prompt:
Chapter: For a time--at all events until my book should be completed, which would
be the work of several months--I took up my abode in my aunt's house at
Dover; and there, sitting in the window from which I had looked out at
the moon upon the sea, when that roof first gave me shelter, I quietly
pursued my task.

In pursuance of my intention of referring to my own fictions only when
their course should incidentally connect itself with the progress of my
story, I do not enter on the aspirations, the delights, anxieties, and
triumphs of my art. That I truly devoted myself to it with my strongest
earnestness, and bestowed upon it every energy of my soul, I have
already said. If the books I have written be of any worth, they will
supply the rest. I shall otherwise have written to poor purpose, and the
rest will be of interest to no one.

Occasionally, I went to London; to lose myself in the swarm of life
there, or to consult with Traddles on some business point. He had
managed for me, in my absence, with the soundest judgement; and my
worldly affairs were prospering. As my notoriety began to bring upon
me an enormous quantity of letters from people of whom I had no
knowledge--chiefly about nothing, and extremely difficult to answer--I
agreed with Traddles to have my name painted up on his door. There, the
devoted postman on that beat delivered bushels of letters for me; and
there, at intervals, I laboured through them, like a Home Secretary of
State without the salary.

Among this correspondence, there dropped in, every now and then, an
obliging proposal from one of the numerous outsiders always lurking
about the Commons, to practise under cover of my name (if I would take
the necessary steps remaining to make a proctor of myself), and pay me
a percentage on the profits. But I declined these offers; being already
aware that there were plenty of such covert practitioners in existence,
and considering the Commons quite bad enough, without my doing anything
to make it worse.

The girls had gone home, when my name burst into bloom on Traddles's
door; and the sharp boy looked, all day, as if he had never heard of
Sophy, shut up in a back room, glancing down from her work into a sooty
little strip of garden with a pump in it. But there I always found her,
the same bright housewife; often humming her Devonshire ballads when no
strange foot was coming up the stairs, and blunting the sharp boy in his
official closet with melody.

I wondered, at first, why I so often found Sophy writing in a copy-book;
and why she always shut it up when I appeared, and hurried it into the
table-drawer. But the secret soon came out. One day, Traddles (who had
just come home through the drizzling sleet from Court) took a paper out
of his desk, and asked me what I thought of that handwriting?

'Oh, DON'T, Tom!' cried Sophy, who was warming his slippers before the
fire.

'My dear,' returned Tom, in a delighted state, 'why not? What do you say
to that writing, Copperfield?'

'It's extraordinarily legal and formal,' said I. 'I don't think I ever
saw such a stiff hand.'

'Not like a lady's hand, is it?' said Traddles.

'A lady's!' I repeated. 'Bricks and mortar are more like a lady's hand!'

Traddles broke into a rapturous laugh, and informed me that it was
Sophy's writing; that Sophy had vowed and declared he would need a
copying-clerk soon, and she would be that clerk; that she had acquired
this hand from a pattern; and that she could throw off--I forget how
many folios an hour. Sophy was very much confused by my being told all
this, and said that when 'Tom' was made a judge he wouldn't be so ready
to proclaim it. Which 'Tom' denied; averring that he should always be
equally proud of it, under all circumstances.

'What a thoroughly good and charming wife she is, my dear Traddles!'
said I, when she had gone away, laughing.

'My dear Copperfield,' returned Traddles, 'she is, without any
exception, the dearest girl! The way she manages this place; her
punctuality, domestic knowledge, economy, and order; her cheerfulness,
Copperfield!'

'Indeed, you have reason to commend her!' I returned. 'You are a happy
fellow. I believe you make yourselves, and each other, two of the
happiest people in the world.'

'I am sure we ARE two of the happiest people,' returned Traddles. 'I
admit that, at all events. Bless my soul, when I see her getting up
by candle-light on these dark mornings, busying herself in the day's
arrangements, going out to market before the clerks come into the Inn,
caring for no weather, devising the most capital little dinners out of
the plainest materials, making puddings and pies, keeping everything in
its right place, always so neat and ornamental herself, sitting up
at night with me if it's ever so late, sweet-tempered and encouraging
always, and all for me, I positively sometimes can't believe it,
Copperfield!'

He was tender of the very slippers she had been warming, as he put them
on, and stretched his feet enjoyingly upon the fender.

'I positively sometimes can't believe it,' said Traddles. 'Then our
pleasures! Dear me, they are inexpensive, but they are quite wonderful!
When we are at home here, of an evening, and shut the outer door, and
draw those curtains--which she made--where could we be more snug? When
it's fine, and we go out for a walk in the evening, the streets
abound in enjoyment for us. We look into the glittering windows of the
jewellers' shops; and I show Sophy which of the diamond-eyed serpents,
coiled up on white satin rising grounds, I would give her if I could
afford it; and Sophy shows me which of the gold watches that are
capped and jewelled and engine-turned, and possessed of the horizontal
lever-escape-movement, and all sorts of things, she would buy for me if
she could afford it; and we pick out the spoons and forks, fish-slices,
butter-knives, and sugar-tongs, we should both prefer if we could both
afford it; and really we go away as if we had got them! Then, when we
stroll into the squares, and great streets, and see a house to let,
sometimes we look up at it, and say, how would THAT do, if I was made
a judge? And we parcel it out--such a room for us, such rooms for the
girls, and so forth; until we settle to our satisfaction that it
would do, or it wouldn't do, as the case may be. Sometimes, we go at
half-price to the pit of the theatre--the very smell of which is cheap,
in my opinion, at the money--and there we thoroughly enjoy the play:
which Sophy believes every word of, and so do I. In walking home,
perhaps we buy a little bit of something at a cook's-shop, or a little
lobster at the fishmongers, and bring it here, and make a splendid
supper, chatting about what we have seen. Now, you know, Copperfield, if
I was Lord Chancellor, we couldn't do this!'

'You would do something, whatever you were, my dear Traddles,' thought
I, 'that would be pleasant and amiable. And by the way,' I said aloud,
'I suppose you never draw any skeletons now?'

'Really,' replied Traddles, laughing, and reddening, 'I can't wholly
deny that I do, my dear Copperfield. For being in one of the back rows
of the King's Bench the other day, with a pen in my hand, the fancy came
into my head to try how I had preserved that accomplishment. And I am
afraid there's a skeleton--in a wig--on the ledge of the desk.'

After we had both laughed heartily, Traddles wound up by looking with a
smile at the fire, and saying, in his forgiving way, 'Old Creakle!'

'I have a letter from that old--Rascal here,' said I. For I never was
less disposed to forgive him the way he used to batter Traddles, than
when I saw Traddles so ready to forgive him himself.

'From Creakle the schoolmaster?' exclaimed Traddles. 'No!'

'Among the persons who are attracted to me in my rising fame and
fortune,' said I, looking over my letters, 'and who discover that they
were always much attached to me, is the self-same Creakle. He is not
a schoolmaster now, Traddles. He is retired. He is a Middlesex
Magistrate.'

I thought Traddles might be surprised to hear it, but he was not so at
all.

'How do you suppose he comes to be a Middlesex Magistrate?' said I.

'Oh dear me!' replied Traddles, 'it would be very difficult to answer
that question. Perhaps he voted for somebody, or lent money to somebody,
or bought something of somebody, or otherwise obliged somebody, or
jobbed for somebody, who knew somebody who got the lieutenant of the
county to nominate him for the commission.'

'On the commission he is, at any rate,' said I. 'And he writes to me
here, that he will be glad to show me, in operation, the only true
system of prison discipline; the only unchallengeable way of making
sincere and lasting converts and penitents--which, you know, is by
solitary confinement. What do you say?'

'To the system?' inquired Traddles, looking grave.

'No. To my accepting the offer, and your going with me?'

'I don't object,' said Traddles.

'Then I'll write to say so. You remember (to say nothing of our
treatment) this same Creakle turning his son out of doors, I suppose,
and the life he used to lead his wife and daughter?'

'Perfectly,' said Traddles.

'Yet, if you'll read his letter, you'll find he is the tenderest of
men to prisoners convicted of the whole calendar of felonies,' said I;
'though I can't find that his tenderness extends to any other class of
created beings.'

Traddles shrugged his shoulders, and was not at all surprised. I had not
expected him to be, and was not surprised myself; or my observation of
similar practical satires would have been but scanty. We arranged the
time of our visit, and I wrote accordingly to Mr. Creakle that evening.

On the appointed day--I think it was the next day, but no
matter--Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr. Creakle was
powerful. It was an immense and solid building, erected at a vast
expense. I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what
an uproar would have been made in the country, if any deluded man had
proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an
industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving
old.

In an office that might have been on the ground-floor of the Tower of
Babel, it was so massively constructed, we were presented to our old
schoolmaster; who was one of a group, composed of two or three of the
busier sort of magistrates, and some visitors they had brought. He
received me, like a man who had formed my mind in bygone years, and
had always loved me tenderly. On my introducing Traddles, Mr. Creakle
expressed, in like manner, but in an inferior degree, that he had always
been Traddles's guide, philosopher, and friend. Our venerable instructor
was a great deal older, and not improved in appearance. His face was
as fiery as ever; his eyes were as small, and rather deeper set. The
scanty, wet-looking grey hair, by which I remembered him, was almost
gone; and the thick veins in his bald head were none the more agreeable
to look at.

After some conversation among these gentlemen, from which I might have
supposed that there was nothing in the world to be legitimately taken
into account but the supreme comfort of prisoners, at any expense, and
nothing on the wide earth to be done outside prison-doors, we began
our inspection. It being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the
great kitchen, where every prisoner's dinner was in course of being set
out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity
and precision of clock-work. I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered
whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast
between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not
to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk
of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred
ever dined half so well. But I learned that the 'system' required high
living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found
that on that head and on all others, 'the system' put an end to all
doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least
idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered.

As we were going through some of the magnificent passages, I inquired of
Mr. Creakle and his friends what were supposed to be the main advantages
of this all-governing and universally over-riding system? I found
them to be the perfect isolation of prisoners--so that no one man in
confinement there, knew anything about another; and the reduction of
prisoners to a wholesome state of mind, leading to sincere contrition
and repentance.

Now, it struck me, when we began to visit individuals in their cells,
and to traverse the passages in which those cells were, and to have the
manner of the going to chapel and so forth, explained to us, that there
was a strong probability of the prisoners knowing a good deal about each
other, and of their carrying on a pretty complete system of intercourse.
This, at the time I write, has been proved, I believe, to be the case;
but, as it would have been flat blasphemy against the system to have
hinted such a doubt then, I looked out for the penitence as diligently
as I could.

And here again, I had great misgivings. I found as prevalent a fashion
in the form of the penitence, as I had left outside in the forms of the
coats and waistcoats in the windows of the tailors' shops. I found a
vast amount of profession, varying very little in character: varying
very little (which I thought exceedingly suspicious), even in words. I
found a great many foxes, disparaging whole vineyards of inaccessible
grapes; but I found very few foxes whom I would have trusted within
reach of a bunch. Above all, I found that the most professing men were
the greatest objects of interest; and that their conceit, their vanity,
their want of excitement, and their love of deception (which many
of them possessed to an almost incredible extent, as their histories
showed), all prompted to these professions, and were all gratified by
them.

However, I heard so repeatedly, in the course of our goings to and fro,
of a certain Number Twenty Seven, who was the Favourite, and who really
appeared to be a Model Prisoner, that I resolved to suspend my judgement
until I should see Twenty Seven. Twenty Eight, I understood, was also
a bright particular star; but it was his misfortune to have his glory
a little dimmed by the extraordinary lustre of Twenty Seven. I heard so
much of Twenty Seven, of his pious admonitions to everybody around him,
and of the beautiful letters he constantly wrote to his mother (whom he
seemed to consider in a very bad way), that I became quite impatient to
see him.

I had to restrain my impatience for some time, on account of Twenty
Seven being reserved for a concluding effect. But, at last, we came to
the door of his cell; and Mr. Creakle, looking through a little hole in
it, reported to us, in a state of the greatest admiration, that he was
reading a Hymn Book.

There was such a rush of heads immediately, to see Number Twenty Seven
reading his Hymn Book, that the little hole was blocked up, six or seven
heads deep. To remedy this inconvenience, and give us an opportunity of
conversing with Twenty Seven in all his purity, Mr. Creakle directed the
door of the cell to be unlocked, and Twenty Seven to be invited out into
the passage. This was done; and whom should Traddles and I then behold,
to our amazement, in this converted Number Twenty Seven, but Uriah Heep!

He knew us directly; and said, as he came out--with the old writhe,--

'How do you do, Mr. Copperfield? How do you do, Mr. Traddles?'

This recognition caused a general admiration in the party. I rather
thought that everyone was struck by his not being proud, and taking
notice of us.

'Well, Twenty Seven,' said Mr. Creakle, mournfully admiring him. 'How do
you find yourself today?'

'I am very umble, sir!' replied Uriah Heep.

'You are always so, Twenty Seven,' said Mr. Creakle.

Here, another gentleman asked, with extreme anxiety: 'Are you quite
comfortable?'

'Yes, I thank you, sir!' said Uriah Heep, looking in that direction.
'Far more comfortable here, than ever I was outside. I see my follies,
now, sir. That's what makes me comfortable.'

Several gentlemen were much affected; and a third questioner, forcing
himself to the front, inquired with extreme feeling: 'How do you find
the beef?'

'Thank you, sir,' replied Uriah, glancing in the new direction of this
voice, 'it was tougher yesterday than I could wish; but it's my duty to
bear. I have committed follies, gentlemen,' said Uriah, looking round
with a meek smile, 'and I ought to bear the consequences without
repining.' A murmur, partly of gratification at Twenty Seven's celestial
state of mind, and partly of indignation against the Contractor who had
given him any cause of complaint (a note of which was immediately made
by Mr. Creakle), having subsided, Twenty Seven stood in the midst of
us, as if he felt himself the principal object of merit in a highly
meritorious museum. That we, the neophytes, might have an excess of
light shining upon us all at once, orders were given to let out Twenty
Eight.

I had been so much astonished already, that I only felt a kind of
resigned wonder when Mr. Littimer walked forth, reading a good book!

'Twenty Eight,' said a gentleman in spectacles, who had not yet spoken,
'you complained last week, my good fellow, of the cocoa. How has it been
since?'

'I thank you, sir,' said Mr. Littimer, 'it has been better made. If I
might take the liberty of saying so, sir, I don't think the milk which
is boiled with it is quite genuine; but I am aware, sir, that there is
a great adulteration of milk, in London, and that the article in a pure
state is difficult to be obtained.'

It appeared to me that the gentleman in spectacles backed his Twenty
Eight against Mr. Creakle's Twenty Seven, for each of them took his own
man in hand.

'What is your state of mind, Twenty Eight?' said the questioner in
spectacles.

'I thank you, sir,' returned Mr. Littimer; 'I see my follies now, sir.
I am a good deal troubled when I think of the sins of my former
companions, sir; but I trust they may find forgiveness.'

'You are quite happy yourself?' said the questioner, nodding
encouragement.

'I am much obliged to you, sir,' returned Mr. Littimer. 'Perfectly so.'

'Is there anything at all on your mind now?' said the questioner. 'If
so, mention it, Twenty Eight.'

'Sir,' said Mr. Littimer, without looking up, 'if my eyes have not
deceived me, there is a gentleman present who was acquainted with me
in my former life. It may be profitable to that gentleman to know, sir,
that I attribute my past follies, entirely to having lived a thoughtless
life in the service of young men; and to having allowed myself to be led
by them into weaknesses, which I had not the strength to resist. I hope
that gentleman will take warning, sir, and will not be offended at my
freedom. It is for his good. I am conscious of my own past follies. I
hope he may repent of all the wickedness and sin to which he has been a
party.'

I observed that several gentlemen were shading their eyes, each with one
hand, as if they had just come into church.

'This does you credit, Twenty Eight,' returned the questioner. 'I should
have expected it of you. Is there anything else?'

