Preface to the 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 forever. 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 forever. 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

David Copperfield

Af­fec­tion­ately in­scribed to
the Hon. Mr. and Mrs. Richard Wat­son,
of Rock­ing­han, Northamp­ton­shire.

I 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 seago­ing 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 grave­stone 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 sea­coast 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 god­daugh­ter. 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 forever 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.

II 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 stor­e­room 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 sun­dial, and think within my­self, “Is the sun­dial 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 ground­work 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 heart­broken 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 wax­work 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 overnight, 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 forever.

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.

III 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 atop, 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 gas­works, 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—child­like, 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 hi 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 boat­house.

“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.

IV 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 bed­side. 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 cock­crow. 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 broken­hearted 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 pray­er­book, 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 deathblow 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 din­ner­time, 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 centrepiece 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 any­one 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 any­one. 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. “Good­bye, Davy. You are go­ing for your own good. Good­bye, 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.

V 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 akimbo, 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 ta­ble­spoon, “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 ta­ble­spoon to my tea­spoon, 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 wagon. 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 mid­sum­mer 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 reen­act­ing 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 stage­coach. 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 alms­houses, 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 sea­side 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 copy­books 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 stage­coach, 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 night­shirt, and that plac­ard.

In the mono­tony of my life, and in my con­stant ap­pre­hen­sion of the re­open­ing 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 bed­side 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 out­house 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.