prompt:
Chapter: There was a servant in that house, a man who, I understood, was usually
with Steerforth, and had come into his service at the University, who
was in appearance a pattern of respectability. I believe there never
existed in his station a more respectable-looking man. He was taciturn,
soft-footed, very quiet in his manner, deferential, observant, always at
hand when wanted, and never near when not wanted; but his great claim to
consideration was his respectability. He had not a pliant face, he had
rather a stiff neck, rather a tight smooth head with short hair clinging
to it at the sides, a soft way of speaking, with a peculiar habit of
whispering the letter S so distinctly, that he seemed to use it
oftener than any other man; but every peculiarity that he had he made
respectable. If his nose had been upside-down, he would have made that
respectable. He surrounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability,
and walked secure in it. It would have been next to impossible to
suspect him of anything wrong, he was so thoroughly respectable.
Nobody could have thought of putting him in a livery, he was so highly
respectable. To have imposed any derogatory work upon him, would have
been to inflict a wanton insult on the feelings of a most respectable
man. And of this, I noticed--the women-servants in the household were
so intuitively conscious, that they always did such work themselves, and
generally while he read the paper by the pantry fire.

Such a self-contained man I never saw. But in that quality, as in every
other he possessed, he only seemed to be the more respectable. Even the
fact that no one knew his Christian name, seemed to form a part of his
respectability. Nothing could be objected against his surname, Littimer,
by which he was known. Peter might have been hanged, or Tom transported;
but Littimer was perfectly respectable.

It was occasioned, I suppose, by the reverend nature of respectability
in the abstract, but I felt particularly young in this man's presence.
How old he was himself, I could not guess--and that again went to his
credit on the same score; for in the calmness of respectability he might
have numbered fifty years as well as thirty.

Littimer was in my room in the morning before I was up, to bring me that
reproachful shaving-water, and to put out my clothes. When I undrew the
curtains and looked out of bed, I saw him, in an equable temperature
of respectability, unaffected by the east wind of January, and not
even breathing frostily, standing my boots right and left in the first
dancing position, and blowing specks of dust off my coat as he laid it
down like a baby.

I gave him good morning, and asked him what o'clock it was. He took
out of his pocket the most respectable hunting-watch I ever saw, and
preventing the spring with his thumb from opening far, looked in at the
face as if he were consulting an oracular oyster, shut it up again, and
said, if I pleased, it was half past eight.

'Mr. Steerforth will be glad to hear how you have rested, sir.'

'Thank you,' said I, 'very well indeed. Is Mr. Steerforth quite well?'

'Thank you, sir, Mr. Steerforth is tolerably well.' Another of his
characteristics--no use of superlatives. A cool calm medium always.

'Is there anything more I can have the honour of doing for you, sir? The
warning-bell will ring at nine; the family take breakfast at half past
nine.'

'Nothing, I thank you.'

'I thank YOU, sir, if you please'; and with that, and with a little
inclination of his head when he passed the bed-side, as an apology for
correcting me, he went out, shutting the door as delicately as if I had
just fallen into a sweet sleep on which my life depended.

Every morning we held exactly this conversation: never any more, and
never any less: and yet, invariably, however far I might have been
lifted out of myself over-night, and advanced towards maturer years,
by Steerforth's companionship, or Mrs. Steerforth's confidence, or Miss
Dartle's conversation, in the presence of this most respectable man I
became, as our smaller poets sing, 'a boy again'.

He got horses for us; and Steerforth, who knew everything, gave me
lessons in riding. He provided foils for us, and Steerforth gave me
lessons in fencing--gloves, and I began, of the same master, to improve
in boxing. It gave me no manner of concern that Steerforth should find
me a novice in these sciences, but I never could bear to show my want of
skill before the respectable Littimer. I had no reason to believe
that Littimer understood such arts himself; he never led me to suppose
anything of the kind, by so much as the vibration of one of his
respectable eyelashes; yet whenever he was by, while we were practising,
I felt myself the greenest and most inexperienced of mortals.

I am particular about this man, because he made a particular effect on
me at that time, and because of what took place thereafter.