'Sir,' returned Mr. Littimer, slightly lifting up his eyebrows, but not
his eyes, 'there was a young woman who fell into dissolute courses, that
I endeavoured to save, sir, but could not rescue. I beg that gentleman,
if he has it in his power, to inform that young woman from me that
I forgive her her bad conduct towards myself, and that I call her to
repentance--if he will be so good.'

'I have no doubt, Twenty Eight,' returned the questioner, 'that the
gentleman you refer to feels very strongly--as we all must--what you
have so properly said. We will not detain you.'

'I thank you, sir,' said Mr. Littimer. 'Gentlemen, I wish you a good
day, and hoping you and your families will also see your wickedness, and
amend!'

With this, Number Twenty Eight retired, after a glance between him and
Uriah; as if they were not altogether unknown to each other, through
some medium of communication; and a murmur went round the group, as his
door shut upon him, that he was a most respectable man, and a beautiful
case.

'Now, Twenty Seven,' said Mr. Creakle, entering on a clear stage with
his man, 'is there anything that anyone can do for you? If so, mention
it.'

'I would umbly ask, sir,' returned Uriah, with a jerk of his malevolent
head, 'for leave to write again to mother.'

'It shall certainly be granted,' said Mr. Creakle.

'Thank you, sir! I am anxious about mother. I am afraid she ain't safe.'

Somebody incautiously asked, what from? But there was a scandalized
whisper of 'Hush!'

'Immortally safe, sir,' returned Uriah, writhing in the direction of
the voice. 'I should wish mother to be got into my state. I never should
have been got into my present state if I hadn't come here. I wish mother
had come here. It would be better for everybody, if they got took up,
and was brought here.'

This sentiment gave unbounded satisfaction--greater satisfaction, I
think, than anything that had passed yet.

'Before I come here,' said Uriah, stealing a look at us, as if he would
have blighted the outer world to which we belonged, if he could, 'I was
given to follies; but now I am sensible of my follies. There's a deal
of sin outside. There's a deal of sin in mother. There's nothing but sin
everywhere--except here.'

'You are quite changed?' said Mr. Creakle.

'Oh dear, yes, sir!' cried this hopeful penitent.

'You wouldn't relapse, if you were going out?' asked somebody else.

'Oh de-ar no, sir!'

'Well!' said Mr. Creakle, 'this is very gratifying. You have addressed
Mr. Copperfield, Twenty Seven. Do you wish to say anything further to
him?'

'You knew me, a long time before I came here and was changed, Mr.
Copperfield,' said Uriah, looking at me; and a more villainous look
I never saw, even on his visage. 'You knew me when, in spite of my
follies, I was umble among them that was proud, and meek among them that
was violent--you was violent to me yourself, Mr. Copperfield. Once, you
struck me a blow in the face, you know.'

General commiseration. Several indignant glances directed at me.

'But I forgive you, Mr. Copperfield,' said Uriah, making his forgiving
nature the subject of a most impious and awful parallel, which I shall
not record. 'I forgive everybody. It would ill become me to bear malice.
I freely forgive you, and I hope you'll curb your passions in future. I
hope Mr. W. will repent, and Miss W., and all of that sinful lot. You've
been visited with affliction, and I hope it may do you good; but you'd
better have come here. Mr. W. had better have come here, and Miss W.
too. The best wish I could give you, Mr. Copperfield, and give all of
you gentlemen, is, that you could be took up and brought here. When I
think of my past follies, and my present state, I am sure it would be
best for you. I pity all who ain't brought here!'

He sneaked back into his cell, amidst a little chorus of approbation;
and both Traddles and I experienced a great relief when he was locked
in.

It was a characteristic feature in this repentance, that I was fain to
ask what these two men had done, to be there at all. That appeared to be
the last thing about which they had anything to say. I addressed
myself to one of the two warders, who, I suspected from certain latent
indications in their faces, knew pretty well what all this stir was
worth.

'Do you know,' said I, as we walked along the passage, 'what felony was
Number Twenty Seven's last "folly"?'

The answer was that it was a Bank case.

'A fraud on the Bank of England?' I asked. 'Yes, sir. Fraud, forgery,
and conspiracy. He and some others. He set the others on. It was a deep
plot for a large sum. Sentence, transportation for life. Twenty Seven
was the knowingest bird of the lot, and had very nearly kept himself
safe; but not quite. The Bank was just able to put salt upon his
tail--and only just.'

'Do you know Twenty Eight's offence?'

'Twenty Eight,' returned my informant, speaking throughout in a low
tone, and looking over his shoulder as we walked along the passage, to
guard himself from being overheard, in such an unlawful reference
to these Immaculates, by Creakle and the rest; 'Twenty Eight (also
transportation) got a place, and robbed a young master of a matter of
two hundred and fifty pounds in money and valuables, the night before
they were going abroad. I particularly recollect his case, from his
being took by a dwarf.'

'A what?'

'A little woman. I have forgot her name?'

'Not Mowcher?'

'That's it! He had eluded pursuit, and was going to America in a flaxen
wig, and whiskers, and such a complete disguise as never you see in all
your born days; when the little woman, being in Southampton, met
him walking along the street--picked him out with her sharp eye in a
moment--ran betwixt his legs to upset him--and held on to him like grim
Death.'

'Excellent Miss Mowcher!' cried I.

'You'd have said so, if you had seen her, standing on a chair in the
witness-box at the trial, as I did,' said my friend. 'He cut her face
right open, and pounded her in the most brutal manner, when she took
him; but she never loosed her hold till he was locked up. She held so
tight to him, in fact, that the officers were obliged to take 'em
both together. She gave her evidence in the gamest way, and was highly
complimented by the Bench, and cheered right home to her lodgings. She
said in Court that she'd have took him single-handed (on account of what
she knew concerning him), if he had been Samson. And it's my belief she
would!'

It was mine too, and I highly respected Miss Mowcher for it.

We had now seen all there was to see. It would have been in vain to
represent to such a man as the Worshipful Mr. Creakle, that Twenty Seven
and Twenty Eight were perfectly consistent and unchanged; that exactly
what they were then, they had always been; that the hypocritical knaves
were just the subjects to make that sort of profession in such a place;
that they knew its market-value at least as well as we did, in the
immediate service it would do them when they were expatriated; in
a word, that it was a rotten, hollow, painfully suggestive piece of
business altogether. We left them to their system and themselves, and
went home wondering.

'Perhaps it's a good thing, Traddles,' said I, 'to have an unsound Hobby
ridden hard; for it's the sooner ridden to death.'

'I hope so,' replied Traddles.

The year came round to Christmas-time, and I had been at home above
two months. I had seen Agnes frequently. However loud the general voice
might be in giving me encouragement, and however fervent the emotions
and endeavours to which it roused me, I heard her lightest word of
praise as I heard nothing else.

At least once a week, and sometimes oftener, I rode over there, and
passed the evening. I usually rode back at night; for the old unhappy
sense was always hovering about me now--most sorrowfully when I left
her--and I was glad to be up and out, rather than wandering over the
past in weary wakefulness or miserable dreams. I wore away the longest
part of many wild sad nights, in those rides; reviving, as I went, the
thoughts that had occupied me in my long absence.

Or, if I were to say rather that I listened to the echoes of those
thoughts, I should better express the truth. They spoke to me from afar
off. I had put them at a distance, and accepted my inevitable place.
When I read to Agnes what I wrote; when I saw her listening face; moved
her to smiles or tears; and heard her cordial voice so earnest on the
shadowy events of that imaginative world in which I lived; I thought
what a fate mine might have been--but only thought so, as I had thought
after I was married to Dora, what I could have wished my wife to be.

My duty to Agnes, who loved me with a love, which, if I disquieted, I
wronged most selfishly and poorly, and could never restore; my matured
assurance that I, who had worked out my own destiny, and won what I
had impetuously set my heart on, had no right to murmur, and must bear;
comprised what I felt and what I had learned. But I loved her: and now
it even became some consolation to me, vaguely to conceive a distant day
when I might blamelessly avow it; when all this should be over; when I
could say 'Agnes, so it was when I came home; and now I am old, and I
never have loved since!'

