  She is godmother
to a real living Betsey Trotwood; and Dora (the next in order) says
she spoils her.

There is something bulky in Peggotty's pocket.  It is nothing
smaller than the Crocodile Book, which is in rather a dilapidated
condition by this time, with divers of the leaves torn and stitched
across, but which Peggotty exhibits to the children as a precious
relic.  I find it very curious to see my own infant face, looking
up at me from the Crocodile stories; and to be reminded by it of my
old acquaintance Brooks of Sheffield.

Among my boys, this summer holiday time, I see an old man making
giant kites, and gazing at them in the air, with a delight for
which there are no words.  He greets me rapturously, and whispers,
with many nods and winks, 'Trotwood, you will be glad to hear that
I shall finish the Memorial when I have nothing else to do, and
that your aunt's the most extraordinary woman in the world, sir!'

Who is this bent lady, supporting herself by a stick, and showing
me a countenance in which there are some traces of old pride and
beauty, feebly contending with a querulous, imbecile, fretful
wandering of the mind?  She is in a garden; and near her stands a
sharp, dark, withered woman, with a white scar on her lip.  Let me
hear what they say.

'Rosa, I have forgotten this gentleman's name.'

Rosa bends over her, and calls to her, 'Mr. Copperfield.'

'I am glad to see you, sir.  I am sorry to observe you are in
mourning.  I hope Time will be good to you.'

Her impatient attendant scolds her, tells her I am not in mourning,
bids her look again, tries to rouse her.

'You have seen my son, sir,' says the elder lady.  'Are you
reconciled?'

Looking fixedly at me, she puts her hand to her forehead, and
moans.  Suddenly, she cries, in a terrible voice, 'Rosa, come to
me.  He is dead!' Rosa kneeling at her feet, by turns caresses her,
and quarrels with her; now fiercely telling her, 'I loved him
better than you ever did!'- now soothing her to sleep on her
breast, like a sick child.  Thus I leave them; thus I always find
them; thus they wear their time away, from year to year.

What ship comes sailing home from India, and what English lady is
this, married to a growling old Scotch Croesus with great flaps of
ears?  Can this be Julia Mills?

Indeed it is Julia Mills, peevish and fine, with a black man to
carry cards and letters to her on a golden salver, and a
copper-coloured woman in linen, with a bright handkerchief round
her head, to serve her Tiffin in her dressing-room.  But Julia
keeps no diary in these days; never sings Affection's Dirge;
eternally quarrels with the old Scotch Croesus, who is a sort of
yellow bear with a tanned hide.  Julia is steeped in money to the
throat, and talks and thinks of nothing else.  I liked her better
in the Desert of Sahara.

Or perhaps this IS the Desert of Sahara! For, though Julia has a
stately house, and mighty company, and sumptuous dinners every day,
I see no green growth near her; nothing that can ever come to fruit
or flower.  What Julia calls 'society', I see; among it Mr. Jack
Maldon, from his Patent Place, sneering at the hand that gave it
him, and speaking to me of the Doctor as 'so charmingly antique'. 
But when society is the name for such hollow gentlemen and ladies,
Julia, and when its breeding is professed indifference to
everything that can advance or can retard mankind, I think we must
have lost ourselves in that same Desert of Sahara, and had better
find the way out.

And lo, the Doctor, always our good friend, labouring at his
Dictionary (somewhere about the letter D), and happy in his home
and wife.  Also the Old Soldier, on a considerably reduced footing,
and by no means so influential as in days of yore!

Working at his chambers in the Temple, with a busy aspect, and his
hair (where he is not bald) made more rebellious than ever by the
constant friction of his lawyer's-wig, I come, in a later time,
upon my dear old Traddles.  His table is covered with thick piles
of papers; and I say, as I look around me:

'If Sophy were your clerk, now, Traddles, she would have enough to
do!'

'You may say that, my dear Copperfield! But those were capital
days, too, in Holborn Court! Were they not?'

'When she told you you would be a judge?  But it was not the town
talk then!'

'At all events,' says Traddles, 'if I ever am one -'
'Why, you know you will be.'

'Well, my dear Copperfield, WHEN I am one, I shall tell the story,
as I said I would.'

We walk away, arm in arm.  I am going to have a family dinner with
Traddles.  It is Sophy's birthday; and, on our road, Traddles
discourses to me of the good fortune he has enjoyed.

'I really have been able, my dear Copperfield, to do all that I had
most at heart.  There's the Reverend Horace promoted to that living
at four hundred and fifty pounds a year; there are our two boys
receiving the very best education, and distinguishing themselves as
steady scholars and good fellows; there are three of the girls
married very comfortably; there are three more living with us;
there are three more keeping house for the Reverend Horace since
Mrs. Crewler's decease; and all of them happy.'

'Except -' I suggest.

'Except the Beauty,' says Traddles.  'Yes.  It was very unfortunate
that she should marry such a vagabond.  But there was a certain
dash and glare about him that caught her.  However, now we have got
her safe at our house, and got rid of him, we must cheer her up
again.'

Traddles's house is one of the very houses - or it easily may have
been - which he and Sophy used to parcel out, in their evening
walks.  It is a large house; but Traddles keeps his papers in his
dressing-room and his boots with his papers; and he and Sophy
squeeze themselves into upper rooms, reserving the best bedrooms
for the Beauty and the girls.  There is no room to spare in the
house; for more of 'the girls' are here, and always are here, by
some accident or other, than I know how to count.  Here, when we go
in, is a crowd of them, running down to the door, and handing
Traddles about to be kissed, until he is out of breath.  Here,
established in perpetuity, is the poor Beauty, a widow with a
little girl; here, at dinner on Sophy's birthday, are the three
married girls with their three husbands, and one of the husband's
brothers, and another husband's cousin, and another husband's
sister, who appears to me to be engaged to the cousin.  Traddles,
exactly the same simple, unaffected fellow as he ever was, sits at
the foot of the large table like a Patriarch; and Sophy beams upon
him, from the head, across a cheerful space that is certainly not
glittering with Britannia metal.

And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet,
these faces fade away.  But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly
light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond
them all.  And that remains.

I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.

My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the
dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.

O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life
indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the
shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing
upward!

End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens