XX. Steerforth’s Home   
     
WHEN the chambermaid tapped at my door at eight o’clock, and informed me that my shaving-water was outside, I felt severely the having no occasion for it, and blushed in my bed. The suspicion that she laughed too, when she said it, preyed upon my mind all the time I was dressing; and gave me, I was conscious, a sneaking and guilty air when I passed her on the staircase, as I was going down to breakfast. I was so sensitively aware, indeed, of being younger than I could have wished, that for some time I could not make up my mind to pass her at all, under the ignoble circumstances of the case; but, hearing her there with a broom, stood peeping out of the window at King Charles on horseback, surrounded by a maze of hackney-coaches and looking anything but regal in a drizzling rain and a dark-brown fog, until I was admonished by the waiter that the gentleman was waiting for me.      1   
  It was not in the coffee-room that I found Steerforth expecting me, but in a snug private apartment, red-curtained and Turkey-carpeted, where the fire burnt bright, and a fine hot breakfast was set forth on a table covered with a clean cloth; and a cheerful miniature of the room, the fire, the breakfast, Steerforth, and all, was shining in the little round mirror over the sideboard. I was rather bashful at first, Steerforth being so self-possessed, and elegant, and superior to me in all respects (age included); but his easy patronage soon put that to rights, and made me quite at home. I could not enough admire the change he had wrought in the Golden Cross; or compare the dull forlorn state I had held yesterday, with this morning’s comfort and this morning’s entertainment. As to the waiter’s familiarity, it was quenched as if it had never been. He attended on us, as I may say, in sackcloth and ashes.      2   
  “Now, Copperfield,” said Steerforth, when we were alone, “I should like to hear what you are doing, and where you are going, and all about you. I feel as if you were my property.”      3   
  Glowing with pleasure to find that he had still this interest in me, I told him how my aunt had proposed the little expedition that I had before me, and whither it tended.      4   
  “As you are in no hurry, then,” said Steerforth, “come home with me to Highgate, and stay a day or two. You will be pleased with my mother—she is a little vain and prosy about me, but that you can forgive her—and she will be pleased with you.”      5   
  “I should like to be as sure of that, as you are kind enough to say you are,” I answered, smiling.      6   
  “Oh!” said Steerforth, “every one who likes me, has a claim on her that is sure to be acknowledged.”      7   
  “Then I think I shall be a favourite,” said I.      8   
  “Good!” said Steerforth. “Come and prove it. We will go and see the lions for an hour or two—it’s something to have a fresh fellow like you to show them to, Copperfield—and then we’ll journey out to Highgate by the coach.”      9   
  I could hardly believe but that I was in a dream, and that I should wake presently in number forty-four, to the solitary box in the coffee-room and the familiar waiter again. After I had written to my aunt and told her of my fortunate meeting with my admired old schoolfellow, and my acceptance of his invitation, we went out in a hackney-chariot, and saw a Panorama and some other sights, and took a walk through the Museum, where I could not help observing how much Steerforth knew, on an infinite variety of subjects, and of how little account he seemed to make his knowledge.     10   
  “You’ll take a high degree at college, Steerforth,” said I, “if you have not done so already; and they will have good reason to be proud of you.”     11   
  “I take a degree!” cried Steerforth. “Not I! my dear Daisy—will you mind my calling you Daisy?”     12   
  “Not at all!” said I.     13   
  “That’s a good fellow! My dear Daisy,” said Steerforth, laughing, “I have not the least desire or intention to distinguish myself in that way. I have done quite sufficient for my purpose. I find that I am heavy company enough for myself, as I am.”     14   
  “But the fame——” I was beginning.     15   
  “You romantic Daisy!” said Steerforth, laughing still more heartily; “why should I trouble myself, that a parcel of heavy-headed fellows may gape and hold up their hands? Let them do it at some other man. There’s fame for him, and he’s welcome to it.”     16   
  I was abashed at having made so great a mistake, and was glad to change the subject. Fortunately it was not difficult to do, for Steerforth could always pass from one subject to another with a carelessness and lightness that were his own.     17   
  Lunch succeeded to our sight-seeing, and the short winter day wore away so fast, that it was dusk when the stage-coach stopped with us at an old brick house at Highgate on the summit of the hill. An elderly lady, though not very far advanced in years, with a proud carriage and a handsome face, was in the doorway as we alighted; and greeting Steerforth as “My dearest James,” folded him in her arms.     18   
  To this lady he presented me as his mother, and she gave me a stately welcome.     19   
  It was a genteel old-fashioned house, very quiet and orderly. From the windows of my room I saw all London lying in the distance like a great vapour, with here and there some lights twinkling through it. I had only time, in dressing, to glance at the solid furniture, the framed pieces of work (done, I suppose, by Steerforth’s mother when she was a girl), and some pictures in crayons of ladies with powdered hair and bodices, coming and going on the walls, as the newly-kindled fire crackled and sputtered, when I was called to dinner.     20   
  There was a second lady in the dining-room, of a slight short figure, dark, and not agreeable to look at, but with some appearance of good looks too, who attracted my attention: perhaps because I had not expected to see her; perhaps because I found myself sitting opposite to her; perhaps because of something really remarkable in her. She had black hair and eager black eyes, and was thin, and had a scar upon her lip. It was an old scar—I should rather call it, seam, for it was not discoloured, and had healed years ago—which had once cut through her mouth, downward towards the chin, but was now barely visible across the table, except above and on her upper lip, the shape of which it had altered. I concluded in my own mind that she was about thirty years of age, and that she wished to be married. She was a little dilapidated—like a house—with having been so long to let; yet had, as I have said, an appearance of good looks. Her thinness seemed to be the effect of some wasting fire within her, which found a vent in her gaunt eyes.     21   
  She was introduced as Miss Dartle and both Steerforth and his mother called her Rosa. I found that she lived there, and had been for a long time Mrs. Steerforth’s companion. It appeared to me that she never said anything she wanted to say, outright; but hinted it, and made a great deal more of it by this practice. For example, when Mrs. Steerforth observed, more in jest than earnest, that she feared her son led but a wild life at college, Miss Dartle put in thus:     22   
  “Oh, really? You know how ignorant I am; and that I only ask for information, but isn’t it always so? I thought that kind of life was on all hands understood to be—eh?”     23   
  “It is education for a very grave profession, if you mean that, Rosa,” Mrs. Steerforth answered with some coldness.     24   
  “Oh! Yes! That’s very true,” returned Miss Dartle. “But isn’t it, though?—I want to be put right, if I am wrong—isn’t it really?”     25   
  “Really what?” said Mrs. Steerforth.     26   
  “Oh! You mean it’s not! returned Miss Dartle. “Well, I’m very glad to hear it! Now, I know what to do. That’s the advantage of asking. I shall never allow people to talk before me about wastefulness and profligacy, and so forth, in connexion with that life, any more.”     27   
  “And you will be right,” said Mrs. Steerforth. “My son’s tutor is a conscientious gentleman; and if I had not implicit reliance on my son, I should have reliance on him.”     28   
  “Should you?” said Miss Dartle. “Dear me! Conscientious is he? Really conscientious, now?”     29   
  “Yes, I am convinced of it,” said Mrs. Steerforth.     30   
  “How very nice!” exclaimed Miss Dartle. “What a comfort! Really conscientious? Then he’s not—but of course he can’t be, if he’s really conscientious. Well, I shall be quite happy in my opinion of him, from this time. You can’t think how it elevates him in my opinion, to know for certain that he’s really conscientious!”     31   
  Her own views of every question, and her correction of everything that was said to which she was opposed, Miss Dartle insinuated in the same way: sometimes, I could not conceal from myself, with great power, though in contradiction even of Steerforth. An instance happened before dinner was done. Mrs. Steerforth speaking to me about my intention of going down into Suffolk, I said at hazard how glad I should be, if Steerforth would only go there with me; and explaining to him that I was going to see my old nurse, and Mr. Peggotty’s family, I reminded him of the boatman whom he had seen at school.     32   
  “Oh! That bluff fellow!” said Steerforth. “He had a son with him, hadn’t he?”     33   
  “No. That was his nephew,” I replied; “whom he adopted, though, as a son. He has a very pretty little niece too, whom he adopted as a daughter. In short, his house (or rather his boat, for he lives in one, on dry land) is full of people who are objects of his generosity and kindness. You would be delighted to see that household.”

 “Should I?” said Steerforth. “Well, I think I should. I must see what can be done. It would be worth a journey—not to mention the pleasure of a journey with you, Daisy—to see that sort of people together, and to make one of ’em.”     35   
  My heart leaped with a new hope of pleasure. But it was in reference to the tone in which he had spoken of “that sort of people,” that Miss Dartle, whose sparkling eyes had been watchful of us, now broke in again.     36   
  “Oh, but, really? Do tell me. Are they, though?” she said.     37   
  “Are they what? And are who what?” said Steerforth.     38   
  “That sort of people.—Are they really animals and clods, and beings of another order? I want to know so much.”     39   
  “Why, there’s a pretty wide separation between them and us,” said Steerforth, with indifference. “They are not to be expected to be as sensitive as we are. Their delicacy is not to be shocked, or hurt very easily. They are wonderfully virtuous, I dare say—some people contend for that, at least; and I am sure I don’t want to contradict them—but they have not very fine natures, and they may be thankful that, like their coarse rough skins, they are not easily wounded.”     40   
  “Really!” said Miss Dartle. “Well, I don’t know, now, when I have been better pleased than to hear that. It’s so consoling! It’s such a delight to know that, when they suffer, they don’t feel! Sometimes I have been quite uneasy for that sort of people; but now I shall just dismiss the idea of them, altogether. Live and learn. I had my doubts, I confess, but now they’re cleared up. I didn’t know, and now I do know; and that shows the advantage of asking—don’t it?”     41   
  I believed that Steerforth had said what he had, in jest, or to draw Miss Dartle out; and I expected him to say as much when she was gone, and we two were sitting before the fire. But he merely asked me what I thought of her.     42   
  “She is very clever, is she not?” I asked.     43   
  “Clever! She brings everything to a grindstone,” said Steerforth, “and sharpens it, as she has sharpened her own face and figure these years past. She has worn herself away by constant sharpening. She is all edge.”     44   
  “What a remarkable scar that is upon her lip!” I said.     45   
  Steerforth’s face fell, and he paused a moment.     46   
  “Why, the fact is,” he returned, “—I did that.”     47   
  “By an unfortunate accident!”     48   
  “No. I was a young boy, and she exasperated me, and I threw a hammer at her. A promising young angel I must have been!”     49   
  I was deeply sorry to have touched on such a painful theme, but that was useless now.     50   
  “She has borne the mark ever since, as you see,” said Steerforth; “and she’ll bear it to her grave, if she ever rests in one; though I can hardly believe she will ever rest anywhere. She was the motherless child of a sort of cousin of my father’s. He died one day. My mother, who was then a widow, brought her here to be company to her. She has a couple of thousand pounds of her own, and saves the interest of it every year, to add to the principal. There’s the history of Miss Rosa Dartle for you.”     51   
  “And I have no doubt she loves you like a brother?” said I.     52   
  “Humph!” retorted Steerforth, looking at the fire. “Some brothers are not loved over much; and some love—but help yourself, Copperfield! We’ll drink the daisies of the field, in compliment to you; and the lilies of the valley that toil not, neither do they spin, in compliment to me—the more shame for me!” A moody smile that had overspread his features cleared off as he said this merrily, and he was his own frank, winning self again.     53   
  I could not help glancing at the scar with a painful interest when we went in to tea. It was not long before I observed that it was the most susceptible part of her face, and that, when she turned pale, that mark altered first, and became a dull, lead-coloured streak, lengthening out to its full extent, like a mark in invisible ink brought to the fire. There was a little altercation between her and Steerforth about a cast of the dice at backgammon—when I thought her, for one moment, in a storm of rage; and then I saw it start forth like the old writing on the wall.     54   
  It was no matter of wonder to me to find Mrs. Steerforth devoted to her son. She seemed to be able to speak or think about nothing else. She showed me his picture as an infant, in a locket, with some of his baby-hair in it; she showed me his picture as he had been when I first knew him; and she wore at her breast his picture as he was now. All the letters he had ever written to her, she kept in a cabinet near her own chair by the fire; and she would have read me some of them, and I should have been very glad to hear them too, if he had not interposed, and coaxed her out of the design.     55   
  “It was at Mr. Creakle’s, my son tells me, that you first became acquainted,” said Mrs. Steerforth, as she and I were talking at one table, while they played backgammon at another. “Indeed, I recollect his speaking, at that time, of a pupil younger than himself who had taken his fancy there; but your name, as you may suppose, has not lived in my memory.”     56   
  “He was very generous and noble to me in those days, I assure you, ma’am,” said I, “and I stood in need of such a friend. I should have been quite crushed without him.”     57   
  “He is always generous and noble,” said Mrs. Steerforth, proudly.     58   