She did not once show me any change in herself. What she always had been
to me, she still was; wholly unaltered.

Between my aunt and me there had been something, in this connexion,
since the night of my return, which I cannot call a restraint, or an
avoidance of the subject, so much as an implied understanding that we
thought of it together, but did not shape our thoughts into words. When,
according to our old custom, we sat before the fire at night, we often
fell into this train; as naturally, and as consciously to each other, as
if we had unreservedly said so. But we preserved an unbroken silence. I
believed that she had read, or partly read, my thoughts that night; and
that she fully comprehended why I gave mine no more distinct expression.

This Christmas-time being come, and Agnes having reposed no new
confidence in me, a doubt that had several times arisen in my
mind--whether she could have that perception of the true state of
my breast, which restrained her with the apprehension of giving me
pain--began to oppress me heavily. If that were so, my sacrifice was
nothing; my plainest obligation to her unfulfilled; and every poor
action I had shrunk from, I was hourly doing. I resolved to set this
right beyond all doubt;--if such a barrier were between us, to break it
down at once with a determined hand.

It was--what lasting reason have I to remember it!--a cold, harsh,
winter day. There had been snow, some hours before; and it lay, not
deep, but hard-frozen on the ground. Out at sea, beyond my window, the
wind blew ruggedly from the north. I had been thinking of it, sweeping
over those mountain wastes of snow in Switzerland, then inaccessible to
any human foot; and had been speculating which was the lonelier, those
solitary regions, or a deserted ocean.

'Riding today, Trot?' said my aunt, putting her head in at the door.

'Yes,' said I, 'I am going over to Canterbury. It's a good day for a
ride.'

'I hope your horse may think so too,' said my aunt; 'but at present he
is holding down his head and his ears, standing before the door there,
as if he thought his stable preferable.'

My aunt, I may observe, allowed my horse on the forbidden ground, but
had not at all relented towards the donkeys.

'He will be fresh enough, presently!' said I.

'The ride will do his master good, at all events,' observed my aunt,
glancing at the papers on my table. 'Ah, child, you pass a good many
hours here! I never thought, when I used to read books, what work it was
to write them.'

'It's work enough to read them, sometimes,' I returned. 'As to the
writing, it has its own charms, aunt.'

'Ah! I see!' said my aunt. 'Ambition, love of approbation, sympathy, and
much more, I suppose? Well: go along with you!'

'Do you know anything more,' said I, standing composedly before her--she
had patted me on the shoulder, and sat down in my chair--'of that
attachment of Agnes?'

She looked up in my face a little while, before replying:

'I think I do, Trot.'

'Are you confirmed in your impression?' I inquired.

'I think I am, Trot.'

She looked so steadfastly at me: with a kind of doubt, or pity, or
suspense in her affection: that I summoned the stronger determination to
show her a perfectly cheerful face.

'And what is more, Trot--' said my aunt.

'Yes!'

'I think Agnes is going to be married.'

'God bless her!' said I, cheerfully.

'God bless her!' said my aunt, 'and her husband too!'

I echoed it, parted from my aunt, and went lightly downstairs, mounted,
and rode away. There was greater reason than before to do what I had
resolved to do.

How well I recollect the wintry ride! The frozen particles of ice,
brushed from the blades of grass by the wind, and borne across my face;
the hard clatter of the horse's hoofs, beating a tune upon the ground;
the stiff-tilled soil; the snowdrift, lightly eddying in the chalk-pit
as the breeze ruffled it; the smoking team with the waggon of old hay,
stopping to breathe on the hill-top, and shaking their bells musically;
the whitened slopes and sweeps of Down-land lying against the dark sky,
as if they were drawn on a huge slate!

I found Agnes alone. The little girls had gone to their own homes now,
and she was alone by the fire, reading. She put down her book on seeing
me come in; and having welcomed me as usual, took her work-basket and
sat in one of the old-fashioned windows.

I sat beside her on the window-seat, and we talked of what I was doing,
and when it would be done, and of the progress I had made since my last
visit. Agnes was very cheerful; and laughingly predicted that I should
soon become too famous to be talked to, on such subjects.

'So I make the most of the present time, you see,' said Agnes, 'and talk
to you while I may.'

As I looked at her beautiful face, observant of her work, she raised her
mild clear eyes, and saw that I was looking at her.

'You are thoughtful today, Trotwood!'

'Agnes, shall I tell you what about? I came to tell you.'

She put aside her work, as she was used to do when we were seriously
discussing anything; and gave me her whole attention.

'My dear Agnes, do you doubt my being true to you?'

'No!' she answered, with a look of astonishment.

'Do you doubt my being what I always have been to you?'

'No!' she answered, as before.

'Do you remember that I tried to tell you, when I came home, what a debt
of gratitude I owed you, dearest Agnes, and how fervently I felt towards
you?'

'I remember it,' she said, gently, 'very well.'

'You have a secret,' said I. 'Let me share it, Agnes.'

She cast down her eyes, and trembled.

'I could hardly fail to know, even if I had not heard--but from other
lips than yours, Agnes, which seems strange--that there is someone upon
whom you have bestowed the treasure of your love. Do not shut me out of
what concerns your happiness so nearly! If you can trust me, as you say
you can, and as I know you may, let me be your friend, your brother, in
this matter, of all others!'

With an appealing, almost a reproachful, glance, she rose from the
window; and hurrying across the room as if without knowing where, put
her hands before her face, and burst into such tears as smote me to the
heart.

And yet they awakened something in me, bringing promise to my heart.
Without my knowing why, these tears allied themselves with the quietly
sad smile which was so fixed in my remembrance, and shook me more with
hope than fear or sorrow.

'Agnes! Sister! Dearest! What have I done?'

'Let me go away, Trotwood. I am not well. I am not myself. I will speak
to you by and by--another time. I will write to you. Don't speak to me
now. Don't! don't!'

I sought to recollect what she had said, when I had spoken to her on
that former night, of her affection needing no return. It seemed a very
world that I must search through in a moment. 'Agnes, I cannot bear
to see you so, and think that I have been the cause. My dearest girl,
dearer to me than anything in life, if you are unhappy, let me share
your unhappiness. If you are in need of help or counsel, let me try to
give it to you. If you have indeed a burden on your heart, let me try to
lighten it. For whom do I live now, Agnes, if it is not for you!'

'Oh, spare me! I am not myself! Another time!' was all I could
distinguish.

Was it a selfish error that was leading me away? Or, having once a clue
to hope, was there something opening to me that I had not dared to think
of?

'I must say more. I cannot let you leave me so! For Heaven's sake,
Agnes, let us not mistake each other after all these years, and all
that has come and gone with them! I must speak plainly. If you have any
lingering thought that I could envy the happiness you will confer; that
I could not resign you to a dearer protector, of your own choosing; that
I could not, from my removed place, be a contented witness of your joy;
dismiss it, for I don't deserve it! I have not suffered quite in vain.
You have not taught me quite in vain. There is no alloy of self in what
I feel for you.'

She was quiet now. In a little time, she turned her pale face towards
me, and said in a low voice, broken here and there, but very clear:

'I owe it to your pure friendship for me, Trotwood--which, indeed, I do
not doubt--to tell you, you are mistaken. I can do no more. If I have
sometimes, in the course of years, wanted help and counsel, they have
come to me. If I have sometimes been unhappy, the feeling has passed
away. If I have ever had a burden on my heart, it has been lightened
for me. If I have any secret, it is--no new one; and is--not what you
suppose. I cannot reveal it, or divide it. It has long been mine, and
must remain mine.'

'Agnes! Stay! A moment!'

She was going away, but I detained her. I clasped my arm about her
waist. 'In the course of years!' 'It is not a new one!' New thoughts and
hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were
changing.

'Dearest Agnes! Whom I so respect and honour--whom I so devotedly love!
When I came here today, I thought that nothing could have wrested this
confession from me. I thought I could have kept it in my bosom all our
lives, till we were old. But, Agnes, if I have indeed any new-born hope
that I may ever call you something more than Sister, widely different
from Sister!--'

Her tears fell fast; but they were not like those she had lately shed,
and I saw my hope brighten in them.

'Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more mindful
of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together, I think my
heedless fancy never would have wandered from you. But you were so
much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish hope and
disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely upon in
everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the time the first
and greater one of loving you as I do!'

Still weeping, but not sadly--joyfully! And clasped in my arms as she
had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!

'When I loved Dora--fondly, Agnes, as you know--'

'Yes!' she cried, earnestly. 'I am glad to know it!'

'When I loved her--even then, my love would have been incomplete,
without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when I lost
her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!'

Closer in my arms, nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my
shoulder, her sweet eyes shining through her tears, on mine!

'I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I
returned home, loving you!'

And now, I tried to tell her of the struggle I had had, and the
conclusion I had come to. I tried to lay my mind before her, truly, and
entirely. I tried to show her how I had hoped I had come into the better
knowledge of myself and of her; how I had resigned myself to what that
better knowledge brought; and how I had come there, even that day, in my
fidelity to this. If she did so love me (I said) that she could take me
for her husband, she could do so, on no deserving of mine, except upon
the truth of my love for her, and the trouble in which it had ripened to
be what it was; and hence it was that I revealed it. And O, Agnes, even
out of thy true eyes, in that same time, the spirit of my child-wife
looked upon me, saying it was well; and winning me, through thee, to
tenderest recollections of the Blossom that had withered in its bloom!

'I am so blest, Trotwood--my heart is so overcharged--but there is one
thing I must say.'

'Dearest, what?'

She laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders, and looked calmly in my
face.

'Do you know, yet, what it is?'

'I am afraid to speculate on what it is. Tell me, my dear.'

'I have loved you all my life!'

O, we were happy, we were happy! Our tears were not for the trials (hers
so much the greater) through which we had come to be thus, but for the
rapture of being thus, never to be divided more!

We walked, that winter evening, in the fields together; and the blessed
calm within us seemed to be partaken by the frosty air. The early stars
began to shine while we were lingering on, and looking up to them, we
thanked our GOD for having guided us to this tranquillity.

We stood together in the same old-fashioned window at night, when the
moon was shining; Agnes with her quiet eyes raised up to it; I following
her glance. Long miles of road then opened out before my mind; and,
toiling on, I saw a ragged way-worn boy, forsaken and neglected, who
should come to call even the heart now beating against mine, his own.

It was nearly dinner-time next day when we appeared before my aunt. She
was up in my study, Peggotty said: which it was her pride to keep in
readiness and order for me. We found her, in her spectacles, sitting by
the fire.

'Goodness me!' said my aunt, peering through the dusk, 'who's this
you're bringing home?'

'Agnes,' said I.

As we had arranged to say nothing at first, my aunt was not a little
discomfited. She darted a hopeful glance at me, when I said 'Agnes'; but
seeing that I looked as usual, she took off her spectacles in despair,
and rubbed her nose with them.

She greeted Agnes heartily, nevertheless; and we were soon in the
lighted parlour downstairs, at dinner. My aunt put on her spectacles
twice or thrice, to take another look at me, but as often took them
off again, disappointed, and rubbed her nose with them. Much to the
discomfiture of Mr. Dick, who knew this to be a bad symptom.

'By the by, aunt,' said I, after dinner; 'I have been speaking to Agnes
about what you told me.'

'Then, Trot,' said my aunt, turning scarlet, 'you did wrong, and broke
your promise.'

'You are not angry, aunt, I trust? I am sure you won't be, when you
learn that Agnes is not unhappy in any attachment.'

'Stuff and nonsense!' said my aunt.

As my aunt appeared to be annoyed, I thought the best way was to cut her
annoyance short. I took Agnes in my arm to the back of her chair, and we
both leaned over her. My aunt, with one clap of her hands, and one look
through her spectacles, immediately went into hysterics, for the first
and only time in all my knowledge of her.

The hysterics called up Peggotty. The moment my aunt was restored, she
flew at Peggotty, and calling her a silly old creature, hugged her with
all her might. After that, she hugged Mr. Dick (who was highly honoured,
but a good deal surprised); and after that, told them why. Then, we were
all happy together.

I could not discover whether my aunt, in her last short conversation
with me, had fallen on a pious fraud, or had really mistaken the state
of my mind. It was quite enough, she said, that she had told me Agnes
was going to be married; and that I now knew better than anyone how true
it was.

We were married within a fortnight. Traddles and Sophy, and Doctor and
Mrs. Strong, were the only guests at our quiet wedding. We left them
full of joy; and drove away together. Clasped in my embrace, I held the
source of every worthy aspiration I had ever had; the centre of myself,
the circle of my life, my own, my wife; my love of whom was founded on a
rock!

'Dearest husband!' said Agnes. 'Now that I may call you by that name, I
have one thing more to tell you.'

'Let me hear it, love.'

'It grows out of the night when Dora died. She sent you for me.'

'She did.'

'She told me that she left me something. Can you think what it was?'

I believed I could. I drew the wife who had so long loved me, closer to
my side.

'She told me that she made a last request to me, and left me a last
charge.'

'And it was--'

'That only I would occupy this vacant place.'

And Agnes laid her head upon my breast, and wept; and I wept with her,
though we were so happy.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: David receives such a large volume of mail because of his writing that he decides to have Traddles manage his correspondence from London. In particular, David and Traddles discuss a letter that has arrived from Mr. Creakle, the former Salem House proprietor. He is now a magistrate who runs a model prison and the two young men decide to visit him. As Traddles and David are escorted through the building, Mr. Creakle explains that each prisoner is isolated so that they may all be restored to a "wholesome state of mind, leading to sincere contrition and repentance." Mr. Creakle is very proud of two of his model prisoners, Numbers Twenty-Seven and Twenty-eight. David is amazed to find that they are Uriah Heep and Littimer! Uriah is in jail for fraud, forgery, and conspiracy, and when he sees David he sanctimoniously "forgives" David for being "violent" to him and warns him to mend his ways. Littimer was imprisoned for robbing his master, and David learns that he would have escaped had it not been for Miss Mowcher, the dwarf hairdresser. David frequently visits Agnes to read her parts of his novel-in-progress. All the time he is with Agnes, he thinks of how much he loves her and what a perfect wife she would be. Shortly after Christmas, Aunt Betsey tells David that Agnes is about to be married. This rouses David to action, and he rides out to see Agnes to break down the barrier "with a determined hand." Agnes is very reluctant to talk about her "attachment" and she begins to cry. David hesitantly professes his intentions and Agnes tells him that he is the only person she has ever loved. Two weeks later they are married. The wedding is a very simple affair and the only guests are Traddles, Sophy, and Dr. Strong and his wife. After the ceremony, Agnes tells David that the night Dora died, she told Agnes that only she should "occupy this vacant place."


prompt:
Chapter: What I have purposed to record is nearly finished; but there is yet an
incident conspicuous in my memory, on which it often rests with delight,
and without which one thread in the web I have spun would have a
ravelled end.

I had advanced in fame and fortune, my domestic joy was perfect, I had
been married ten happy years. Agnes and I were sitting by the fire, in
our house in London, one night in spring, and three of our children were
playing in the room, when I was told that a stranger wished to see me.

He had been asked if he came on business, and had answered No; he had
come for the pleasure of seeing me, and had come a long way. He was an
old man, my servant said, and looked like a farmer.

As this sounded mysterious to the children, and moreover was like the
beginning of a favourite story Agnes used to tell them, introductory
to the arrival of a wicked old Fairy in a cloak who hated everybody, it
produced some commotion. One of our boys laid his head in his mother's
lap to be out of harm's way, and little Agnes (our eldest child) left
her doll in a chair to represent her, and thrust out her little heap
of golden curls from between the window-curtains, to see what happened
next.

'Let him come in here!' said I.

There soon appeared, pausing in the dark doorway as he entered, a hale,
grey-haired old man. Little Agnes, attracted by his looks, had run to
bring him in, and I had not yet clearly seen his face, when my wife,
starting up, cried out to me, in a pleased and agitated voice, that it
was Mr. Peggotty!