The week passed away in a most delightful manner. It passed rapidly, as
may be supposed, to one entranced as I was; and yet it gave me so many
occasions for knowing Steerforth better, and admiring him more in a
thousand respects, that at its close I seemed to have been with him
for a much longer time. A dashing way he had of treating me like a
plaything, was more agreeable to me than any behaviour he could have
adopted. It reminded me of our old acquaintance; it seemed the natural
sequel of it; it showed me that he was unchanged; it relieved me of
any uneasiness I might have felt, in comparing my merits with his, and
measuring my claims upon his friendship by any equal standard; above
all, it was a familiar, unrestrained, affectionate demeanour that he
used towards no one else. As he had treated me at school differently
from all the rest, I joyfully believed that he treated me in life unlike
any other friend he had. I believed that I was nearer to his heart than
any other friend, and my own heart warmed with attachment to him. He
made up his mind to go with me into the country, and the day arrived for
our departure. He had been doubtful at first whether to take Littimer
or not, but decided to leave him at home. The respectable creature,
satisfied with his lot whatever it was, arranged our portmanteaux on
the little carriage that was to take us into London, as if they were
intended to defy the shocks of ages, and received my modestly proffered
donation with perfect tranquillity.

We bade adieu to Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle, with many thanks on
my part, and much kindness on the devoted mother's. The last thing I
saw was Littimer's unruffled eye; fraught, as I fancied, with the silent
conviction that I was very young indeed.

What I felt, in returning so auspiciously to the old familiar places,
I shall not endeavour to describe. We went down by the Mail. I was
so concerned, I recollect, even for the honour of Yarmouth, that when
Steerforth said, as we drove through its dark streets to the inn, that,
as well as he could make out, it was a good, queer, out-of-the-way kind
of hole, I was highly pleased. We went to bed on our arrival (I observed
a pair of dirty shoes and gaiters in connexion with my old friend the
Dolphin as we passed that door), and breakfasted late in the morning.
Steerforth, who was in great spirits, had been strolling about the
beach before I was up, and had made acquaintance, he said, with half the
boatmen in the place. Moreover, he had seen, in the distance, what he
was sure must be the identical house of Mr. Peggotty, with smoke coming
out of the chimney; and had had a great mind, he told me, to walk in and
swear he was myself grown out of knowledge.

'When do you propose to introduce me there, Daisy?' he said. 'I am at
your disposal. Make your own arrangements.'

'Why, I was thinking that this evening would be a good time, Steerforth,
when they are all sitting round the fire. I should like you to see it
when it's snug, it's such a curious place.'

'So be it!' returned Steerforth. 'This evening.'

'I shall not give them any notice that we are here, you know,' said I,
delighted. 'We must take them by surprise.'

'Oh, of course! It's no fun,' said Steerforth, 'unless we take them by
surprise. Let us see the natives in their aboriginal condition.'

'Though they ARE that sort of people that you mentioned,' I returned.

'Aha! What! you recollect my skirmishes with Rosa, do you?' he exclaimed
with a quick look. 'Confound the girl, I am half afraid of her. She's
like a goblin to me. But never mind her. Now what are you going to do?
You are going to see your nurse, I suppose?'

'Why, yes,' I said, 'I must see Peggotty first of all.'

'Well,' replied Steerforth, looking at his watch. 'Suppose I deliver you
up to be cried over for a couple of hours. Is that long enough?'

I answered, laughing, that I thought we might get through it in that
time, but that he must come also; for he would find that his renown had
preceded him, and that he was almost as great a personage as I was.

'I'll come anywhere you like,' said Steerforth, 'or do anything you
like. Tell me where to come to; and in two hours I'll produce myself in
any state you please, sentimental or comical.'

I gave him minute directions for finding the residence of Mr. Barkis,
carrier to Blunderstone and elsewhere; and, on this understanding, went
out alone. There was a sharp bracing air; the ground was dry; the sea
was crisp and clear; the sun was diffusing abundance of light, if not
much warmth; and everything was fresh and lively. I was so fresh and
lively myself, in the pleasure of being there, that I could have stopped
the people in the streets and shaken hands with them.

The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen
as children always do, I believe, when we go back to them. But I had
forgotten nothing in them, and found nothing changed, until I came to
Mr. Omer's shop. OMER AND Joram was now written up, where OMER used to
be; but the inscription, DRAPER, TAILOR, HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER,
&c., remained as it was.

My footsteps seemed to tend so naturally to the shop door, after I had
read these words from over the way, that I went across the road and
looked in. There was a pretty woman at the back of the shop, dancing
a little child in her arms, while another little fellow clung to her
apron. I had no difficulty in recognizing either Minnie or Minnie's
children. The glass door of the parlour was not open; but in the
workshop across the yard I could faintly hear the old tune playing, as
if it had never left off.

'Is Mr. Omer at home?' said I, entering. 'I should like to see him, for
a moment, if he is.'

'Oh yes, sir, he is at home,' said Minnie; 'the weather don't suit his
asthma out of doors. Joe, call your grandfather!'

The little fellow, who was holding her apron, gave such a lusty shout,
that the sound of it made him bashful, and he buried his face in her
skirts, to her great admiration. I heard a heavy puffing and blowing
coming towards us, and soon Mr. Omer, shorter-winded than of yore, but
not much older-looking, stood before me.

'Servant, sir,' said Mr. Omer. 'What can I do for you, sir?' 'You can
shake hands with me, Mr. Omer, if you please,' said I, putting out my
own. 'You were very good-natured to me once, when I am afraid I didn't
show that I thought so.'

'Was I though?' returned the old man. 'I'm glad to hear it, but I don't
remember when. Are you sure it was me?'

'Quite.'

'I think my memory has got as short as my breath,' said Mr. Omer,
looking at me and shaking his head; 'for I don't remember you.'

'Don't you remember your coming to the coach to meet me, and my having
breakfast here, and our riding out to Blunderstone together: you, and I,
and Mrs. Joram, and Mr. Joram too--who wasn't her husband then?'

'Why, Lord bless my soul!' exclaimed Mr. Omer, after being thrown by his
surprise into a fit of coughing, 'you don't say so! Minnie, my dear, you
recollect? Dear me, yes; the party was a lady, I think?'

'My mother,' I rejoined.

'To--be--sure,' said Mr. Omer, touching my waistcoat with his
forefinger, 'and there was a little child too! There was two parties.
The little party was laid along with the other party. Over at
Blunderstone it was, of course. Dear me! And how have you been since?'

Very well, I thanked him, as I hoped he had been too.

'Oh! nothing to grumble at, you know,' said Mr. Omer. 'I find my breath
gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as
it comes, and make the most of it. That's the best way, ain't it?'

Mr. Omer coughed again, in consequence of laughing, and was assisted out
of his fit by his daughter, who now stood close beside us, dancing her
smallest child on the counter.

'Dear me!' said Mr. Omer. 'Yes, to be sure. Two parties! Why, in that
very ride, if you'll believe me, the day was named for my Minnie to
marry Joram. "Do name it, sir," says Joram. "Yes, do, father," says
Minnie. And now he's come into the business. And look here! The
youngest!'

Minnie laughed, and stroked her banded hair upon her temples, as her
father put one of his fat fingers into the hand of the child she was
dancing on the counter.

'Two parties, of course!' said Mr. Omer, nodding his head
retrospectively. 'Ex-actly so! And Joram's at work, at this minute, on
a grey one with silver nails, not this measurement'--the measurement of
the dancing child upon the counter--'by a good two inches.---Will you
take something?'

I thanked him, but declined.

'Let me see,' said Mr. Omer. 'Barkis's the carrier's wife--Peggotty's
the boatman's sister--she had something to do with your family? She was
in service there, sure?'

My answering in the affirmative gave him great satisfaction.

'I believe my breath will get long next, my memory's getting so much
so,' said Mr. Omer. 'Well, sir, we've got a young relation of hers here,
under articles to us, that has as elegant a taste in the dress-making
business--I assure you I don't believe there's a Duchess in England can
touch her.'

'Not little Em'ly?' said I, involuntarily.

'Em'ly's her name,' said Mr. Omer, 'and she's little too. But if you'll
believe me, she has such a face of her own that half the women in this
town are mad against her.'

'Nonsense, father!' cried Minnie.

'My dear,' said Mr. Omer, 'I don't say it's the case with you,' winking
at me, 'but I say that half the women in Yarmouth--ah! and in five mile
round--are mad against that girl.'

'Then she should have kept to her own station in life, father,' said
Minnie, 'and not have given them any hold to talk about her, and then
they couldn't have done it.'

'Couldn't have done it, my dear!' retorted Mr. Omer. 'Couldn't have
done it! Is that YOUR knowledge of life? What is there that any woman
couldn't do, that she shouldn't do--especially on the subject of another
woman's good looks?'

I really thought it was all over with Mr. Omer, after he had uttered
this libellous pleasantry. He coughed to that extent, and his breath
eluded all his attempts to recover it with that obstinacy, that I fully
expected to see his head go down behind the counter, and his little
black breeches, with the rusty little bunches of ribbons at the knees,
come quivering up in a last ineffectual struggle. At length, however,
he got better, though he still panted hard, and was so exhausted that he
was obliged to sit on the stool of the shop-desk.

'You see,' he said, wiping his head, and breathing with difficulty, 'she
hasn't taken much to any companions here; she hasn't taken kindly to
any particular acquaintances and friends, not to mention sweethearts. In
consequence, an ill-natured story got about, that Em'ly wanted to be a
lady. Now my opinion is, that it came into circulation principally on
account of her sometimes saying, at the school, that if she was a lady
she would like to do so-and-so for her uncle--don't you see?--and buy
him such-and-such fine things.'

'I assure you, Mr. Omer, she has said so to me,' I returned eagerly,
'when we were both children.'

Mr. Omer nodded his head and rubbed his chin. 'Just so. Then out of a
very little, she could dress herself, you see, better than most others
could out of a deal, and that made things unpleasant. Moreover, she was
rather what might be called wayward--I'll go so far as to say what I
should call wayward myself,' said Mr. Omer; '--didn't know her own mind
quite--a little spoiled--and couldn't, at first, exactly bind herself
down. No more than that was ever said against her, Minnie?'

'No, father,' said Mrs. Joram. 'That's the worst, I believe.'

'So when she got a situation,' said Mr. Omer, 'to keep a fractious old
lady company, they didn't very well agree, and she didn't stop. At last
she came here, apprenticed for three years. Nearly two of 'em are over,
and she has been as good a girl as ever was. Worth any six! Minnie, is
she worth any six, now?'

'Yes, father,' replied Minnie. 'Never say I detracted from her!'

'Very good,' said Mr. Omer. 'That's right. And so, young gentleman,' he
added, after a few moments' further rubbing of his chin, 'that you may
not consider me long-winded as well as short-breathed, I believe that's
all about it.'

As they had spoken in a subdued tone, while speaking of Em'ly, I had no
doubt that she was near. On my asking now, if that were not so, Mr.
Omer nodded yes, and nodded towards the door of the parlour. My hurried
inquiry if I might peep in, was answered with a free permission; and,
looking through the glass, I saw her sitting at her work. I saw her, a
most beautiful little creature, with the cloudless blue eyes, that had
looked into my childish heart, turned laughingly upon another child
of Minnie's who was playing near her; with enough of wilfulness in her
bright face to justify what I had heard; with much of the old capricious
coyness lurking in it; but with nothing in her pretty looks, I am sure,
but what was meant for goodness and for happiness, and what was on a
good and happy course.

The tune across the yard that seemed as if it never had left off--alas!
it was the tune that never DOES leave off--was beating, softly, all the
while.

'Wouldn't you like to step in,' said Mr. Omer, 'and speak to her? Walk
in and speak to her, sir! Make yourself at home!'

I was too bashful to do so then--I was afraid of confusing her, and I
was no less afraid of confusing myself.--but I informed myself of the
hour at which she left of an evening, in order that our visit might
be timed accordingly; and taking leave of Mr. Omer, and his pretty
daughter, and her little children, went away to my dear old Peggotty's.

Here she was, in the tiled kitchen, cooking dinner! The moment I knocked
at the door she opened it, and asked me what I pleased to want. I looked
at her with a smile, but she gave me no smile in return. I had never
ceased to write to her, but it must have been seven years since we had
met.

'Is Mr. Barkis at home, ma'am?' I said, feigning to speak roughly to
her.

'He's at home, sir,' returned Peggotty, 'but he's bad abed with the
rheumatics.'

'Don't he go over to Blunderstone now?' I asked.

'When he's well he do,' she answered.

'Do YOU ever go there, Mrs. Barkis?'

She looked at me more attentively, and I noticed a quick movement of her
hands towards each other.

'Because I want to ask a question about a house there, that they call
the--what is it?--the Rookery,' said I.

She took a step backward, and put out her hands in an undecided
frightened way, as if to keep me off.

'Peggotty!' I cried to her.

She cried, 'My darling boy!' and we both burst into tears, and were
locked in one another's arms.

What extravagances she committed; what laughing and crying over me; what
pride she showed, what joy, what sorrow that she whose pride and joy I
might have been, could never hold me in a fond embrace; I have not the
heart to tell. I was troubled with no misgiving that it was young in
me to respond to her emotions. I had never laughed and cried in all my
life, I dare say--not even to her--more freely than I did that morning.

'Barkis will be so glad,' said Peggotty, wiping her eyes with her apron,
'that it'll do him more good than pints of liniment. May I go and tell
him you are here? Will you come up and see him, my dear?'

Of course I would. But Peggotty could not get out of the room as easily
as she meant to, for as often as she got to the door and looked round
at me, she came back again to have another laugh and another cry upon my
shoulder. At last, to make the matter easier, I went upstairs with
her; and having waited outside for a minute, while she said a word of
preparation to Mr. Barkis, presented myself before that invalid.

He received me with absolute enthusiasm. He was too rheumatic to be
shaken hands with, but he begged me to shake the tassel on the top of
his nightcap, which I did most cordially. When I sat down by the side
of the bed, he said that it did him a world of good to feel as if he
was driving me on the Blunderstone road again. As he lay in bed, face
upward, and so covered, with that exception, that he seemed to be
nothing but a face--like a conventional cherubim--he looked the queerest
object I ever beheld.

'What name was it, as I wrote up in the cart, sir?' said Mr. Barkis,
with a slow rheumatic smile.

'Ah! Mr. Barkis, we had some grave talks about that matter, hadn't we?'

'I was willin' a long time, sir?' said Mr. Barkis.

'A long time,' said I.

'And I don't regret it,' said Mr. Barkis. 'Do you remember what you
told me once, about her making all the apple parsties and doing all the
cooking?'

'Yes, very well,' I returned.

'It was as true,' said Mr. Barkis, 'as turnips is. It was as true,' said
Mr. Barkis, nodding his nightcap, which was his only means of emphasis,
'as taxes is. And nothing's truer than them.'

Mr. Barkis turned his eyes upon me, as if for my assent to this result
of his reflections in bed; and I gave it.

'Nothing's truer than them,' repeated Mr. Barkis; 'a man as poor as I
am, finds that out in his mind when he's laid up. I'm a very poor man,
sir!'

'I am sorry to hear it, Mr. Barkis.'

'A very poor man, indeed I am,' said Mr. Barkis.

Here his right hand came slowly and feebly from under the bedclothes,
and with a purposeless uncertain grasp took hold of a stick which was
loosely tied to the side of the bed. After some poking about with
this instrument, in the course of which his face assumed a variety of
distracted expressions, Mr. Barkis poked it against a box, an end
of which had been visible to me all the time. Then his face became
composed.

'Old clothes,' said Mr. Barkis.

'Oh!' said I.

'I wish it was Money, sir,' said Mr. Barkis.

'I wish it was, indeed,' said I.

'But it AIN'T,' said Mr. Barkis, opening both his eyes as wide as he
possibly could.

I expressed myself quite sure of that, and Mr. Barkis, turning his eyes
more gently to his wife, said:

'She's the usefullest and best of women, C. P. Barkis. All the praise
that anyone can give to C. P. Barkis, she deserves, and more! My dear,
you'll get a dinner today, for company; something good to eat and drink,
will you?'

I should have protested against this unnecessary demonstration in
my honour, but that I saw Peggotty, on the opposite side of the bed,
extremely anxious I should not. So I held my peace.

'I have got a trifle of money somewhere about me, my dear,' said Mr.
Barkis, 'but I'm a little tired. If you and Mr. David will leave me for
a short nap, I'll try and find it when I wake.'

We left the room, in compliance with this request. When we got outside
the door, Peggotty informed me that Mr. Barkis, being now 'a little
nearer' than he used to be, always resorted to this same device before
producing a single coin from his store; and that he endured unheard-of
agonies in crawling out of bed alone, and taking it from that unlucky
box. In effect, we presently heard him uttering suppressed groans of the
most dismal nature, as this magpie proceeding racked him in every joint;
but while Peggotty's eyes were full of compassion for him, she said his
generous impulse would do him good, and it was better not to check it.
So he groaned on, until he had got into bed again, suffering, I have no
doubt, a martyrdom; and then called us in, pretending to have just
woke up from a refreshing sleep, and to produce a guinea from under his
pillow. His satisfaction in which happy imposition on us, and in
having preserved the impenetrable secret of the box, appeared to be a
sufficient compensation to him for all his tortures.

I prepared Peggotty for Steerforth's arrival and it was not long before
he came. I am persuaded she knew no difference between his having been a
personal benefactor of hers, and a kind friend to me, and that she would
have received him with the utmost gratitude and devotion in any case.
But his easy, spirited good humour; his genial manner, his handsome
looks, his natural gift of adapting himself to whomsoever he pleased,
and making direct, when he cared to do it, to the main point of interest
in anybody's heart; bound her to him wholly in five minutes. His
manner to me, alone, would have won her. But, through all these causes
combined, I sincerely believe she had a kind of adoration for him before
he left the house that night.

He stayed there with me to dinner--if I were to say willingly, I should
not half express how readily and gaily. He went into Mr. Barkis's room
like light and air, brightening and refreshing it as if he were healthy
weather. There was no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything
he did; but in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming
impossibility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which
was so graceful, so natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even
now, in the remembrance.

We made merry in the little parlour, where the Book of Martyrs,
unthumbed since my time, was laid out upon the desk as of old, and where
I now turned over its terrific pictures, remembering the old sensations
they had awakened, but not feeling them. When Peggotty spoke of what
she called my room, and of its being ready for me at night, and of her
hoping I would occupy it, before I could so much as look at Steerforth,
hesitating, he was possessed of the whole case.

'Of course,' he said. 'You'll sleep here, while we stay, and I shall
sleep at the hotel.'

'But to bring you so far,' I returned, 'and to separate, seems bad
companionship, Steerforth.'

'Why, in the name of Heaven, where do you naturally belong?' he said.
'What is "seems", compared to that?' It was settled at once.

He maintained all his delightful qualities to the last, until we started
forth, at eight o'clock, for Mr. Peggotty's boat. Indeed, they were more
and more brightly exhibited as the hours went on; for I thought even
then, and I have no doubt now, that the consciousness of success in his
determination to please, inspired him with a new delicacy of perception,
and made it, subtle as it was, more easy to him. If anyone had told me,
then, that all this was a brilliant game, played for the excitement of
the moment, for the employment of high spirits, in the thoughtless love
of superiority, in a mere wasteful careless course of winning what was
worthless to him, and next minute thrown away--I say, if anyone had told
me such a lie that night, I wonder in what manner of receiving it my
indignation would have found a vent! Probably only in an increase, had
that been possible, of the romantic feelings of fidelity and friendship
with which I walked beside him, over the dark wintry sands towards the
old boat; the wind sighing around us even more mournfully, than it had
sighed and moaned upon the night when I first darkened Mr. Peggotty's
door.