  I subscribed to this with all my heart, God knows. She knew I did; for the stateliness of her manner already abated toward me, except when she spoke in praise of him, and then her air was always lofty.     59   
  “It was not a fit school generally for my son,” said she; “far from it; but there were particular circumstances to be considered at the time, of more importance even than that selection. My son’s high spirit made it desirable that he should be placed with some man who felt its superiority, and would be content to bow himself before it; and we found such a man there.”     60   
  I knew that, knowing the fellow. And yet I did not despise him the more for it, but thought it a redeeming quality in him—if he could be allowed any grace for not resisting one so irresistible as Steerforth.     61   
  “My son’s great capacity was tempted on, there, by a feeling of voluntary emulation and conscious pride,” the fond lady went on to say. “He would have risen against all constraint; but he found himself the monarch of the place, and he haughtily determined to be worthy of his station. It was like himself.”     62   
  I echoed, with all my heart and soul, that it was like himself.     63   
  “So my son took, of his own will, and on no compulsion, to the course in which he can always, when it is his pleasure, outstrip every competitor,” she pursued. “My son informs me, Mr. Copperfield, that you were quite devoted to him, and that when you met yesterday you made yourself known to him with tears of joy. I should be an affected woman if I made any pretence of being surprised by my son’s inspiring such emotions; but I can not be indifferent to any one who is so sensible of his merit, and I am very glad to see you here, and can assure you that he feels an unusual friendship for you, and that you may rely on his protection.”     64   
  Miss Dartle played backgammon as eagerly as she did everything else. If I had seen her, first, at the board, I should have fancied that her figure had got thin, and her eyes had got large, over that pursuit, and no other in the world. But I am very much mistaken if she missed a word of this, or lost a look of mine as I received it with the utmost pleasure, and, honoured by Mrs. Steerforth’s confidence, felt older than I had done since I left Canterbury.     65   
  When the evening was pretty far spent, and a tray of glasses and decanters came in, Steerforth promised, over the fire, that he would seriously think of going down into the country with me. There was no hurry, he said; a week hence would do; and his mother hospitably said the same. While we were talking, he more than once called me Daisy; which brought Miss Dartle out again.     66   
  “But really, Mr. Copperfield,” she asked, “is it a nickname? And why does he give it you? Is it—eh?—because he thinks you young and innocent? I am so stupid in these things.”     67   
  I coloured in replying that I believed it was.     68   
  “Oh!” said Miss Dartle. “Now I am glad to know that! I ask for information, and, I am glad to know it. He thinks you young and innocent; and so you are his friend? Well, that’s quite delightful!”     69   
  She went to bed soon after this, and Mrs. Steerforth retired too. Steerforth and I, after lingering for half an hour over the fire, talking about Traddles and all the rest of them at old Salem House, went up-stairs together. Steerforth’s room was next to mine, and I went in to look at it. It was a picture of comfort, full of easy-chairs, cushions, and footstools, worked by his mother’s hand, and with no sort of thing omitted that could help to render it complete. Finally, her handsome features looked down on her darling from a portrait on the wall, as if it were even something to her that her likeness should watch him while he slept.     70   
  I found the fire burning clear enough in my room by this time, and the curtains drawn before the windows and round the bed, giving it a very snug appearance. I sat down in a great chair upon the hearth to meditate on my happiness; and had enjoyed the contemplation of it for some time, when I found a likeness of Miss Dartle looking eagerly at me from above the chimney-piece.     71   
  It was a startling likeness, and necessarily had a startling look. The painter hadn’t made the scar, but I made it; and there it was, coming and going: now confined to the upper lip as I had seen it at dinner, and now showing the whole extent of the wound inflicted by the hammer, as I had seen it when she was passionate.     72   
  I wondered peevishly why they couldn’t put her anywhere else instead of quartering her on me. To get rid of her, I undressed quickly, extinguished my light, and went to bed. But, as I fell asleep, I could not forget that she was still there looking, “Is it really, though? I want to know;” and when I awoke in the night, I found that I was uneasily asking all sorts of people in my dreams whether it really was or not—without knowing what I meant.

XXI. Little Em’ly   
     
THERE was a servant in that house, a man who, I understood, was usually with Steerforth, and had come into his service at the University, who was in appearance a pattern of respectability. I believe there never existed in his station a more respectable-looking man. He was taciturn, soft-footed, very quiet in his manner, deferential, observant, always at hand when wanted, and never near when not wanted; but his great claim to consideration was his respectability. He had not a pliant face, he had rather a stiff neck, rather a tight smooth head with short hair clinging to it at the sides, a soft way of speaking, with a peculiar habit of whispering the letter S so distinctly, that he seemed to use it oftener than any other man: but every peculiarity that he had he made respectable. If his nose had been upside-down, he would have made that respectable. He surrounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability, and walked secure in it. It would have been next to impossible to suspect him of anything wrong, he was so thoroughly respectable. Nobody could have thought of putting him in a livery, he was so highly respectable. To have imposed any derogatory work upon him, would have been to inflict a wanton insult on the feelings of a most respectable man. And of this, I noticed the womenservants in the household were so intuitively conscious, that they always did such work themselves, and generally while he read the paper by the pantry fire.      1   
  Such a self-contained man I never saw. But in that quality, as in every other he possessed, he only seemed to be the more respectable. Even the fact that no one knew his Christian name, seemed to form a part of his respectability. Nothing could be objected against his surname Littimer, by which he was known. Peter might have been hanged, or Tom transported; but Littimer was perfectly respectable.      2   
  It was occasioned, I suppose, by the reverend nature of respectability in the abstract, but I felt particularly young in this man’s presence. How old he was himself, I could not guess—and that again went to his credit on the same score; for in the calmness of respectability he might have numbered fifty years as well as thirty.      3   
  Littimer was in my room in the morning before I was up, to bring me that reproachful shaving-water, and to put out my clothes. When I undrew the curtains an looked out of bed, I saw him, in an equable temperature of respectability, unaffected by the east wind of January, and not even breathing frostily, standing my boots right and left in the first dancing position, and blowing specks of dust off my coat as he laid it down like a baby.      4   
  I gave him good morning, and asked him what o’clock it was. He took out of his pocket the most respectable hunting-watch I ever saw, and preventing the spring with his thumb from opening far, looked in at the face as if he were consulting an oracular oyster, shut it up again, and said, if I pleased, it was half-past eight.      5   
  “Mr. Steerforth will be glad to hear how you have rested, Sir.”      6   
  “Thank you,” said I, “very well indeed. Is Mr. Steerforth quite well?”      7   
  “Thank you, Sir, Mr. Steerforth is tolerably well.” Another of his characteristics,—no use of superlatives. A cool calm medium always.      8   
  “Is there anything more I can have the honour of doing for you, Sir? The warning bell will ring at nine; the family take breakfast at half-past nine.”      9   
  “Nothing, I thank you.”     10   
  “I thank you, Sir, if you please;” and with that, and with a little inclination of his head when he passed the bedside, as an apology for correcting me, he went out, shutting the door as delicately as if I had just fallen into a sweet sleep on which my life depended.     11   
  Every morning we held exactly this conversation: never any more, and never any less; and yet, invariably, however ever far I might have been lifted out of myself overnight, and advanced towards maturer years, by Steerforth’s companionship, or Mrs. Steerforth’s confidence, or Miss Dartle’s conversation, in the presence of this most respectable man I became, as our smaller poets sing “a boy again.”     12   
  He got horses for us; and Steerforth, who knew everything, gave me lessons in riding. He provided foils for us, and Steerforth gave me lessons in fencing—gloves, and I began, of the same master, to improve in boxing. It gave me no manner of concern that Steerforth should find me a novice in these sciences, but I never could bear to show my want of skill before the respectable Littimer. I had no reason to believe that Littimer understood such arts himself; he never led me to suppose anything of the kind, by so much as the vibration of one of his respectable eyelashes; yet whenever he was by, while we were practising, I felt myself the greenest and most inexperienced of mortals.     13   
  I am particular about this man, because he made a particular effect on me at that time, and because of what took place thereafter.     14   
  The week passed away in a most delightful manner. It passed rapidly, as may be supposed, to one entranced as I was; and yet it gave me so many occasions for knowing Steerforth better, and admiring him more in a thousand respects, that at its close I seemed to have been with him for a much longer time. A dashing way he had of treating me like a plaything, was more agreeable to me than any behaviour he could have adopted. It reminded me of our old acquaintance; it seemed the natural sequel of it; it showed me that he was unchanged; it relieved me of any uneasiness I might have felt, in comparing my merits with his, and measuring my claims upon his friendship by any equal standard; above all, it was a familiar, unrestrained, affectionate demeanour that he used towards no one else. As he had treated me at school differently from all the rest, I joyfully believed that he treated me in life unlike any other friend he had. I believed that I was nearer to his heart than any other friend, and my own heart warmed with attachment to him.     15   
  He made up his mind to go with me into the country, and the day arrived for our departure. He had been doubtful at first whether to take Littimer or not, but decided to leave him at home. The respectable creature, satisfied with his lot whatever it was, arranged our portmanteaus on the little carriage that was to take us into London, as if they were intended to defy the shocks of ages; and received my modestly proffered donation with perfect tranquillity.     16   
  We bade adieu to Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle, with many thanks on my part, and much kindness on the devoted mother’s.     17   
  The last thing I saw was Littimer’s unruffled eye; fraught, as I fancied, with the silent conviction that I was very young indeed.     18   
  What I felt, in returning so auspiciously to the old familiar places, I shall not endeavour to describe. We went down by the Mail. I was so concerned, I recollect, even for the honour of Yarmouth, that when Steerforth said, as we drove through its dark streets to the inn, that, as well as he could make out, it was a good, queer, out-of-the-way kind of hole, I was highly pleased. We went to bed on our arrival (I observed a pair of dirty shoes and gaiters in connexion with my old friend the Dolphin as we passed that door), and breakfasted late in the morning. Steerforth, who was in great spirits, had been strolling about the beach before I was up, and had made acquaintance, he said, with half the boatmen in the place. Moreover he had seen, in the distance, what he was sure must be the identical house of Mr. Peggotty, with smoke coming out of the chimney; and had had a great mind, he told me, to walk in and swear he was myself grown out of knowledge.     19   
  “When do you propose to introduce me there, Daisy?” he said. “I am at your disposal. Make your own arrangements.”     20   
  “Why, I was thinking that this evening would be a good time, Steerforth, when they are all sitting round the fire. I should like you to see it when it’s snug, it’s such a curious place.”     21   
  “So be it!” returned Steerforth. “This evening.”     22   
  “I shall not give them any notice that we are here, you know,” said I, delighted. “We must take them by surprise.”     23   
  “Oh, of course! It’s no fun,” said Steerforth, “unless we take them by surprise. Let us see the natives in their aboriginal condition.”     24   
  “Though they are that sort of people that you mentioned,” I returned.     25   
  “Aha! What! you recollect my skirmishes with Rosa, do you?” he exclaimed with a quick look. “Confound the girl, I am half afraid of her. She’s like a goblin to me. But never mind her. Now what are you going to do? You are going to see your nurse, I suppose?”     26   
  “Why, yes,” I said, “I must see Peggotty first of all.”     27   
  “Well,” replied Steerforth, looking at his watch. “Suppose I deliver you up to be cried over for a couple of hours. Is that long enough?”     28   
  I answered, laughing, that I thought we might get through it in that time, but that he must come also; for he would find that his renown had preceded him, and that he was almost as great a personage as I was.     29   
  “I’ll come anywhere you like,” said Steerforth, “or do anything you like. Tell me where to come to; and in two hours I’ll produce myself in any state you please, sentimental or comical.”     30   
  I gave him minute directions for finding the residence of Mr. Barkis, carrier to Blunderstone and elsewhere; and, on this understanding, went out alone. There was a sharp bracing air; the ground was dry; the sea was crisp and clear; the sun was diffusing abundance of light, if not much warmth; and everything was fresh and lively. I was so fresh and lively myself, in the pleasure of being there, that I could have stopped the people in the streets and shaken hands with them.     31   
  The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do, I believe, when we go back to them. But I had forgotten nothing in them, and found nothing changed, until I came to Mr. Omer’s shop. OMER AND JORAM was now written up, where OMER used to be; but the inscription, DRAPER, TAILOR, HABERDASHER, FURNISHER, &C., remained as it was.

  My footsteps seemed to tend so naturally to the shopdoor, after I had read these words from over the way, that I went across the road and looked in. There was a pretty woman at the back of the shop, dancing a little child in her arms, while another little fellow clung to her apron. I had no difficulty in recognizing either Minnie or Minnie’s children. The glass door of the parlour was not open; but in the workshop across the yard I could faintly hear the old tune playing, as if it had never left off.     33   
  “Is Mr. Omer at home?” said I, entering. “I should like to see him, for a moment, if he is.”     34   
  “Oh yes, Sir, he is at home,” said Minnie; “this weather don’t suit his asthma out of doors. Joe, call your grandfather!”     35   
  The little fellow, who was holding her apron, gave such a lusty shout, that the sound of it made him bashful, and he buried his face in her skirts, to her great admiration. I heard a heavy puffing and blowing coming towards us, and soon Mr. Omer, shorter-winded than of yore, but not much older-looking, stood before me.     36   
  “Servant, Sir,” said Mr. Omer. “What can I do for you, Sir?”     37   
  “You can shake hands with me, Mr. Omer, if you please,” said I, putting out my own. “You were very good-natured to me once, when I am afraid I didn’t show that I thought so.”     38   
  “Was I though?” returned the old man. “I’m glad to hear it, but I don’t remember when. Are you sure it was me?”     39   
  “Quite.”     40   
  “I think my memory has got as short as my breath,” said Mr. Omer, looking at me and shaking his head; “for I don’t remember you.”     41   
  “Don’t you remember your coming to the coach to meet me, and my having breakfast here, and our riding out to Blunderstone together: you, and I, and Mrs. Joram, and Mr. Joram too—who wasn’t her husband then?”     42   
  “Why, Lord bless my soul!” exclaimed Mr. Omer, after being thrown by his surprise into a fit of coughing, “you don’t say so! Minnie, my dear, you recollect? Dear me, yes—the party was a lady—I think?”     43   
  “My mother,” I rejoined.     44   
  “To—be—sure,” said Mr. Omer, touching my waistcoat with his forefinger, “and there was a little child too! There was two parties. The little party was laid along with the other party. Over at Blunderstone it was, of course. Dear me! And how have you been since?”     45   
  Very well, I thanked him, as I hoped he had been too.     46   
  “Oh! nothing to grumble at, you know,” said Mr. Omer. “I find my breath gets short but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as it comes, and make the most of it. That’s the best way, ain’t it?”     47   
  Mr. Omer coughed again, in consequence of laughing, and was assisted out of his fit by his daughter, who now stood close beside us, dancing her smallest child on the counter.     48   
  “Dear me!” said Mr. Omer. “Yes, to be sure. Two parties! Why, in that very ride, if you’ll believe me, the day was named for my Minnie to marry Joram. ‘Do name it, Sir,’ says Joram. ‘Yes, do, father,’ says Minnie. And now he’s come into the business. And look here! The youngest!”     49   
  Minnie laughed, and stroked her banded hair upon her temples, as her father put one of his fat fingers into the hand of the child she was dancing on the counter.     50   
  “Two parties, of course!” said Mr. Omer, nodding his head retrospectively. “Exactly so! And Joram’s at work, at this minute, on a grey one with silver nails, not this measurement”—the measurement of the dancing child upon the counter—“by a good two inches. Will you take something?”     51   
  I thanked him, but declined.     52   
  “Let me see,” said Mr. Omer. “Barkis’s the carrier’s wife—Peggotty’s the boatman’s sister—she had something to do with your family? She was in service there, sure?”     53   
  My answering in the affirmative gave him great satisfaction.     54   
  “I believe my breath will get long next, my memory’s getting so much so,” said Mr. Omer. “Well, Sir, we’ve got a young relation of hers here, under articles to us, that has as elegant a taste in the dressmaking business—I assure you I don’t believe there’s a duchess in England can touch her.”     55   
  “Not little Em’ly?” said I involuntarily.     56   
  “Em’ly’s her name,” said Mr. Omer, “and she’s little too. But if you’ll believe me, she has such a face of her own that half the women in this town are mad against her.”     57   
  “Nonsense, father!” cried Minnie.     58   
  “My dear,” said Mr. Omer, “I don’t say it’s the case with you,” winking at me, “but I say that half the women in Yarmouth—ah! and in five mile round—are mad against that girl.”     59   
  “Then she should have kept her own station in life, father,” said Minnie, “and not have given them any hold to talk about her, and then they couldn’t have done it.”     60   
  “Couldn’t have done it, my dear!” retorted Mr. Omer. “Couldn’t have done it! Is that your knowledge of life? What is there that any woman couldn’t do, that she shouldn’t do—especially on the subject of another woman’s good looks?”     61   
  I really thought it was all over with Mr. Omer, after he had uttered this libellous pleasantry. He coughed to that extent, and his breath eluded all his attempts to recover it with that obstinacy, that I fully expected to see his head go down behind the counter, and his little black breeches, with the rusty little bunches of ribbons at the knees, come quivering up in a last ineffectual struggle. At length, however, he got better, though he still panted hard, and was so exhausted that he was obliged to sit on the stool of the shopdesk.     62   
  “You see,” he said, wiping his head, and breathing with difficulty, “she hasn’t taken much to any companions here; she hasn’t taken kindly to any particular acquaintances and friends, not to mention sweethearts. In consequence, an ill-natured story got about, that Em’ly wanted to be a lady. Now, my opinion is, that it came into circulation principally on account of her sometimes saying, at the school, that if she was a lady she would like to do so and so for her uncle—don’t you see?—and buy him such and such fine things.”     63   
  “I assure you, Mr. Omer, she has said so to me,” I returned eagerly, “when we were both children.”     64   
  Mr. Omer nodded his head and rubbed his chin. “Just so. Then out of a very little, she could dress herself, you see, better than most others could out of a deal, and that made things unpleasant. Moreover, she was rather what might be called wayward—I’ll go so far as to say what I should call wayward myself,” said Mr. Omer—“didn’t know her own mind quite—a little spoiled—and couldn’t at first, exactly bind herself down. No more than that was ever said against her, Minnie?”     65   
  “No, father,” said Mrs. Joram. “That’s the worst, I believe.”     66   
  “So when she got a situation,” said Mr. Omer, “to keep a fractious old lady company, they didn’t very well agree, and she didn’t stop. At last she came here, apprenticed for three years. Nearly two of ’em are over, and she has been as good a girl as ever was. Worth any six! Minnie, is she worth any six, now?”     67   
  “Yes, father,” replied Minnie. “Never say I detracted from her!”     68   
  “Very good,” said Mr. Omer. “That’s right. And so, young gentleman,” he added, after a few moments’ further rubbing of his chin, “that you may not consider me longwinded as well as short-breathed, I believe that’s all about it.”     69   
  As they had spoken in a subdued tone, while speaking of Em’ly, I had no doubt that she was near. On my asking now, if that were not so, Mr. Omer nodded yes, and nodded towards the door of the parlour. My hurried inquiry if I might peep in, was answered with a free permission; and, looking through the glass, I saw her sitting at her work. I saw her, a most beautiful little creature, with the cloudless blue eyes, that had looked into my childish heart, turned laughingly upon another child of Minnie’s who was playing near her; with enough of wilfulness in her bright face to justify what I had heard; with much of the old capricious coyness lurking in it; but with nothing in her pretty looks, I am sure, but what was meant for goodness and for happiness, and what was on a good and happy course.     70   
  The tune across the yard that seemed as if it never had left off—alas! it was the tune that never does leave off—was beating, softly, all the while.     71   
  “Wouldn’t you like to step in,” said Mr. Omer, “and speak to her? Walk in and speak to her, Sir! Make yourself at home!”     72   
  I was too bashful to do so then—I was afraid of confusing her, and I was no less afraid of confusing myself: but I informed myself of the hour at which she left of an evening, in order that our visit might be timed accordingly; and taking leave of Mr. Omer, and his pretty daughter, and her little children, went away to my dear old Peggotty’s.     73   
  Here she was, in the tiled kitchen, cooking dinner! The moment I knocked at the door she opened it, and asked me what I pleased to want. I looked at her with a smile, but she gave me no smile in return. I had never ceased to write to her, but it must have been seven years since we had met.     74   
  “Is Mr. Barkis at home, ma’am?” I said, feigning to speak roughly to her.     75   
  “He’s at home, Sir,” returned Peggotty, “but he’s bad abed with the rheumatics.”     76   
  “Don’t he go over to Blunderstone now?” I asked.     77   
  “When he’s well, he do,” she answered.     78   
  “Do you ever go there, Mrs. Barkis?”     79   
  She looked at me more attentively, and I noticed a quick movement of her hands towards each other.     80   
  “Because I want to ask a question about a house there, that they call the—what is it?—the Rookery,” said I.     81   
  She took a step backward, and put out her hands in an undecided frightened way, as if to keep me off.     82   
  “Peggotty!” I cried to her.     83   
  She cried, “My darling boy!” and we both burst into tears, and were locked in one another’s arms.     84   
  What extravagances she committed; what laughing and crying over me; what pride she showed, what joy, what sorrow that she whose pride and joy I might have been, could never hold me in a fond embrace; I have not the heart to tell. I was troubled with no misgiving that it was young in me to respond to her emotions. I had never laughed and cried in all my life, I dare say—not even to her—more freely than I did that morning.     85   
  “Barkis will be so glad,” said Peggotty, wiping her eyes with her apron, “that it’ll do him more good than pints of liniment. May I go and tell him you are here? Will you come up and see him, my dear?”     86   
  Of course I would. But Peggotty could not get out of the room as easily as she meant to, for as often as she got to the door and looked round at me, she came back again to have another laugh and another cry upon my shoulder.     87   
  At last, to make the matter easier, I went up-stairs with her; and having waited outside for a minute, while she said a word of preparation to Mr. Barkis, presented myself before that invalid.     88   
  He received me with absolute enthusiasm. He was too rheumatic to be shaken hands with, but he begged me to shake the tassel on the top of his nightcap, which I did most cordially. When I sat down by the side of the bed, he said that it did him a world of good to feel as if he was driving me on the Blunderstone road again. As he lay in bed, face upward, and so covered, with that exception, that he seemed to be nothing but a face—like a conventional cherubim—he looked the queerest object I ever beheld.     89   
  “What name was it as I wrote up in the cart, Sir?” said Mr. Barkis, with a slow rheumatic smile.     90   
  “Ah! Mr. Barkis, we had some grave talks about that matter, hadn’t we?”     91   
  “I was willin’ a long time, Sir?” said Mr. Barkis.     92   
  “A long time,” said I.     93   
  “And I don’t regret it,” said Mr. Barkis. “Do you remember what you told me once, about her making all the apple pasties and doing all the cooking?”     94   
  “Yes, very well,” I returned.     95   
  “It was as true,” said Mr. Barkis, “as turnips is. It was as true,” said Mr. Barkis, nodding his nightcap, which was his only means of emphasis, “as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them.”     96   
  Mr. Barkis turned his eyes upon me, as if for my assent to this result of his reflections in bed; and I gave it.     97   
  “Nothing’s truer than them,” repeated Mr. Barkis; “a man as poor as I am finds that out in his mind when he’s laid up. I’m a very poor man, Sir.”     98   
  “I am sorry to hear it, Mr. Barkis.”     99   
  “A very poor man, indeed I am,” said Mr. Barkis.    100   
  Here his right hand came slowly and feebly from under the bed-clothes, and with a purposeless uncertain grasp took hold of a stick which was loosely tied to the side of the bed. After some poking about with this instrument, in the course of which his face assumed a variety of distracted expressions, Mr. Barkis poked it against a box, an end of which had been visible to me all the time. Then his face became composed.    101   
  “Old clothes,” said Mr. Barkis.    102   
  “Oh!” said I.    103   
  “I wish it was Money, Sir,” said Mr. Barkis.    104   
  “I wish it was, indeed,” said I.    105   
  “But it AIN’T,” said Mr. Barkis, opening both his eyes as wide as he possibly could.    106   
  I expressed myself quite sure of that, and Mr. Barkis, turning his eyes more gently to his wife, said: “She’s the usefullest and best of women, C. P. Barkis. All the praise that any one can give to C. P. Barkis, she deserves, and more! My dear, you’ll get a dinner to-day, for company; something good to eat and drink, will you?”    107   
  I should have protested against this unnecessary demonstration in my honour, but that I saw Peggotty, on the opposite side of the bed, extremely anxious I should not. So I held my peace.    108   
  “I have got a trifle of money somewhere about me, my dear,” said Mr. Barkis, “but I’m a little tired. If you and Mr. David will leave me for a short nap, I’ll try and find it when I wake.”    109   
  We left the room, in compliance with this request. When we got outside the door, Peggotty informed me that Mr. Barkis, being now “a little nearer” than he used to be, always resorted to this same device before producing a single coin from his store; and that he endured unheard-of agonies in crawling out of bed alone, and taking it from that unlucky box. In effect, we presently heard him uttering suppressed groans of the most dismal nature, as this magpie proceeding racked him in every joint; but while Peggotty’s eyes were full of compassion for him, she said his generous impulse would do him good, and it was better not to check it. So he groaned on, until he had got into bed again, suffering, I have no doubt, a martyrdom; and then called us in, pretending to have just woke up from a refreshing sleep, and to produce a guinea from under his pillow. His satisfaction in which happy imposition on us, and in having preserved the impenetrable secret of the box, appeared to be a sufficient compensation to him for all his tortures.    110   
  I prepared Peggotty for Steerforth’s arrival, and it was not long before he came. I am persuaded she knew no difference between his having been a personal benefactor of hers and a kind friend to me, and that she would have received him with the utmost gratitude and devotion in any case. But his easy, spirited good-humour; his genial manner, his handsome looks, his natural gift of adapting himself to whomsover he pleased, and making direct, when he cared to do it, to the main point of interest in anybody’s heart; bound her to him wholly in five minutes. His manner to me, alone, would have won her. But, through all these causes combined, I sincerely believe she had a kind of adoration for him before he left the house that night.

 He stayed there with me to dinner—if I were to say willingly, I should not half express how readily and gaily. He went into Mr. Barkis’s room like light and air, brightening and refreshing it as if it were healthy weather. There was no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything he did; but in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming impossibility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which was so graceful, so natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even now, in the remembrance.    112   
  We made merry in the little parlour, where the Book of Martyrs, unthumbed since my time, was laid out upon the desk as of old, and where I now turned over its terrific pictures, remembering the old sensations they had awakened, but not feeling them. When Peggotty spoke of what she called my room, and of its being ready for me at night, and of her hoping I would occupy it, before I could so much as look at Steerforth, hesitating, he was possessed of the whole case.    113   
  “Of course,” he said. “You’ll sleep here, while we stay, and I shall sleep at the hotel.”    114   
  “But to bring you so far,” I returned, “and to separate, seems bad companionship, Steerforth.”    115   
  “Why, in the name of Heaven, where do you naturally belong!” he said. “What is ‘seems,’ compared to that!” It was settled at once.    116   
  He maintained all his delightful qualities to the last, until we started forth, at eight o’clock, for Mr. Peggotty’s boat. Indeed, they were more and more brightly exhibited as the hours went on; for I thought even then, and I have no doubt now, that the consciousness of success in his determination to please, inspired him with a new delicacy of perception, and made it, subtle as it was, more easy to him. If any one had told me, then, that all this was a brilliant game, played for the excitement of the moment, for the employment of high spirits, in the thoughtless love of superiority, in a mere wasteful careless course of winning what was worthless to him, and next minute thrown away—I say, if any one had told me such a lie that night, I wonder in what manner of receiving it my indignation would have found a vent!    117   
  Probably only in an increase, had that been possible, of the romantic feelings of fidelity and friendship with which I walked beside him, over the dark wintry sands, towards the old boat; the wind sighing around us even more mournfully than it had sighed and moaned upon the night when I first darkened Mr. Peggotty’s door.    118   
  “This is a wild kind of place, Steerforth, is it not?”    119   
  “Dismal enough in the dark,” he said; “and the sea roars as if it were hungry for us. Is that the boat, where I see a light yonder?”    120   
  “That’s the boat,” said I.    121   
  “And it’s the same I saw this morning,” he returned. “I came straight to it, by instinct, I suppose.”    122   
  We said no more as we approached the light, but made softly for the door. I laid my hand upon the latch; and whispering Steerforth to keep close to me, went in.    123   
  A murmur of voices had been audible on the outside, and, at the moment of our entrance, a clapping of hands, which latter noise, I was surprised to see, proceeded from the generally disconsolate Mrs. Gummidge. But Mrs. Gummidge was not the only person there who was unusually excited. Mr. Peggotty, his face lighted up with uncommon satisfaction, and laughing with all his might, held his rough arms wide open, as if for little Em’ly to run into them; Ham, with a mixed expression in his face of admiration, exultation, and a lumbering sort of bashfulness that sat upon him very well, held little Em’ly by the hand, as if he were presenting her to Mr. Peggotty; little Em’ly herself, blushing and shy, but delighted with Mr. Peggotty’s delight, as her joyous eyes expressed, was stopped by our entrance (for she saw us first) in the very act of springing from Ham to nestle in Mr. Peggotty’s embrace. In the first glimpse we had of them all, and at the moment of our passing from the dark cold night into the warm light room, this was the way in which they were all employed: Mrs. Gummidge in the background, clapping her hands like a madwoman.    124   
  The little picture was so instantaneously dissolved by our going in, that one might have doubted whether it had ever been. I was in the midst of the astonished family, face to face with Mr. Peggotty, and holding out my hand to him, when Ham shouted:    125   
  “Mas’r Davy! It’s Mas’r Davy!”    126   
  In a moment we were all shaking hands with one another, and asking one another how we did, and telling one another how glad we were to meet, and all talking at once. Mr. Peggotty was so proud and overjoyed to see us, that he did not know what to say or do, but kept over and over again shaking hands with me, and then with Steerforth, and then with me, and then ruffling his shaggy hair all over his head and laughing with such glee and triumph, that it was a treat to see him.    127   
  “Why, that you two gent’lmen—gent’lmen growed—should come to this here roof to-night, of all nights in my life,” said Mr. Peggotty, “is such a thing as never happened afore, I do rightly believe! Em’ly, my darling, come here! Come here, my little witch! There’s Mas’r Davy’s friend, my dear! There’s the gent’lman as you’ve heerd on, Em’ly. He comes to see you, along with Mas’r Davy, on the brightest night of your uncle’s life as ever was or will be, Gorm the t’other one, and horroar for it!”    128   
  After delivering this speech all in a breath, and with extraordinary animation and pleasure, Mr. Peggotty put one of his large hands rapturously on each side of his niece’s face, and kissing it a dozen times, laid it with a gentle pride and love upon his broad chest, and patted it as if his hand had been a lady’s. Then he let her go; and as she ran into the little chamber where I used to sleep, looked around upon us, quite hot and out of breath with his uncommon satisfaction.    129   
  “If you two gent’lmen—gent’lmen growed now, and such gent’lmen——” said Mr. Peggotty.    130   
  “So th’ are, so th’ are!” cried Ham. “Well said! So th’ are. Mas’r Davy bor’—gent’lmen growed—so th’ are!”    131   
  “If you two gent’lmen, gent’lmen growed,” said Mr. Peggotty, “don’t excuse me for being in a state of mind, when you understand matters, I’ll arks your pardon. Em’ly, my dear!—She knows I’m a going to tell,” here his delight broke out again, “and has made off. Would you be so good as look arter her, Mawther, for a minute?”    132   
  Mrs. Gummidge nodded and disappeared.    133   
  “If this ain’t,” said Mr. Peggotty, sitting down among us by the fire, “the brightest night o’ my life, I’m a shell-fish—biled too—and more I can’t say. This here little Em’ly, Sir,” in a low voice to Steerforth,—“her as you see a blushing here just now——”    134   
  Steerforth only nodded; but with such a pleased expression of interest, and of participation in Mr. Peggotty’s feelings, that the latter answered him as if he had spoken.    135   
  “To be sure,” said Mr. Peggotty, “that’s her, and so she is. Thank’ee, Sir.”    136   
  Ham nodded to me several times, as if he would have said so too.    137   
  “This here little Em’ly of ours,” said Mr. Peggotty, “has been, in our house, what I suppose (I’m a ignorant man, but that’s my belief) no one but a little bright-eyed creetur can be in a house. She ain’t my child; I never had one; but I couldn’t love her more. You understand! I couldn’t do it!”    138   
  “I quite understand,” said Steerforth.    139   
  “I know you do, Sir,” returned Mr. Peggotty, “and thank’ee again. Mas’r Davy, he can remember what she was; you may judge for your own self what she is; but neither of you can’t fully know what she has been, is, and will be, to my loving’art. I am rough, Sir,” said Mr. Peggotty, “I am as rough as a Sea Porkypine; but no one, unless, mayhap, it is a woman, can know, I think, what our little Em’ly is to me. And betwixt ourselves,” sinking his voice lower yet, “that woman’s name ain’t Missis Gummidge neither, though she has a world of merits.”    140   
  Mr. Peggotty ruffled his hair again with both hands, as a further preparation for what he was going to say, and went on, with a hand upon each of his knees: “There was a certain person as had know’d our Em’ly, from the time when her father was drownded; as had seen her constant; when a babby, when a young gal, when a woman. Not much of a person to look at, he warn’t,” said Mr. Peggotty, “something o’my own build—rough—a good deal o’ the sou’-wester in him—wery salt—but, on the whole, a honest sort of a chap, with his ’art in the right place.”    141   
  I thought I had never seen Ham grin to anything like the extent to which he sat grinning at us now.    142   
  “What does this here blessed tarpaulin go and do,” said Mr. Peggotty, with his face one high moon of enjoyment, “but he loses that there ’art of his to our little Em’ly. He follers her about, he makes hisself a sort o’ sarvant to her, he loses in a great measure his relish for his wittles, and in the long run he makes it clear to me wot’s amiss. Now I could wish myself, you see, that our little Em’ly was in a fair way of being married. I could wish to see her, at all ewents, under articles to a honest man as had a right to defend her. I don’t know how long I may live, or how soon I may die; but I know that if I was capsized, any night, in a gale of wind in Yarmouth Roads here, and was to see the town-lights shining for the last time over the rollers as I couldn’t make no head aginst, I could go down quieter for thinking ‘There’s a man ashore there, iron-true to my little Em’ly, God bless her, and no wrong can touch my Em’ly while so be as that man lives.’ ”    143   
  Mr. Peggotty, in simple earnestness, waved his right arm, as if he were waving it at the town-lights for the last time, and then, exchanging a nod with Ham, whose eye he caught, proceeded as before: “Well! I counsels him to speak to Em’ly. He’s big enough, but he’s bashfuller than a little ’un, and he don’t like. So I speak. ‘What! Him?’ says Em’ly. ‘Him that I’ve knowed so intimate so many years, and like so much! Oh, uncle! I never can have him. He’s such a good fellow!’ I gives her a kiss, and I says no more to her than ‘My dear, you’re right to speak out, you’re to choose for yourself, you’re as free as a little bird.’ Then I aways to him, and I says, ‘I wish it could have been so, but it can’t. But you can both be as you was, and wot I say to you is, Be as you was with her, like a man.’ He says to me, a shaking of my hand, ‘I will!’ he says. And he was—honourable and manful—for two year going on, and we was just the same at home here as afore.”    144   
  Mr. Peggotty’s face, which had varied in its expression with the various stages of his narrative, now resumed all its former triumphant delight, as he laid a hand upon my knee and a hand upon Steerforth’s (previously wetting them both, for the greater emphasis of the action), and divided the following speech between us: “All of a sudden, one evening—as it might be to-night—comes little Em’ly from her work, and him with her! There ain’t so much in that, you’ll say. No, because he takes care on her, like a brother, arter dark, and indeed afore dark, and at all times. But this tarpaulin chap, he takes hold of her hand, and he cries out to me, joyful, ‘Look here! This is to be my little wife!’ And she says, half bold and half shy, and half a laughing and half a crying, ‘Yes, uncle! If you please.’—If I please!” cried Mr. Peggotty, rolling his head in an ecstasy at the idea; “Lord, as if I should do anythink else!—‘If you please, I am steadier now, and I have thought better of it, and I’ll be as good a little wife as I can to him, for he’s a dear, good fellow!’ Then Missis Gummidge, she claps her hands like a play, and you come in. Theer! the murder’s out!” said Mr. Peggotty—“You come in! It took place this here present hour; and here’s the man that’ll marry her, the minute she’s out of her time.”    145   
  Ham staggered, as well he might, under the blow Mr. Peggotty dealt him in his unbounded joy, as a mark of confidence and friendship; but feeling called upon to say something to us, he said, with much faltering and great difficulty: “She warn’t no higher than you was, Mas’r Davy—when you first come—when I thought what she’d grow up to be. I see her grow up—gent’lmen—like a flower. I’d lay down my life for her—Mas’r Davy—Oh! most content and cheerful! She’s more to me—gent’lmen—than—she’s all to me that ever I can want, and more than ever I—than ever I could say. I—I love her true. There ain’t a gent’lman in all the land—nor yet sailing upon all the sea—that can love his lady more than I love her, though there’s many a common man—would say better—what he meant.”    146   
  I thought it affecting to see such a sturdy fellow as Ham was now, trembling in the strength of what he felt for the pretty little creature who had won his heart. I thought the simple confidence reposed in us by Mr. Peggotty and by himself, was, in itself, affecting. I was affected by the story altogether. How far my emotions were influenced by the recollections of my childhood, I don’t know. Whether I had come there with any lingering fancy that I was still to love little Em’ly, I don’t know. I know that I was filled with pleasure by all this; but, at first, with an indescribably sensitive pleasure, that a very little would have changed to pain.    147   
  Therefore, if it had depended upon me to touch the prevailing chord among them with any skill, I should have made a poor hand of it. But it depended upon Steerforth; and he did it with such address, that in a few minutes we were all as easy and as happy as it was possible to be.    148   
  “Mr. Peggotty,” he said, “you are a thoroughly good fellow, and deserve to be as happy as you are to-night. My hand upon it! Ham, I give you joy, my boy. My hand upon that, too! Daisy, stir the fire, and make it a brisk one! and Mr. Peggotty, unless you can induce your gentle niece to come back (for whom I vacate this seat in the corner), I shall go. Any gap at your fireside on such a night—such a gap least of all—I wouldn’t make, for the wealth of the Indies!”    149   
  So Mr. Peggotty went into my old room to fetch little Em’ly. At first, little Em’ly didn’t like to come, and then Ham went. Presently they brought her to the fireside, very much confused, and very shy,—but she soon became more assured when she found how gently and respectfully Steerforth spoke to her; how skilfully he avoided anything that would embarrass her; how he talked to Mr. Peggotty of boats, and ships, and tides, and fish; how he referred to me about the time when he had seen Mr. Peggotty at Salem House; how delighted he was with the boat and all belonging to it; how lightly and easily he carried on, until he brought us, by degrees, into a charmed circle, and we were all talking away without any reserve.    150   
  Em’ly, indeed, said little all the evening; but she looked, and listened, and her face got animated, and she was charming. Steerforth told a story of a dismal shipwreck (which arose out of his talk with Mr. Peggotty), as if he saw it all before him—and little Em’ly’s eyes were fastened on him all the time, as if she saw it too. He told us a merry adventure of his own, as a relief to that, with as much gaiety as if the narrative were as fresh to him as it was to us—and little Em’ly laughed until the boat rang with the musical sounds, and we all laughed (Steerforth too), in irresistible sympathy with what was so pleasant and light-hearted. He got Mr. Peggotty to sing, or rather to roar, “When the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow;” and he sang a sailor’s song himself, so pathetically and beautifully, that I could have almost fancied that the real wind creeping sorrowfully round the house, and murmuring low through our unbroken silence, was there to listen.    151   
  As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despondency with a success never attained by anyone else (so Mr. Peggotty informed me), since the decease of the old one. He left her so little leisure for being miserable, that she said next day she thought she must have been bewitched.    152   
  But he set up no monopoly of the general attention, or the conversation. When little Em’ly grew more courageous, and talked (but still bashfully) across the fire to me, of our old wanderings upon the beach, to pick up shells and pebbles; and when I asked her if she recollected how I used to be devoted to her; and when we both laughed and reddened, casting these looks back on the pleasant old times, so unreal to look at now; he was silent and attentive, and observed us thoughtfully. She sat, at this time, and all the evening, on the old locker in her old little corner by the fire—Ham beside her, where I used to sit. I could not satisfy myself whether it was in her own little tormenting way, or in a maidenly reserve before us, that she kept quite close to the wall, and away from him; but I observed that she did so, all the evening.    153   
  As I remember, it was almost midnight when we took our leave. We had had some biscuit and dried fish for supper, and Steerforth had produced from his pocket a full flask of Hollands, which we men (I may say we men, now, without a blush) had emptied. We parted merrily; and as they all stood crowded round the door to light us as far as they could upon our road, I saw the sweet blue eyes of little Em’ly peeping after us, from behind Ham, and heard her soft voice calling to us to be careful how we went.    154   
  “A most engaging little beauty!” said Steerforth, taking my arm. “Well! It’s a quaint place, and they are quaint company, and it’s quite a new sensation to mix with them.”    155   
  “How fortunate we are, too,” I returned, “to have arrived to witness their happiness in that intended marriage! I never saw people so happy. How delightful to see it, and to be made the sharers in their honest joy, as we have been!”    156   
  “That’s rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl; isn’t he?” said Steerforth.    157   
  He had been so hearty with him, and with them all, that I felt a shock in this unexpected and cold reply. But turning quickly upon him, and seeing a laugh in his eyes, I answered, much relieved: “Ah, Steerforth! It’s well for you to joke about the poor! You may skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman’s, or humour a love like my old nurse’s, I know that there is not a joy or sorrow, not an emotion, of such people, that can be indifferent to you. And I admire and love you for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more.”    158   
  He stopped, and looking in my face, said, “Daisy, I believe you are in earnest, and are good. I wish we all were!” Next moment he was gaily singing Mr. Peggotty’s song, as we walked at a round pace back to Yarmouth.

XXII. Some Old Scenes, and Some New People   
     
STEERFORTH and I stayed for more than a fortnight in that part of the country. We were very much together, I need not say; but occasionally we were asunder for some hours at a time. He was a good sailor, and I was but an indifferent one; and when he went out boating with Mr. Peggotty, which was a favourite amusement of his, I generally remained ashore. My occupation of Peggotty’s spare room put a constraint upon me, from which he was free: for, knowing how assiduously she attended on Mr. Barkis all day, I did not like to remain out late at night; whereas Steerforth, lying at the Inn, had nothing to consult but his own humour. Thus it came about, that I heard of his making little treats for the fishermen at Mr. Peggotty’s house of call, “The Willing Mind,” after I was in bed, and of his being afloat wrapped in fishermen’s clothes, whole moonlight nights, and coming back when the morning tide was at flood. By this time, however, I knew that his restless nature and bold spirits delighted to find a vent in rough toil and hard weather, as in any other means of excitement that presented itself freshly to him; so none of his proceedings surprised me.      1   
  Another cause of our being sometimes apart was, that I had naturally an interest in going over to Blunderstone, and revisiting the old familiar scenes of my childhood; while Steerforth, after being there once, had naturally no great interest in going there again. Hence, on three or four days that I can at once recall, we went our several ways after an early breakfast, and met again at a late dinner. I had no idea how he employed his time in the interval, beyond a general knowledge that he was very popular in the place, and had twenty means of actively diverting himself where another man might not have found one.      2   
  For my own part, my occupation in my solitary pilgrimages was to recall every yard of the old road as I went along it, and to haunt the old spots, of which I never tired. I haunted them, as my memory had often done, and lingered among them as my younger thoughts had lingered when I was far away.      3   
  The grave beneath the tree, where both my parents lay—on which I had looked out, when it was my father’s only, with such curious feelings of compassion, and by which I had stood, so desolate, when it was opened to receive my pretty mother and her baby—the grave which Peggotty’s own faithful care had ever since kept neat, and made a garden of, I walked near, by the hour. It lay a little off the churchyard path, in a quiet corner, not so far removed but I could read the names upon the stone as I walked to and fro, startled by the sound of the church-bell when it struck the hour, for it was like a departed voice to me. My reflections at these times were always associated with the figure I was to make in life, and the distinguished things I was to do. My echoing footsteps went to no other tune, but were as constant to that as if I had come home to build my castles in the air at a living mother’s side.      4   
  There were great changes in my old home. The ragged nests, so long deserted by the rooks, were gone; and the trees were lopped and topped out of their remembered shapes. The garden had run wild, and half the windows of the house were shut up. It was occupied, but only by a poor lunatic gentleman, and the people who took care of him. He was always sitting at my little window, looking out into the churchyard; and I wondered whether his rambling thoughts ever went upon any of the fancies that used to occupy mine, on the rosy mornings when I peeped out of that same little window in my night-clothes, and saw the sheep quietly feeding in the light of the rising sun.      5   
  Our old neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Grayper, were gone to South America, and the rain had made its way through the roof of their empty house, and stained the outer walls. Mr. Chillip was married again to a tall, raw-boned, high-nosed wife; and they had a weazen little baby, with a heavy head that it couldn’t hold up, and two weak staring eyes, with which it seemed to be always wondering why it had ever been born.      6   
  It was with a singular jumble of sadness and pleasure that I used to linger about my native place, until the reddening winter sun admonished me that it was time to start on my returning walk. But, when the place was left behind, and especially when Steerforth and I were happily seated over our dinner by a blazing fire, it was delicious to think of having been there. So it was, though in a softened degree, when I went to my neat room at night; and, turning over the leaves of the crocodile-book (which was always there, upon a little table), remembered with a grateful heart how blest I was in having such a friend as Steerforth, such a friend as Peggotty, and such a substitute for what I had lost as my excellent and generous aunt.      7   
  My nearest way to Yarmouth, in coming back from these long walks, was by a ferry. It landed me on the flat between the town and the sea, which I could make straight across, and so save myself a considerable circuit by the high road. Mr. Peggotty’s house being on that waste-place, and not a hundred yards out of my tract, I always looked in as I went by.      8   
  Steerforth was pretty sure to be there expecting me, and we went on together through the frosty air and gathering fog towards the twinkling lights of the town.      9   
  One dark evening, when I was later than usual—for I had, that day, been making my parting visit to Blunderstone, as we were now about to return home—I found him alone in Mr. Peggotty’s house, sitting thoughtfully before the fire. He was so intent upon his own reflections that he was quite unconscious of my approach. This, indeed, he might easily have been if he had been less absorbed, for footsteps fell noiselessly on the sandy ground outside; but even my entrance failed to rouse him. I was standing close to him, looking at him; and still, with a heavy brow, he was lost in his meditations.     10   
  He gave such a start when I put my hand upon his shoulder, that he made me start too.     11   
  “You come upon me,” he said, almost angrily, “like a reproachful ghost!”     12   
  “I was obliged to announce myself somehow,” I replied. “Have I called you down from the stars?”     13   
  “No,” he answered. “No.”     14   
  “Up from anywhere, then?” said I, taking my seat near him.     15   
  “I was looking at the pictures in the fire,” he returned.     16   
  “But you are spoiling them for me,” said I, as he stirred it quickly with a piece of burning wood, striking out of it a train of red-hot sparks that went careering up the little chimney, and roaring out into the air.     17   
  “You would not have seen them,” he returned. “I detest this mongrel time, neither day nor night. How late you are! Where have you been?”     18   
  “I have been taking leave of my usual walk,” said I.     19   
  “And I have been sitting here,” said Steerforth, glancing round the room, “thinking that all the people we found so glad on the night of our coming down, might—to judge from the present wasted air of the place—be dispersed, or dead, or come to I don’t know what harm. David, I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years!”     20   
  “My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?”     21   
  “I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!” he exclaimed. “I wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!”     22   
  There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed me. He was more unlike himself than I could have supposed possible.     23   
  “It would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of a nephew,” he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, with his face towards the fire, “than to be myself, twenty times richer and twenty times wiser, and be the torment to myself that I have been, in this Devil’s bark of a boat, within the last halfhour!”     24   
  I was so confounded by the alteration in him, that at last I could only observe him in silence, as he stood leaning his head upon his hand, and looking gloomily down at the fire. At length I begged him, with all the earnestness a felt, to tell me what had occurred to cross him so unusually, and to let me sympathise with him, if I could not hope to advise him. Before I had well concluded, he began to laugh—fretfully at first, but soon with returning gaiety.     25   
  “Tut, it’s nothing, Daisy! nothing!” he replied. “I told you, at the inn in London, I am heavy company for myself, sometimes. I have been a nightmare to myself, just now—must have had one, I think. At odd dull times, nursery tales come up into the memory, unrecognised for what they are. I believe I have been confounding myself with the bad boy who ‘didn’t care,’ and became food for lions—a grander kind of going to the dogs, I suppose. What old women call the horrors, have been creeping over me from head to foot. I have been afraid of myself.”     26   
  “You are afraid of nothing else, I think,” said I.     27   
  “Perhaps not, and yet may have enough to be afraid of too,” he answered. “Well! So it goes by! I am not about to be hipped again, David; but I tell you, my good fellow, once more, that it would have been well for me (and for more than me) if I had had a steadfast and judicious father!”     28   
  His face was always full of expression, but I never saw it express such a dark kind of earnestness as when he said these words, with his glance bent on the fire.     29   
  “So much for that!” he said, making as if he tossed something light into the air, with his hand.
           “ ‘Why, being gone, I am a man again,’like Macbeth. And now for dinner! If I have not (Macbethlike) broken up the feast with most admired disorder, Daisy.”     30   
  “But where are they all, I wonder!” said I.     31   
  “God knows,” said Steerforth. “After strolling to the ferry looking for you, I strolled in here and found the place deserted. That set me thinking, and you found me thinking.”     32   
  The advent of Mrs. Gummidge with a basket, explained how the house had happened to be empty. She had hurried out to buy something that was needed, against Mr. Peggotty’s return with the tide; and had left the door open in the meanwhile, lest Ham and little Em’ly, with whom it was an early night, should come home while she was gone. Steerforth, after very much improving Mrs. Gummidge’s spirits by a cheerful salutation and a jocose embrace, took my arm, and hurried me away.     33   
  He had improved his own spirits, no less than Mrs. Gummidge’s, for they were again at their usual flow, and he was full of vivacious conversation as we went along.     34   
  “And so,” he said, gaily, “we abandon this buccaneer life to-morrow, do we?”     35   
  “So we agreed,” I returned. “And our places by the coach are taken, you know.”     36   
  “Ay! there’s no help for it, I suppose,” said Steerforth. “I have almost forgotten that there is anything to do in the world but to go out tossing on the sea here. I wish there was not.”     37   
  “As long as the novelty should last,” said I, laughing.     38   
  “Like enough,” he returned; “though there’s a sarcastic meaning in that observation for an amiable piece of innocence like my young friend. Well! I dare say I am a capricious fellow, David. I know I am; but while the iron is hot, I can strike it vigorously too. I could pass a reasonably good examination already, as a pilot in these waters, I think.”     39   
  “Mr. Peggotty says you are a wonder,” I returned.     40   
  “A nautical phenomenon, eh?” laughed Steerforth.     41   
  “Indeed he does, and you know how truly; knowing how ardent you are in any pursuit you follow, and how easily you can master it. And that amazes me most in you, Steerforth—that you should be contented with such fitful uses of your powers.”     42   
  “Contented?” he answered, merrily. “I am never contented, except with your freshness, my gentle Daisy. As to fitfulness, I have never learnt the art of binding myself to any of the wheels on which the Ixions of these days are turning round and round. I missed it somehow in a bad apprenticeship, and now don’t care about it.—You know I have bought a boat down here?”     43   
  “What an extraordinary fellow you are, Steerforth!” I exclaimed, stopping—for this was the first I had heard of it. “When you may never care to come near the place again!”     44   
  “I don’t know that,” he returned. “I have taken a fancy to the place. At all events,” walking me briskly on, “I have bought a boat that was for sale—a clipper, Mr. Peggotty says; and so she is—and Mr. Peggotty will be master of her in my absence.”     45   
  “Now I understand you, Steerforth!” said I, exultingly. “You pretend to have bought it for yourself, but you have really done so to confer a benefit on him. I might have known as much at first, knowing you. My dear kind Steerforth, how can I tell you what I think of your generosity?”     46   
  “Tush!” he answered, turning red. “The less said, the better.”     47   
  “Didn’t I know?” cried I, “didn’t I say that there was not a joy, or sorrow, or any emotion of such honest hearts that was indifferent to you?”     48   
  “Ay, ay,” he answered, “you told me all that. There let it rest. We have said enough!”     49   
  Afraid of offending him by pursuing the subject when he made so light of it, I only pursued it in my thoughts as we went on at even a quicker pace than before.     50   
  “She must be newly rigged,” said Steerforth, “and I shall leave Littimer behind to see it done, that I may know she is quite complete. Did I tell you Littimer had come down?”     51   
  “No.”

 “Oh, yes! came down this morning, with a letter from my mother.”     53   
  As our looks met, I observed that he was pale even to his lips, though he looked very steadily at me. I feared that some difference between him and his mother might have led to his being in the frame of mind in which I had found him at the solitary fireside. I hinted so.     54   
  “Oh no!” he said, shaking his head, and giving a slight laugh. “Nothing of the sort! Yes. He is come down, that man of mine.”     55   
  “The same as ever?” said I.     56   
  “The same as ever,” said Steerforth. “Distant and quiet as the North Pole. He shall see to the boat being fresh named. She’s the Stormy Petrel now. What does Mr. Peggotty care for Stormy Petrels! I’ll have her christened again.”     57   
  “By what name?” I asked.     58   
  “The Little Em’ly.”     59   
  As he had continued to look steadily at me, I took it as a reminder that he objected to being extolled for his consideration. I could not help showing in my face how much it pleased me, but I said little, and he resumed his usual smile, and seemed relieved.     60   
  “But see her,” he said, looking before us, “where the original little Em’ly comes? And that fellow with her, eh? Upon my soul, he’s a true knight. He never leaves her!”     61   
  Ham was a boat-builder in these days, having improved a natural ingenuity in that handicraft, until he had become a skilled workman. He was in his working-dress, and looked rugged enough, but manly withal, and a very fit protector for the blooming little creature at his side. Indeed, there was a frankness in his face, an honesty, and an undisguised show of his pride in her, and his love for her, which were, to me, the best of good looks. I thought, as they came towards us, that they were well matched even in that particular.     62   
  She withdrew her hand timidly from his arm as we stopped to speak to them, and blushed as she gave it to Steerforth and to me. When they passed on, after we had exchanged a few words, she did not like to replace that hand, but still appearing timid and constrained, walked by herself. I thought all this very pretty and engaging, and Steerforth seemed to think so too, as we looked after them fading away in the light of a young moon.     63   
  Suddenly there passed us—evidently following them—a young woman whose approach we had not observed, but whose face I saw as she went by, and thought I had a faint remembrance of. She was lightly dressed; looked bold, and haggard, and flaunting, and poor; but seemed, for the time, to have given all that to the wind which was blowing, and to have nothing in her mind but going after them. As the dark distant level absorbing their figures into itself, left but itself visible between us and the sea and clouds, her figure disappeared in like manner, still no nearer to them than before.     64   
  “That is a black shadow to be following the girl,” said Steerforth, standing still; “what does it mean?”     65   
  He spoke in a low voice that sounded almost strange to me.     66   
  “She must have it in her mind to beg of them, I think,” said I.     67   
  “A beggar would be no novelty,” said Steerforth, “but it is a strange thing that the beggar should take that shape to-night.”     68   
  “Why?” I asked him.     69   
  “For no better reason, truly, than because I was thinking,” he said, after a pause, “of something like it, when it came by. Where the Devil did it come from, I wonder!”     70   
  “From the shadow of this wall, I think,” said I, as we emerged upon a road on which a wall abutted.     71   
  “It’s gone!” he returned, looking over his shoulder. “And all ill go with it. Now for our dinner!”     72   
  But he looked again over his shoulder towards the sealine glimmering afar off; and yet again. And he wondered about it, in some broken expressions, several times, in the short remainder of our walk; and only seemed to forget it when the light of fire and candle shone upon us, seated warm and merry, at table.     73   
  Littimer was there, and had his usual effect upon me. When I said to him that I hoped Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle were well, he answered respectfully (and of course respectably), that they were tolerably well, he thanked me, and had sent their compliments. This was all, and yet he seemed to me to say as plainly as a man could say: “You are very young, Sir; you are exceedingly young.”     74   
  We had almost finished dinner, when taking a step or two towards the table, from the corner where he kept watch upon us, or rather upon me, as I felt, he said to his master:     75   
  “I beg your pardon, Sir. Miss Mowcher is down here.”     76   
  “Who?” cried Steerforth, much astonished.     77   
  “Miss Mowcher, Sir.”     78   
  “Why, what on earth does she do here?” said Steerforth.     79   
  “It appears to be her native part of the country, Sir. She informs me that she makes one of her professional visits here, every year, Sir. I met her in the street this afternoon, and she wished to know if she might have the honour of waiting on you after dinner, Sir.”     80   
  “Do you know the giantess in question, Daisy?” inquired Steerforth.     81   
  I was obliged to confess—I felt ashamed, even of being at this disadvantage before Littimer—that Miss Mowcher and I were wholly unacquainted.     82   
  “Then you shall know her,” said Steerforth, “for she is one of the seven wonders of the world. When Miss Mowcher comes, show her in.”     83   
  I felt some curiosity and excitement about this lady, especially as Steerforth burst into a fit of laughing when I referred to her, and positively refused to answer any question of which I made her the subject. I remained, therefore, in a state of considerable expectation until the cloth had been removed some half-an-hour, and we were sitting over our decanter of wine before the fire, when the door opened, and Littimer, with his habitual serenity quite undisturbed, announced:     84   
  “Miss Mowcher!” I looked at the doorway and saw nothing. I was still looking at the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher was a long while making her appearance, when, to my infinite astonishment, there came waddling round a sofa which stood between me and it, a pursy dwarf, of about forty or forty-five, with a very large head and face, a pair of roguish grey eyes, and such extremely little arms, that, to enable herself to lay a finger archly against her snub nose as she ogled Steerforth, she was obliged to meet the finger halfway, and lay her nose against it. Her chin, which was what is called a double chin, was so fat that it entirely swallowed up the strings of her bonnet, bow and all. Throat she had none; waist she had none; legs she had none, worth mentioning; for though she was more than full-sized down to where her waist would have been, if she had had any, and though she terminated, as human beings generally do, in a pair of feet, she was so short that she stood at a common-sized chair as at a table, resting a bag she carried on the seat. This lady; dressed in an off-hand, easy style; bringing her nose and her forefinger together, with the difficulty I have described; standing with her head necessarily on one side, and, with one of her sharp eyes shut up, making an uncommonly knowing face; after ogling Steerforth for a few moments, broke into a torrent of words.     85   
  “What! My flower!” she pleasantly began, shaking her large head at him. “You’re there, are you! Oh, you naughty boy, fie for shame, what do you do so far away from home? Up to mischief, I’ll be bound. Oh, you’re a downy fellow, Steerforth, so you are, and I’m another, ain’t I? Ha, ha, ha! You’d have betted a hundred pound to five, now, that you wouldn’t have seen me here, wouldn’t you? Bless you, man alive, I’m everywhere. I’m here, and there, and where not, like the conjuror’s half-crown in the lady’s hankercher. Talking of hankerchers—and talking of ladies—what a comfort you are to your blessed mother, ain’t you, my dear boy, over one of my shoulders, and I don’t say which!”     86   
  Miss Mowcher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her discourse, threw back the strings, and sat down, panting, on a foot-stool in front of the fire—making a kind of arbour of the dining-table, which spread its mahogany shelter above her head.     87   
  “Oh my stars and what’s-their-names!” she went on, clapping a hand on each of her little knees, and glancing shrewdly at me. “I’m of too full a habit, that’s the fact, Steerforth. After a flight of stairs, it gives me as much trouble to draw every breath I want, as if it was a bucket of water. If you saw me looking out of an upper window, you’d think I was a fine woman, wouldn’t you?”     88   
  “I should think that, wherever I saw you,” replied Steerforth.     89   
  “Go along, you dog!” cried the little creature, making a whisk at him with the handkerchief with which she was wiping her face, “and don’t be impudent! But I give you my word and honour I was at Lady Mithers’s last week—there’s a woman! How she wears!—and Mithers himself came into the room where I was waiting for her—there’s a man! How he wears! and his wig too, for he’s had it these ten years—and he went on at that rate in the complimentary line, that I began to think I should be obliged to ring the bell. Ha! ha! ha! He’s a pleasant wretch, but he wants principle.”

 “What were you doing for Lady Mithers?” asked Steerforth.     91   
  “That’s tellings, my blessed infant,” she retorted, tapping her nose again, screwing up her face, and twinkling her eyes like an imp of supernatural intelligence. “Never you mind! You’d like to know whether I stop her hair from falling off, or dye it, or touch up her complexion, or improve her eyebrows, wouldn’t you? And so you shall, my darling—when I tell you! Do you know what my great grandfather’s name was?”     92   
  “No,” said Steerforth.     93   
  “It was Walker, my sweet pet,” replied Miss Mowcher, “and he came of a long line of Walkers, that I inherit all the Hookey estates from.”     94   
  I never beheld anything approaching to Miss Mowcher’s wink, except Miss Mowcher’s self-possession. She had a wonderful way too, when listening to what was said to her, or when waiting for an answer to what she had said herself, of pausing with her head cunningly on one side, and one eye turned up like a magpie’s. Altogether I was lost in amazement, and sat staring at her, quite oblivious, I am afraid, of the laws of politeness.     95   
  She had by this time drawn the chair to her side, and was busily engaged in producing from the bag (plunging in her short arm to the shoulder, at every dive) a number of small bottles, sponges, combs, brushes, bits of flannel, little pairs of curling-irons, and other instruments, which she tumbled in a heap upon the chair. From this employment she suddenly desisted, and said to Steerforth, much to my confusion:     96   
  “Who’s your friend?”     97   
  “Mr. Copperfield,” said Steerforth; “he wants to know you.”     98   
  “Well then, he shall! I thought he looked as if he did!” returned Miss Mowcher, waddling up to me, bag in hand, and laughing on me as she came. “Face like a peach!” standing on tiptoe to pinch my cheek as I sat. “Quite tempting! I’m very fond of peaches. Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Copperfield, I’m sure.”     99   
  I said that I congratulated myself on having the honour to make hers, and that the happiness was mutual.    100   
  “Oh my goodness, how polite we are!” exclaimed Miss Mowcher, making a preposterous attempt to cover her large face with her morsel of a hand. “What a world of gammon and spinnage it is, though, ain’t it!”    101   
  This was addressed confidentially to both of us, as the morsel of a hand came away from the face, and buried itself, arm and all, in the bag again.    102   
  “What do you mean, Miss Mowcher?” said Steerforth.    103   
  “Ha! ha! ha! What a refreshing set of humbugs we are, to be sure, ain’t we, my sweet child?” replied that morsel of a woman, feeling in the bag with her head on one side, and her eye in the air. “Look here!” taking something out. “Scraps of the Russian Prince’s nails! Prince Alphabet turned topsy-turvy, I call him, for his name’s got all the letters in it, higgledy-piggledy.”    104   
  “The Russian Prince is a client of yours, is he?” said Steerforth.    105   
  “I believe you, my pet,” replied Miss Mowcher. “I keep his nails in order for him. Twice a week! Fingers and toes!”    106   
  “He pays well, I hope?” said Steerforth.    107   
  “Pays as he speaks, my dear child—through the nose,” replied Miss Mowcher. “None of your close shavers the Prince ain’t. You’d say so, if you saw his mustachios. Red by nature, black by art.”    108   
  “By your art, of course,” said Steerforth.    109   
  Miss Mowcher winked assent. “Forced to send for me. Couldn’t help it. The climate affected his dye; it did very well in Russia, but it was no go here. You never saw such a rusty prince in all your born days as he was. Like old iron!”    110   
  “Is that why you called him a humbug, just now?” inquired Steerforth.    111   
  “Oh, you’re a broth of a boy, ain’t you?” returned Miss Mowcher, shaking her head violently. “I said, what a set of humbugs we were in general, and I showed you the scraps of the Prince’s nails to prove it. The Prince’s nails do more for me in private families of the genteel sort, than all my talents put together. I always carry’em about. They’re the best introduction. If Miss Mowcher cuts the Prince’s nails, she must be all right. I give’em away to the young ladies. They put’em in albums, I believe. Ha! ha! ha! Upon my life, ‘the whole social system’ (as the men call it when they make speeches in Parliament) is a system of Prince’s nails!” said this least of women, trying to fold her short arms, and nodding her large head.    112   
  Steerforth laughed heartily, and I laughed too. Miss Mowcher continuing all the time to shake her head (which was very much on one side), and to look into the air with one eye, and to wink with the other.    113   
  “Well, well!” she said, smiting her small knees, and rising, “this is not business. Come, Steerforth, let’s explore the polar regions, and have it over.”    114   
  She then selected two or three of the little instruments, and a little bottle, and asked (to my surprise) if the table would bear. On Steerforth’s replying in the affirmative, she pushed a chair against it, and begging the assistance of my hand, mounted up, pretty nimbly, to the top, as if it were a stage.    115   
  “If either of you saw my ankles,” she said, when she was safely elevated, “say so, and I’ll go home and destroy myself.”    116   
  “I did not,” said Steerforth.    117   
  “I did not,” said I.    118   
  “Well, then,” cried Miss Mowcher, “I’ll consent to live. Now, ducky, ducky, ducky, come to Mrs. Bond and be killed!”    119   
  This was an invocation to Steerforth to place himself under her hands; who, accordingly, sat himself down, with his back to the table, and his laughing face towards me, and submitted his head to her inspection, evidently for no other purpose than our entertainment. To see Miss Mowcher standing over him, looking at his rich profusion of brown hair through a large round magnifying-glass, which she took out of her pocket, was a most amazing spectacle.    120   
  “You’re a pretty fellow!” said Miss Mowcher, after a brief inspection. “You’d be as bald as a friar on the top of your head in twelve months, but for me. Just half-a-minute, my young friend, and we’ll give you a polishing that shall keep your curls on for the next ten years!”    121   
  With this, she tilted some of the contents of the little bottle on to one of the little bits of flannel, and, again imparting some of the virtues of that preparation to one of the little brushes, began rubbing and scraping away with both on the crown of Steerforth’s head in the busiest manner I ever witnessed, talking all the time.    122   
  “There’s Charley Pyegrave, the Duke’s son,” she said. “You know Charley?” peeping round into his face.    123   
  “A little,” said Steerforth.    124   
  “What a man he is! There’s a whisker! As to Charley’s legs, if they were only a pair (which they ain’t), they’d defy competition. Would you believe he tried to do without me—in the Life-Guards, too?”    125   
  “Mad!” said Steerforth.    126   
  “It looks like it. However, mad or sane, he tried,” returned Miss Mowcher. “What does he do, but, lo and behold you, he goes into a perfumer’s shop, and wants to buy a bottle of the Madagascar Liquid.”    127   
  “Charley does?” said Steerforth.    128   
  “Charley does. But they haven’t got any of the Madagascar Liquid.”    129   
  “What is it? Something to drink?” asked Steerforth.    130   
  “To drink?” returned Miss Mowcher, stopping to slap his cheek. “To doctor his own moustachios with, you know. There was a woman in the shop—elderly female—quite a Griffin—who had never even heard of it by name. ‘Begging pardon, Sir,’ said the Griffin to Charley, ‘it’s not—not—not ROUGE, is it?’ ‘Rouge,’ said Charley, to the Griffin. ‘What the unmentionable to ears polite, do you think I want with rouge?’ ‘No offence, Sir,’ said the Griffin; ‘we have it asked for by so many names, I thought it might be.’ Now that, my child,” continued Miss Mowcher, rubbing all the time as busily as ever, “is another instance of the refreshing humbug I was speaking of I do something in that way myself—perhaps a good deal—perhaps a little—sharp’s the word, my dear boy—never mind!”    131   
  “In what way do you mean? In the rouge way?” said Steerforth.    132   
  “Put this and that together, my tender pupil,” returned the wary Mowcher, touching her nose, “work it by the rule of Secrets in all trades, and the product will give you the desired result. I say I do a little in that way myself. One Dowager, she calls it lip-salve. Another, she calls it gloves. Another, she calls it tucker-edging. Another, she calls it a fan. I call it whatever they call it. I supply it for ’em, but we keep up the trick so, to one another, and make believe with such a face, that they’d as soon think of laying it on, before a whole drawing-room, as before me. And when I wait upon ’em, they’ll say to me sometimes—with it on—thick, and no mistake—‘How am I looking, Mowcher? Am I pale?’ Ha! ha! ha! ha! Isn’t that refreshing, my young friend!”    133   
  I never did in my days behold anything like Mowcher as she stood upon the dining-table, intensely enjoying this refreshment, rubbing busily at Steerforth’s head, and winking at me over it.    134   
  “Ah!” she said. “Such things are not much in demand hereabouts. That sets me off again! I haven’t seen a pretty woman since I’ve been here, Jemmy.”    135   
  “No?” said Steerforth.    136   
  “Not the ghost of one,” replied Miss Mowcher.    137   
  “We could show her the substance of one, I think?” said Steerforth, addressing his eyes to mine. “Eh, Daisy?”    138   
  “Yes, indeed,” said I.

 “Aha?” cried the little creature, glancing sharply at my face, and then peeping round at Steerforth’s. “Umph?”    140   
  The first exclamation sounded like a question put to both of us, and the second like a question put to Steerforth only. She seemed to have found no answer to either, but continued to rub, with her head on one side and her eye turned up, as if she were looking for an answer in the air, and were confident of its appearing presently.    141   
  “A sister of yours, Mr. Copperfield?” she cried, after a pause, and still keeping the same look-out. “Ay, ay?”    142   
  “No,” said Steerforth, before I could reply. “Nothing of the sort. On the contrary, Mr. Copperfield used—or I am much mistaken—to have a great admiration for her.”    143   
  “Why, hasn’t he now?” returned Miss Mowcher. “Is he fickle? oh, for shame! Did he sip every flower, and change every hour, until Polly his passion requited? Is her name Polly?”    144   
  The elfin suddenness with which she pounced upon me with this question, and a searching look, quite disconcerted me for a moment.    145   
  “No, Miss Mowcher,” I replied. “Her name is Emily.”    146   
  “Aha?” she cried exactly as before. “Umph? What a rattle I am! Mr. Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?”    147   
  Her tone and look implied something that was not agreeable to me in connexion with the subject. So I said, in a graver manner than any of us had yet assumed: “She is as virtuous as she is pretty. She is engaged to be married to a most worthy and deserving man in her own station of life. I esteem her for her good sense, as much as I admire her for her good looks.”    148   
  “Well said!” cried Steerforth. “Hear, hear, hear! Now, I’ll quench the curiosity of this little Fatima, my dear Daisy, by leaving her nothing to guess at. She is at present apprenticed, Miss Mowcher, or articled, or whatever it may be, to Omer and Joram, Haberdashers, Milliners, and so forth, in this town. Do you observe? Omer and Joram. The promise of which my friend has spoken, is made and entered into with her cousin; Christian name, Ham; surname, Peggotty; occupation, boat-builder; also of this town. She lives with a relative; Christian name, unknown; surname, Peggotty; occupation, seafaring; also of this town. She is the prettiest and most engaging little fairy in the world. I admire her—as my friend does—exceedingly. If it were not that I might appear to disparage her intended, which I know my friend would not like, I would add, that to me she seems to be throwing herself away; that I am sure she might do better; and that I swear she was born to be a lady.”    149   
  Miss Mowcher listened to these words, which were very slowly and distinctly spoken, with her head on one side, and her eye in the air, as if she were still looking for that answer. When he ceased she became brisk again in an instant, and rattled away with surprising volubility.    150   
  “Oh, and that’s all about it, is it?” she exclaimed, trimming his whiskers with a little restless pair of scissors, that went glancing round his head in all directions. “Very well: very well! Quite a long story. Ought to end ‘and they lived happy ever afterwards;’ oughtn’t it? Ah! What’s that game at forfeits? I love my love with an E, because she’s enticing: I hate her with an E, because she’s engaged. I took her to the sign of the exquisite, and treated her with an elopement; her name’s Emily, and she lives in the east? Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?”    151   
  Merely looking at me with extravagant slyness, and not waiting for any reply, she continued, without drawing breath: “There! If ever any scapegrace was trimmed and touched up to perfection, you are, Steerforth. If I understand any noddle in the world, I understand yours. Do you hear me when I tell you that, my darling? I understand yours,” peeping down into his face. “Now you may mizzle, Jemmy (as we say at Court), and if Mr. Copperfield will take the chair I’ll operate on him.”    152   
  “What do you say, Daisy?” inquired Steerforth, laughing, and resigning his seat. “Will you be improved?”    153   
  “Thank you, Miss Mowcher, not this evening.”    154   
  “Don’t say no,” returned the little woman, looking at me with the aspect of a connoisseur; “a little bit more eyebrow?”    155   
  “Thank you,” I returned, “some other time.”    156   
  “Have it carried half a quarter of an inch towards the temple,” said Miss Mowcher. “We can do it in a fortnight.”    157   