It WAS Mr. Peggotty. An old man now, but in a ruddy, hearty, strong old
age. When our first emotion was over, and he sat before the fire with
the children on his knees, and the blaze shining on his face, he looked,
to me, as vigorous and robust, withal as handsome, an old man, as ever I
had seen.

'Mas'r Davy,' said he. And the old name in the old tone fell so
naturally on my ear! 'Mas'r Davy, 'tis a joyful hour as I see you, once
more, 'long with your own trew wife!'

'A joyful hour indeed, old friend!' cried I.

'And these heer pretty ones,' said Mr. Peggotty. 'To look at these heer
flowers! Why, Mas'r Davy, you was but the heighth of the littlest of
these, when I first see you! When Em'ly warn't no bigger, and our poor
lad were BUT a lad!'

'Time has changed me more than it has changed you since then,' said I.
'But let these dear rogues go to bed; and as no house in England but
this must hold you, tell me where to send for your luggage (is the old
black bag among it, that went so far, I wonder!), and then, over a glass
of Yarmouth grog, we will have the tidings of ten years!'

'Are you alone?' asked Agnes.

'Yes, ma'am,' he said, kissing her hand, 'quite alone.'

We sat him between us, not knowing how to give him welcome enough; and
as I began to listen to his old familiar voice, I could have fancied he
was still pursuing his long journey in search of his darling niece.

'It's a mort of water,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'fur to come across, and
on'y stay a matter of fower weeks. But water ('specially when 'tis salt)
comes nat'ral to me; and friends is dear, and I am heer. --Which is
verse,' said Mr. Peggotty, surprised to find it out, 'though I hadn't
such intentions.'

'Are you going back those many thousand miles, so soon?' asked Agnes.

'Yes, ma'am,' he returned. 'I giv the promise to Em'ly, afore I come
away. You see, I doen't grow younger as the years comes round, and if
I hadn't sailed as 'twas, most like I shouldn't never have done 't. And
it's allus been on my mind, as I must come and see Mas'r Davy and your
own sweet blooming self, in your wedded happiness, afore I got to be too
old.'

He looked at us, as if he could never feast his eyes on us sufficiently.
Agnes laughingly put back some scattered locks of his grey hair, that he
might see us better.

'And now tell us,' said I, 'everything relating to your fortunes.'

'Our fortuns, Mas'r Davy,' he rejoined, 'is soon told. We haven't fared
nohows, but fared to thrive. We've allus thrived. We've worked as we
ought to 't, and maybe we lived a leetle hard at first or so, but
we have allus thrived. What with sheep-farming, and what with
stock-farming, and what with one thing and what with t'other, we are as
well to do, as well could be. Theer's been kiender a blessing fell upon
us,' said Mr. Peggotty, reverentially inclining his head, 'and we've
done nowt but prosper. That is, in the long run. If not yesterday, why
then today. If not today, why then tomorrow.'

'And Emily?' said Agnes and I, both together.

'Em'ly,' said he, 'arter you left her, ma'am--and I never heerd her
saying of her prayers at night, t'other side the canvas screen, when we
was settled in the Bush, but what I heerd your name--and arter she and
me lost sight of Mas'r Davy, that theer shining sundown--was that low,
at first, that, if she had know'd then what Mas'r Davy kep from us so
kind and thowtful, 'tis my opinion she'd have drooped away. But theer
was some poor folks aboard as had illness among 'em, and she took care
of them; and theer was the children in our company, and she took care of
them; and so she got to be busy, and to be doing good, and that helped
her.'

'When did she first hear of it?' I asked.

'I kep it from her arter I heerd on 't,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'going
on nigh a year. We was living then in a solitary place, but among the
beautifullest trees, and with the roses a-covering our Beein to the
roof. Theer come along one day, when I was out a-working on the land, a
traveller from our own Norfolk or Suffolk in England (I doen't rightly
mind which), and of course we took him in, and giv him to eat and drink,
and made him welcome. We all do that, all the colony over. He'd got an
old newspaper with him, and some other account in print of the storm.
That's how she know'd it. When I came home at night, I found she know'd
it.'

He dropped his voice as he said these words, and the gravity I so well
remembered overspread his face.

'Did it change her much?' we asked.

'Aye, for a good long time,' he said, shaking his head; 'if not to this
present hour. But I think the solitoode done her good. And she had a
deal to mind in the way of poultry and the like, and minded of it, and
come through. I wonder,' he said thoughtfully, 'if you could see my
Em'ly now, Mas'r Davy, whether you'd know her!'

'Is she so altered?' I inquired.

'I doen't know. I see her ev'ry day, and doen't know; But, odd-times, I
have thowt so. A slight figure,' said Mr. Peggotty, looking at the fire,
'kiender worn; soft, sorrowful, blue eyes; a delicate face; a pritty
head, leaning a little down; a quiet voice and way--timid a'most. That's
Em'ly!'

We silently observed him as he sat, still looking at the fire.

'Some thinks,' he said, 'as her affection was ill-bestowed; some, as her
marriage was broken off by death. No one knows how 'tis. She might have
married well, a mort of times, "but, uncle," she says to me, "that's
gone for ever." Cheerful along with me; retired when others is by;
fond of going any distance fur to teach a child, or fur to tend a sick
person, or fur to do some kindness tow'rds a young girl's wedding (and
she's done a many, but has never seen one); fondly loving of her uncle;
patient; liked by young and old; sowt out by all that has any trouble.
That's Em'ly!'

He drew his hand across his face, and with a half-suppressed sigh looked
up from the fire.

'Is Martha with you yet?' I asked.

'Martha,' he replied, 'got married, Mas'r Davy, in the second year. A
young man, a farm-labourer, as come by us on his way to market with his
mas'r's drays--a journey of over five hundred mile, theer and back--made
offers fur to take her fur his wife (wives is very scarce theer), and
then to set up fur their two selves in the Bush. She spoke to me fur to
tell him her trew story. I did. They was married, and they live fower
hundred mile away from any voices but their own and the singing birds.'

'Mrs. Gummidge?' I suggested.

It was a pleasant key to touch, for Mr. Peggotty suddenly burst into a
roar of laughter, and rubbed his hands up and down his legs, as he had
been accustomed to do when he enjoyed himself in the long-shipwrecked
boat.

'Would you believe it!' he said. 'Why, someun even made offer fur to
marry her! If a ship's cook that was turning settler, Mas'r Davy, didn't
make offers fur to marry Missis Gummidge, I'm Gormed--and I can't say no
fairer than that!'

I never saw Agnes laugh so. This sudden ecstasy on the part of Mr.
Peggotty was so delightful to her, that she could not leave off
laughing; and the more she laughed the more she made me laugh, and the
greater Mr. Peggotty's ecstasy became, and the more he rubbed his legs.

'And what did Mrs. Gummidge say?' I asked, when I was grave enough.

'If you'll believe me,' returned Mr. Peggotty, 'Missis Gummidge, 'stead
of saying "thank you, I'm much obleeged to you, I ain't a-going fur
to change my condition at my time of life," up'd with a bucket as was
standing by, and laid it over that theer ship's cook's head 'till he
sung out fur help, and I went in and reskied of him.'

Mr. Peggotty burst into a great roar of laughter, and Agnes and I both
kept him company.

'But I must say this, for the good creetur,' he resumed, wiping his
face, when we were quite exhausted; 'she has been all she said she'd
be to us, and more. She's the willingest, the trewest, the
honestest-helping woman, Mas'r Davy, as ever draw'd the breath of life.
I have never know'd her to be lone and lorn, for a single minute,
not even when the colony was all afore us, and we was new to it. And
thinking of the old 'un is a thing she never done, I do assure you,
since she left England!'

'Now, last, not least, Mr. Micawber,' said I. 'He has paid off every
obligation he incurred here--even to Traddles's bill, you remember my
dear Agnes--and therefore we may take it for granted that he is doing
well. But what is the latest news of him?'

Mr. Peggotty, with a smile, put his hand in his breast-pocket, and
produced a flat-folded, paper parcel, from which he took out, with much
care, a little odd-looking newspaper.

'You are to understan', Mas'r Davy,' said he, 'as we have left the
Bush now, being so well to do; and have gone right away round to Port
Middlebay Harbour, wheer theer's what we call a town.'