'This is a wild kind of place, Steerforth, is it not?'

'Dismal enough in the dark,' he said: 'and the sea roars as if it were
hungry for us. Is that the boat, where I see a light yonder?' 'That's
the boat,' said I.

'And it's the same I saw this morning,' he returned. 'I came straight to
it, by instinct, I suppose.'

We said no more as we approached the light, but made softly for the
door. I laid my hand upon the latch; and whispering Steerforth to keep
close to me, went in.

A murmur of voices had been audible on the outside, and, at the
moment of our entrance, a clapping of hands: which latter noise, I
was surprised to see, proceeded from the generally disconsolate Mrs.
Gummidge. But Mrs. Gummidge was not the only person there who was
unusually excited. Mr. Peggotty, his face lighted up with uncommon
satisfaction, and laughing with all his might, held his rough arms
wide open, as if for little Em'ly to run into them; Ham, with a mixed
expression in his face of admiration, exultation, and a lumbering sort
of bashfulness that sat upon him very well, held little Em'ly by
the hand, as if he were presenting her to Mr. Peggotty; little Em'ly
herself, blushing and shy, but delighted with Mr. Peggotty's delight, as
her joyous eyes expressed, was stopped by our entrance (for she saw us
first) in the very act of springing from Ham to nestle in Mr. Peggotty's
embrace. In the first glimpse we had of them all, and at the moment of
our passing from the dark cold night into the warm light room, this
was the way in which they were all employed: Mrs. Gummidge in the
background, clapping her hands like a madwoman.

The little picture was so instantaneously dissolved by our going in,
that one might have doubted whether it had ever been. I was in the midst
of the astonished family, face to face with Mr. Peggotty, and holding
out my hand to him, when Ham shouted:

'Mas'r Davy! It's Mas'r Davy!'

In a moment we were all shaking hands with one another, and asking one
another how we did, and telling one another how glad we were to meet,
and all talking at once. Mr. Peggotty was so proud and overjoyed to see
us, that he did not know what to say or do, but kept over and over again
shaking hands with me, and then with Steerforth, and then with me, and
then ruffling his shaggy hair all over his head, and laughing with such
glee and triumph, that it was a treat to see him.

'Why, that you two gent'lmen--gent'lmen growed--should come to this here
roof tonight, of all nights in my life,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'is such a
thing as never happened afore, I do rightly believe! Em'ly, my darling,
come here! Come here, my little witch! There's Mas'r Davy's friend, my
dear! There's the gent'lman as you've heerd on, Em'ly. He comes to see
you, along with Mas'r Davy, on the brightest night of your uncle's life
as ever was or will be, Gorm the t'other one, and horroar for it!'

After delivering this speech all in a breath, and with extraordinary
animation and pleasure, Mr. Peggotty put one of his large hands
rapturously on each side of his niece's face, and kissing it a dozen
times, laid it with a gentle pride and love upon his broad chest, and
patted it as if his hand had been a lady's. Then he let her go; and as
she ran into the little chamber where I used to sleep, looked round upon
us, quite hot and out of breath with his uncommon satisfaction.

'If you two gent'lmen--gent'lmen growed now, and such gent'lmen--' said
Mr. Peggotty.

'So th' are, so th' are!' cried Ham. 'Well said! So th' are. Mas'r Davy
bor'--gent'lmen growed--so th' are!'

'If you two gent'lmen, gent'lmen growed,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'don't
ex-cuse me for being in a state of mind, when you understand matters,
I'll arks your pardon. Em'ly, my dear!--She knows I'm a going to tell,'
here his delight broke out again, 'and has made off. Would you be so
good as look arter her, Mawther, for a minute?'

Mrs. Gummidge nodded and disappeared.