  “No, I thank you. Not at present.”    158   
  “Go in for a tip,” she urged. “No? Let’s get the scaffolding up, then, for a pair of whiskers. Come!”    159   
  I could not help blushing as I declined, for I felt we were on my weak point, now. But Miss Mowcher, finding that I was not at present disposed for any decoration within the range of her art, and that I was, for the time being, proof against the blandishments of the small bottle which she held up before one eye to enforce her persuasions, said she would make a beginning on an early day, and requested the aid of my hand to descend from her elevated station. Thus assisted, she skipped down with much agility, and began to tie her double chin into her bonnet.    160   
  “The fee,” said Steerforth, “is——”    161   
  “Five bob,” replied Miss Mowcher, “and dirt cheap, my chicken. Ain’t I volatile, Mr. Copperfield?”    162   
  I replied politely: “Not at all.” But I thought she was rather so, when she tossed up his two half-crowns like a goblin pieman, caught them, dropped them in her pocket and gave it a loud slap.    163   
  “That’s the Till!” observed Miss Mowcher, standing at the chair again, and replacing in the bag a miscellaneous collection of little objects she had emptied out of it. “Have I got all my traps? It seems so. It won’t do to be like long Ned Beadwood, when they took him to church ‘to marry him to somebody,’ as he says, and left the bride behind. Ha! ha! ha! A wicked rascal, Ned, but droll! Now, I know I’m going to break your hearts, but I am forced to leave you. You must call up all your fortitude, and try to bear it. Good bye, Mr. Copperfield! Take care of yourself, Jockey of Norfolk! How I have been rattling on! It’s all the fault of you two wretches. I forgive you! ‘Bob swore!’—as the Englishman said for ‘Good night,’ when he first learnt French, and thought it so like English. ‘Bob swore,’ my ducks!”    164   
  With the bag slung over her arm, and rattling as she waddled away, she waddled to the door; where she stopped to inquire if she should leave us a lock of her hair. “Ain’t I volatile?” she added, as a commentary on this offer, and, with her finger on her nose, departed.    165   
  Steerforth laughed to that degree, that it was impossible for me to help laughing too; though I am not sure I should have done so, but for this inducement. When we had had our laugh quite out, which was after some time, he told me that Miss Mowcher had quite an extensive connexion, and made herself useful to a variety of people in a variety of ways. Some people trifled with her as a mere oddity, he said; but she was as shrewdly and sharply observant as anyone he knew, and as long-headed as she was short-armed. He told me that what she had said of being here, and there, and everywhere, was true enough; for she made little darts into the provinces, and seemed to pick up customers everywhere, and to know everybody. I asked him what her disposition was: was: whether it was at all mischievous, and if her sympathies were generally on the right side of things: but, not succeeding in attracting his attention to these questions after two or three attempts, I forebore or forgot to repeat them. He told me instead, with much rapidity, a good deal about her skill, and her profits; and about her being a scientific cupper, if I should ever have occasion for her service in that capacity.    166   
  She was the principal theme of our conversation during the evening: and when we parted for the night Steerforth called after me over the banisters, “Bob swore!” as I went downstairs.    167   
  I was surprised, when I came to Mr. Barkis’s house, to find Ham walking up and down in front of it, and still more surprised to learn from him that little Em’ly was inside. I naturally inquired why he was not there too, instead of pacing the street by himself?    168   
  “Why, you see, Mas’r Davy,” he rejoined, in a hesitating manner, “Em’ly, she’s talking to some ’un in here.”    169   
  “I should have thought,” said I, smiling, “that that was a reason for your being in here too, Ham.”    170   
  “Well, Mas’r Davy, in a general way, so’t would be,” he returned; “but look’ee here, Mas’r Davy,” lowering his voice, and speaking very gravely. “It’s a young woman, Sir—a young woman, that Em’ly knowed once, and doen’t ought to know no more.”    171   
  When I heard these words, a light began to fall upon the figure I had seen following them, some hours ago.    172   
  “It’s a poor wurem, Mas’r Davy,” said Ham, “as is trod under foot by all the town. Up street and down street. The mowld o’ the churchyard don’t hold any that the folk shrink away from, more.”

  “Did I see her to-night, Ham, on the sands, after we met you?”    174   
  “Keeping us in sight?” said Ham. “It’s like you did, Mas’r Davy. Not that I know’d then, she was theer, Sir, but along of her creeping soon arterwards under Em’ly’s little winder, when she see a light come, and whisp’ring ‘Em’ly, Em’ly, for Christ’s sake, have a woman’s heart towards me. I was once like you!’ Those was solemn words, Mas’r Davy, fur to hear!”    175   
  “They were indeed, Ham. What did Em’ly do?”    176   
  “Says Em’ly, ‘Martha, is it you? Oh, Martha, can it be you?’—for they had sat at work together, many a day, at Mr. Omer’s.”    177   
  “I recollect her now!” cried I, recalling one of the two girls I had seen when I first went there. “I recollect her quite well!”    178   
  “Martha Endell,” said Ham. “Two or three years older than Em’ly, but was at the school with her.”    179   
  “I never heard her name,” said I. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”    180   
  “For the matter o’ that, Mas’r Davy,” replied Ham, “all’s told a’most in them words, ‘Em’ly, Em’ly, for Christ’s sake, have a woman’s heart towards me. I was once like you!’ She wanted to speak to Em’ly. Em’ly couldn’t speak to her theer, for her loving uncle was come home, and he wouldn’t—no, Mas’r Davy,” said Ham, with great earnestness, “he couldn’t, kind-natur’d, tender-hearted as he is, see them two together, side by side, for all the treasures that’s wrecked in the sea.”    181   
  I felt how true this was. I knew it, on the instant, quite as well as Ham.    182   
  “So Em’ly writes in pencil on a bit of paper,” he pursued, “and gives it to her out o’ window to bring here. ‘Show that,’ she says, ‘to my aunt, Mrs. Barkis, and she’ll set you down by her fire, for the love of me, till uncle is gone out, and I can come.’ By-and-by she tells me what I tell you, Mas’r Davy, and asks me to bring her. What can I do? She doen’t ought to know any such, but I can’t deny her, when the tears is on her face.”    183   
  He put his hand into the breast of his shaggy jacket and took out with great care a pretty little purse.    184   
  “And if I could deny her when the tears was on her face, Mas’r Davy,” said Ham, tenderly adjusting it on the rough palm of his hand, “how could I deny her when she give me this to carry for her—knowing what she brought it for? Such a toy as it is!” said Ham, thoughtfully looking on it. “With such a little money in it, Em’ly my dear!”    185   
  I shook him warmly by the hand when he had put it away again—for that was more satisfactory to me than saying anything—and we walked up and down, for a minute or two, in silence. The door opened then, and Peggotty appeared, beckoning to Ham to come in. I would have kept away, but she came after me, entreating me to come in too. Even then, I would have avoided the room where they all were, but for its being the neat-tiled kitchen I have mentioned more than once. The door opening immediately into it, I found myself among them, before I considered whither I was going.    186   
  The girl—the same I had seen upon the sands—was near the fire. She was sitting on the ground, with her head and one arm lying on a chair. I fancied, from the disposition of her figure, that Em’ly had but newly risen from the chair, and that the forlorn head might perhaps have been lying on her lap. I saw but little of the girl’s face, over which her hair fell loose and scattered, as if she had been disordering it with her own hands; but I saw that she was young, and of a fair complexion. Peggotty had been crying. So had little Em’ly. Not a word was spoken when we first went in; and the Dutch clock by the dresser seemed, in the silence, to tick twice as loud as usual.    187   
  Em’ly spoke first.    188   
  “Martha wants,” she said to Ham, “to go to London.”    189   
  “Why to London?” returned Ham.    190   
  He stood between them, looking on the prostrate girl with a mixture of compassion for her, and of jealousy of her holding any companionship with her whom he loved so well, which I have always remembered distinctly. They both spoke as if she were ill; in a soft, suppressed tone that was plainly heard, although it hardly rose above a whisper.    191   
  “Better there than here,” said a third voice aloud—Martha’s, though she did not move. “No one knows me there. Everybody knows me here.”    192   
  “What will she do there?” inquired Ham.    193   
  She lifted up her head, and looked darkly round at him for a moment; then laid it down again, and curved her right arm about her neck, as a woman in a fever, or in an agony of pain from a shot, might twist herself.    194   
  “She will try to do well,” said little Em’ly. “You don’t know what she has said to us. Does he—do they—aunt?”    195   
  Peggotty shook her head compassionately.    196   
  “I’ll try,” said Martha, “if you’ll help me away. I never can do worse than I have done here. I may do better. Oh!” with a dreadful shiver, “take me out of these streets, where the whole town knows me from a child!”    197   
  As Em’ly held out her hand to Ham, I saw him put in it a little canvas bag. She took it, as if she thought it were her purse, and made a step or two forward; but finding her mistake, came back to where he had retired near me, and showed it to him.    198   
  “It’s all yourn, Em’ly,” I could hear him say. “I haven’t nowt in all the wureld that ain’t yourn, my dear. It ain’t of no delight to me, except for you!”    199   
  The tears rose freshly in her eyes, but she turned away and went to Martha. What she gave her, I don’t know. I saw her stooping over her, and putting money in her bosom. She whispered something, and asked was that enough? “More than enough,” the other said, and took her hand and kissed it.    200   
  Then Martha arose, and gathering her shawl about her, covering her face with it, and weeping aloud, went slowly to the door. She stopped a moment before going out, as if she would have uttered something or turned back; but no word passed her lips. Making the same low, dreary, wretched moaning in her shawl, she went away.    201   
  As the door closed, little Em’ly looked at us three in a hurried manner, and then hid her face in her hands, and fell to sobbing.    202   
  “Doen’t, Em’ly!” said Ham, tapping her gently on the shoulder. “Doen’t, my dear! You doen’t ought to cry so, pretty!”    203   
  “Oh, Ham!” she exclaimed, still weeping pitifully, “I am not as good a girl as I ought to be! I know I have not the thankful heart, sometimes, I ought to have!”    204   
  “Yes, yes, you have, I’m sure,” said Ham.    205   
  “No! no! no!” cried little Em’ly, sobbing, and shaking her head. “I am not as good a girl as I ought to be. Not near! not near!”    206   
  And still she cried, as if her heart would break.    207   
  “I try your love too much. I know I do!” she sobbed “I am often cross to you, and changeable with you, when I ought to be far different. You are never so to me. Why am I ever so to you, when I should think of nothing but how to be grateful, and to make you happy!”    208   
  “You always make me so,” said Ham, “my dear! I am happy in the sight of you. I am happy, all day long, in the thoughts of you.”    209   
  “Ah! that’s not enough!” she cried. “That is because you are good; not because I am! Oh, my dear, it might have been a better fortune for you, if you had been fond of some one else—of some one steadier and much worthier than me, who was all bound up in you, and never vain and changeable like me!”    210   
  “Poor little tender-heart,” said Ham, in a low voice. “Martha has overset her, altogether.”    211   
  “Please, aunt,” sobbed Em’ly, “come here, and let me lay my head upon you. Oh, I am very miserable to-night, aunt! Oh, I am not as good a girl as I ought to be. I am not, I know!”    212   
  Peggotty had hastened to the chair before the fire. Em’ly, with her arms around her neck kneeled by her, looking up most earnestly into her face.    213   
  “Oh, pray, aunt, try to help me! Ham, dear, try to help me! Mr. David, for the sake of old times, do please, try to help me! I want to be a better girl than I am. I want to feel a hundred times more thankful than I do. I want to feel more, what a blessed thing it is to be the wife of a good man, and to lead a peaceful life. Oh me, oh me! Oh my heart, my heart!”    214   
  She dropped her face on my old nurse’s breast, and, ceasing this supplication, which in its agony and grief was half a woman’s, half a child’s, as all her manner was (being, in that, more natural, and better suited to her beauty, as I thought, than any other manner could have been), wept silently, while my old nurse hushed her like an infant.    215   
  She got calmer by degrees, and then we soothed her; now talking encouragingly, and now jesting a little with her, until she began to raise her head and speak to us. So we got on, until she was able to smile, and then to laugh, and then to sit up, half ashamed; while Peggotty recalled her stray ringlets, dried her eyes, and made her neat again, lest her uncle should wonder, when she got home, why his darling had been crying.    216   
  I saw her do, that night, what I had never seen her do before. I saw her innocently kiss her chosen husband on the cheek, and creep close to his bluff form as if it were her best support. When they went away together, in the waning moonlight, and I looked after them, comparing their departure in my mind with Martha’s, I saw that she held his arm with both her hands, and still kept close to him.