'Mr. Micawber was in the Bush near you?' said I.

'Bless you, yes,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'and turned to with a will. I never
wish to meet a better gen'l'man for turning to with a will. I've seen
that theer bald head of his a perspiring in the sun, Mas'r Davy, till I
a'most thowt it would have melted away. And now he's a Magistrate.'

'A Magistrate, eh?' said I.

Mr. Peggotty pointed to a certain paragraph in the newspaper, where I
read aloud as follows, from the Port Middlebay Times:

'The public dinner to our distinguished fellow-colonist and townsman,
WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, Port Middlebay District Magistrate, came
off yesterday in the large room of the Hotel, which was crowded to
suffocation. It is estimated that not fewer than forty-seven persons
must have been accommodated with dinner at one time, exclusive of the
company in the passage and on the stairs. The beauty, fashion, and
exclusiveness of Port Middlebay, flocked to do honour to one so
deservedly esteemed, so highly talented, and so widely popular. Doctor
Mell (of Colonial Salem-House Grammar School, Port Middlebay) presided,
and on his right sat the distinguished guest. After the removal of the
cloth, and the singing of Non Nobis (beautifully executed, and in which
we were at no loss to distinguish the bell-like notes of that gifted
amateur, WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, JUNIOR), the usual loyal and
patriotic toasts were severally given and rapturously received. Doctor
Mell, in a speech replete with feeling, then proposed "Our distinguished
Guest, the ornament of our town. May he never leave us but to better
himself, and may his success among us be such as to render his bettering
himself impossible!" The cheering with which the toast was received
defies description. Again and again it rose and fell, like the waves
of ocean. At length all was hushed, and WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE,
presented himself to return thanks. Far be it from us, in the present
comparatively imperfect state of the resources of our establishment,
to endeavour to follow our distinguished townsman through the
smoothly-flowing periods of his polished and highly-ornate address!
Suffice it to observe, that it was a masterpiece of eloquence; and that
those passages in which he more particularly traced his own successful
career to its source, and warned the younger portion of his auditory
from the shoals of ever incurring pecuniary liabilities which they were
unable to liquidate, brought a tear into the manliest eye present. The
remaining toasts were DOCTOR MELL; Mrs. MICAWBER (who gracefully bowed
her acknowledgements from the side-door, where a galaxy of beauty was
elevated on chairs, at once to witness and adorn the gratifying scene),
Mrs. RIDGER BEGS (late Miss Micawber); Mrs. MELL; WILKINS MICAWBER,
ESQUIRE, JUNIOR (who convulsed the assembly by humorously remarking that
he found himself unable to return thanks in a speech, but would do so,
with their permission, in a song); Mrs. MICAWBER'S FAMILY (well known,
it is needless to remark, in the mother-country), &c. &c. &c. At the
conclusion of the proceedings the tables were cleared as if by art-magic
for dancing. Among the votaries of TERPSICHORE, who disported themselves
until Sol gave warning for departure, Wilkins Micawber, Esquire, Junior,
and the lovely and accomplished Miss Helena, fourth daughter of Doctor
Mell, were particularly remarkable.'

I was looking back to the name of Doctor Mell, pleased to have
discovered, in these happier circumstances, Mr. Mell, formerly poor
pinched usher to my Middlesex magistrate, when Mr. Peggotty pointing
to another part of the paper, my eyes rested on my own name, and I read
thus:

'TO DAVID COPPERFIELD, ESQUIRE,

'THE EMINENT AUTHOR.

'My Dear Sir,

'Years have elapsed, since I had an opportunity of ocularly perusing the
lineaments, now familiar to the imaginations of a considerable portion
of the civilized world.

'But, my dear Sir, though estranged (by the force of circumstances over
which I have had no control) from the personal society of the friend and
companion of my youth, I have not been unmindful of his soaring flight.
Nor have I been debarred,

     Though seas between us braid ha' roared,

(BURNS) from participating in the intellectual feasts he has spread
before us.

'I cannot, therefore, allow of the departure from this place of an
individual whom we mutually respect and esteem, without, my dear Sir,
taking this public opportunity of thanking you, on my own behalf, and,
I may undertake to add, on that of the whole of the Inhabitants of Port
Middlebay, for the gratification of which you are the ministering agent.

'Go on, my dear Sir! You are not unknown here, you are not
unappreciated. Though "remote", we are neither "unfriended",
"melancholy", nor (I may add) "slow". Go on, my dear Sir, in your Eagle
course! The inhabitants of Port Middlebay may at least aspire to watch
it, with delight, with entertainment, with instruction!

'Among the eyes elevated towards you from this portion of the globe,
will ever be found, while it has light and life,

               'The
                    'Eye
                         'Appertaining to

                              'WILKINS MICAWBER,
                                   'Magistrate.'

I found, on glancing at the remaining contents of the newspaper, that
Mr. Micawber was a diligent and esteemed correspondent of that journal.
There was another letter from him in the same paper, touching a bridge;
there was an advertisement of a collection of similar letters by him, to
be shortly republished, in a neat volume, 'with considerable additions';
and, unless I am very much mistaken, the Leading Article was his also.

We talked much of Mr. Micawber, on many other evenings while Mr.
Peggotty remained with us. He lived with us during the whole term of his
stay,--which, I think, was something less than a month,--and his sister
and my aunt came to London to see him. Agnes and I parted from him
aboard-ship, when he sailed; and we shall never part from him more, on
earth.

But before he left, he went with me to Yarmouth, to see a little tablet
I had put up in the churchyard to the memory of Ham. While I was copying
the plain inscription for him at his request, I saw him stoop, and
gather a tuft of grass from the grave and a little earth.

'For Em'ly,' he said, as he put it in his breast. 'I promised, Mas'r
Davy.'

And now my written story ends. I look back, once more--for the last
time--before I close these leaves.

I see myself, with Agnes at my side, journeying along the road of life.
I see our children and our friends around us; and I hear the roar of
many voices, not indifferent to me as I travel on.

What faces are the most distinct to me in the fleeting crowd? Lo, these;
all turning to me as I ask my thoughts the question!

Here is my aunt, in stronger spectacles, an old woman of four-score
years and more, but upright yet, and a steady walker of six miles at a
stretch in winter weather.

Always with her, here comes Peggotty, my good old nurse, likewise in
spectacles, accustomed to do needle-work at night very close to the
lamp, but never sitting down to it without a bit of wax candle, a
yard-measure in a little house, and a work-box with a picture of St.
Paul's upon the lid.

The cheeks and arms of Peggotty, so hard and red in my childish days,
when I wondered why the birds didn't peck her in preference to apples,
are shrivelled now; and her eyes, that used to darken their whole
neighbourhood in her face, are fainter (though they glitter still);
but her rough forefinger, which I once associated with a pocket
nutmeg-grater, is just the same, and when I see my least child catching
at it as it totters from my aunt to her, I think of our little parlour
at home, when I could scarcely walk. My aunt's old disappointment is set
right, now. She is godmother to a real living Betsey Trotwood; and Dora
(the next in order) says she spoils her.

There is something bulky in Peggotty's pocket. It is nothing smaller
than the Crocodile Book, which is in rather a dilapidated condition by
this time, with divers of the leaves torn and stitched across, but which
Peggotty exhibits to the children as a precious relic. I find it very
curious to see my own infant face, looking up at me from the Crocodile
stories; and to be reminded by it of my old acquaintance Brooks of
Sheffield.

Among my boys, this summer holiday time, I see an old man making giant
kites, and gazing at them in the air, with a delight for which there
are no words. He greets me rapturously, and whispers, with many nods
and winks, 'Trotwood, you will be glad to hear that I shall finish the
Memorial when I have nothing else to do, and that your aunt's the most
extraordinary woman in the world, sir!'

Who is this bent lady, supporting herself by a stick, and showing me
a countenance in which there are some traces of old pride and beauty,
feebly contending with a querulous, imbecile, fretful wandering of the
mind? She is in a garden; and near her stands a sharp, dark, withered
woman, with a white scar on her lip. Let me hear what they say.

'Rosa, I have forgotten this gentleman's name.'

Rosa bends over her, and calls to her, 'Mr. Copperfield.'

'I am glad to see you, sir. I am sorry to observe you are in mourning. I
hope Time will be good to you.'

Her impatient attendant scolds her, tells her I am not in mourning, bids
her look again, tries to rouse her.

'You have seen my son, sir,' says the elder lady. 'Are you reconciled?'

Looking fixedly at me, she puts her hand to her forehead, and moans.
Suddenly, she cries, in a terrible voice, 'Rosa, come to me. He is
dead!' Rosa kneeling at her feet, by turns caresses her, and quarrels
with her; now fiercely telling her, 'I loved him better than you ever
did!'--now soothing her to sleep on her breast, like a sick child. Thus
I leave them; thus I always find them; thus they wear their time away,
from year to year.

What ship comes sailing home from India, and what English lady is this,
married to a growling old Scotch Croesus with great flaps of ears? Can
this be Julia Mills?

Indeed it is Julia Mills, peevish and fine, with a black man to carry
cards and letters to her on a golden salver, and a copper-coloured woman
in linen, with a bright handkerchief round her head, to serve her Tiffin
in her dressing-room. But Julia keeps no diary in these days; never
sings Affection's Dirge; eternally quarrels with the old Scotch Croesus,
who is a sort of yellow bear with a tanned hide. Julia is steeped in
money to the throat, and talks and thinks of nothing else. I liked her
better in the Desert of Sahara.

Or perhaps this IS the Desert of Sahara! For, though Julia has a stately
house, and mighty company, and sumptuous dinners every day, I see no
green growth near her; nothing that can ever come to fruit or flower.
What Julia calls 'society', I see; among it Mr. Jack Maldon, from his
Patent Place, sneering at the hand that gave it him, and speaking to me
of the Doctor as 'so charmingly antique'. But when society is the name
for such hollow gentlemen and ladies, Julia, and when its breeding is
professed indifference to everything that can advance or can retard
mankind, I think we must have lost ourselves in that same Desert of
Sahara, and had better find the way out.

And lo, the Doctor, always our good friend, labouring at his Dictionary
(somewhere about the letter D), and happy in his home and wife. Also
the Old Soldier, on a considerably reduced footing, and by no means so
influential as in days of yore!

Working at his chambers in the Temple, with a busy aspect, and his hair
(where he is not bald) made more rebellious than ever by the constant
friction of his lawyer's-wig, I come, in a later time, upon my dear old
Traddles. His table is covered with thick piles of papers; and I say, as
I look around me:

'If Sophy were your clerk, now, Traddles, she would have enough to do!'

'You may say that, my dear Copperfield! But those were capital days,
too, in Holborn Court! Were they not?'

'When she told you you would be a judge? But it was not the town talk
then!'

'At all events,' says Traddles, 'if I ever am one--' 'Why, you know you
will be.'

'Well, my dear Copperfield, WHEN I am one, I shall tell the story, as I
said I would.'

We walk away, arm in arm. I am going to have a family dinner with
Traddles. It is Sophy's birthday; and, on our road, Traddles discourses
to me of the good fortune he has enjoyed.

'I really have been able, my dear Copperfield, to do all that I had most
at heart. There's the Reverend Horace promoted to that living at four
hundred and fifty pounds a year; there are our two boys receiving the
very best education, and distinguishing themselves as steady scholars
and good fellows; there are three of the girls married very comfortably;
there are three more living with us; there are three more keeping house
for the Reverend Horace since Mrs. Crewler's decease; and all of them
happy.'

'Except--' I suggest.

'Except the Beauty,' says Traddles. 'Yes. It was very unfortunate that
she should marry such a vagabond. But there was a certain dash and glare
about him that caught her. However, now we have got her safe at our
house, and got rid of him, we must cheer her up again.'

Traddles's house is one of the very houses--or it easily may have
been--which he and Sophy used to parcel out, in their evening walks. It
is a large house; but Traddles keeps his papers in his dressing-room
and his boots with his papers; and he and Sophy squeeze themselves into
upper rooms, reserving the best bedrooms for the Beauty and the girls.
There is no room to spare in the house; for more of 'the girls' are
here, and always are here, by some accident or other, than I know how
to count. Here, when we go in, is a crowd of them, running down to
the door, and handing Traddles about to be kissed, until he is out of
breath. Here, established in perpetuity, is the poor Beauty, a widow
with a little girl; here, at dinner on Sophy's birthday, are the three
married girls with their three husbands, and one of the husband's
brothers, and another husband's cousin, and another husband's sister,
who appears to me to be engaged to the cousin. Traddles, exactly the
same simple, unaffected fellow as he ever was, sits at the foot of the
large table like a Patriarch; and Sophy beams upon him, from the head,
across a cheerful space that is certainly not glittering with Britannia
metal.

And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these
faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by
which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And
that remains.

I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.

My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear
presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.

O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life
indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows
which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: David and Agnes have been married for ten years when one night an old man calls on them. It is Mr. Peggotty, who has now returned to England for a brief visit. He tells David how his little band of emigrants have prospered in Australia by raising livestock. Em'ly has had many chances to marry but she has refused them all and is content to stay with her uncle. Martha Endell is married, and even Mrs. Gummidge could have married, but she rejected her suitor rather firmly by hitting him with a bucket. Mr. Micawber has become a noted District Magistrate, and David reads a news account of a dinner in his honor in which the toastmaster was none other than Doctor Mell, David's former teacher. Mr. Peggotty stays with David for nearly a month and before he leaves he visits Ham's grave. He asks David to copy the plain inscription on the tablet and then he gathers up a tuft of grass from the grave, and a little earth, "for Em'ly." David looks back on his life and tells the reader about his old friends -- almost like a theater curtain call. Aunt Betsey is older, but unchanged, and is cared for by Peggotty. Mr. Dick continues to work on his writing and to fly his kites. Mrs. Steerforth and Rosa Dartle still live together and grieve over their loss. Julia Mills, Dora's old friend, is married to a wealthy Scot and is unhappy. Traddles is a Magistrate and he and Sophy have two boys who are being educated at the best schools and are distinguishing themselves as scholars. Dr. Strong labors on his Dictionary , and Jack Maldon sneers at the world and thinks Doctor Strong "charmingly antique." Justice has won out. The happiest of all is David. His love for Agnes is complete. "The dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company." His only wish is that she will continue to live with him and that when he dies, she will be near him, "pointing upward."


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Yes,' said my mother, faintly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Where are the birds?' asked Miss Betsey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Peggotty,' said my mother.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'And a governess?'

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

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

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

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

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

('Much he knew about it himself!') said Miss Betsey in a parenthesis.
--'And I hope I should have improved, being very anxious to learn, and
he very patient to teach me, if the great misfortune of his death'--my
mother broke down again here, and could get no farther.

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

'Well, well!' said Miss Betsey. 'Don't cry any more.' --'And I am
sure we never had a word of difference respecting it, except when Mr.
Copperfield objected to my threes and fives being too much like each
other, or to my putting curly tails to my sevens and nines,' resumed my
mother in another burst, and breaking down again.

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

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

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

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

'How much?' asked Miss Betsey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Some local irritation, ma'am?'

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

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

'Some local irritation, ma'am?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'What upon?' said my aunt, sharply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: I am born An older David Copperfield narrates the story of his life. He begins by saying that only the writing that follows can tell who the hero of his story is. He tells of his simple birth, which occurred at the stroke of midnight on a Friday night. An old woman in the neighborhood has told him that the time of his birth indicates he will be unlucky and will be able to see ghosts and spirits. David's father is already dead when David is born. David's aunt, Miss Betsey Trotwood, appears on the day of David's birth and speaks with David's mother, Clara. Miss Betsey informs Clara that she intends to take custody of the girl Clara is about to bear. Miss Betsey wishes to raise the girl so that men never take advantage of her the way Miss Betsey has been taken advantage of in her own life. When David is born and Mr. Chillip, the doctor, informs Miss Betsey that Clara has had a boy, Miss Betsey storms out of the house and never returns