'If this ain't,' said Mr. Peggotty, sitting down among us by the fire,
'the brightest night o' my life, I'm a shellfish--biled too--and more I
can't say. This here little Em'ly, sir,' in a low voice to Steerforth,
'--her as you see a blushing here just now--'

Steerforth only nodded; but with such a pleased expression of interest,
and of participation in Mr. Peggotty's feelings, that the latter
answered him as if he had spoken.

'To be sure,' said Mr. Peggotty. 'That's her, and so she is. Thankee,
sir.'

Ham nodded to me several times, as if he would have said so too.

'This here little Em'ly of ours,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'has been, in our
house, what I suppose (I'm a ignorant man, but that's my belief) no one
but a little bright-eyed creetur can be in a house. She ain't my
child; I never had one; but I couldn't love her more. You understand! I
couldn't do it!'

'I quite understand,' said Steerforth.

'I know you do, sir,' returned Mr. Peggotty, 'and thankee again. Mas'r
Davy, he can remember what she was; you may judge for your own self what
she is; but neither of you can't fully know what she has been, is, and
will be, to my loving art. I am rough, sir,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'I am as
rough as a Sea Porkypine; but no one, unless, mayhap, it is a woman, can
know, I think, what our little Em'ly is to me. And betwixt ourselves,'
sinking his voice lower yet, 'that woman's name ain't Missis Gummidge
neither, though she has a world of merits.' Mr. Peggotty ruffled his
hair again, with both hands, as a further preparation for what he was
going to say, and went on, with a hand upon each of his knees:

'There was a certain person as had know'd our Em'ly, from the time when
her father was drownded; as had seen her constant; when a babby, when
a young gal, when a woman. Not much of a person to look at, he warn't,'
said Mr. Peggotty, 'something o' my own build--rough--a good deal o'
the sou'-wester in him--wery salt--but, on the whole, a honest sort of a
chap, with his art in the right place.'

I thought I had never seen Ham grin to anything like the extent to which
he sat grinning at us now.

'What does this here blessed tarpaulin go and do,' said Mr. Peggotty,
with his face one high noon of enjoyment, 'but he loses that there art
of his to our little Em'ly. He follers her about, he makes hisself a
sort o' servant to her, he loses in a great measure his relish for his
wittles, and in the long-run he makes it clear to me wot's amiss. Now I
could wish myself, you see, that our little Em'ly was in a fair way of
being married. I could wish to see her, at all ewents, under articles to
a honest man as had a right to defend her. I don't know how long I may
live, or how soon I may die; but I know that if I was capsized, any
night, in a gale of wind in Yarmouth Roads here, and was to see the
town-lights shining for the last time over the rollers as I couldn't
make no head against, I could go down quieter for thinking "There's a
man ashore there, iron-true to my little Em'ly, God bless her, and no
wrong can touch my Em'ly while so be as that man lives."'

Mr. Peggotty, in simple earnestness, waved his right arm, as if he were
waving it at the town-lights for the last time, and then, exchanging a
nod with Ham, whose eye he caught, proceeded as before.

'Well! I counsels him to speak to Em'ly. He's big enough, but he's
bashfuller than a little un, and he don't like. So I speak. "What! Him!"
says Em'ly. "Him that I've know'd so intimate so many years, and like so
much. Oh, Uncle! I never can have him. He's such a good fellow!" I gives
her a kiss, and I says no more to her than, "My dear, you're right to
speak out, you're to choose for yourself, you're as free as a little
bird." Then I aways to him, and I says, "I wish it could have been so,
but it can't. But you can both be as you was, and wot I say to you is,
Be as you was with her, like a man." He says to me, a-shaking of my
hand, "I will!" he says. And he was--honourable and manful--for two year
going on, and we was just the same at home here as afore.'

Mr. Peggotty's face, which had varied in its expression with the various
stages of his narrative, now resumed all its former triumphant delight,
as he laid a hand upon my knee and a hand upon Steerforth's (previously
wetting them both, for the greater emphasis of the action), and divided
the following speech between us:

'All of a sudden, one evening--as it might be tonight--comes little
Em'ly from her work, and him with her! There ain't so much in that,
you'll say. No, because he takes care on her, like a brother, arter
dark, and indeed afore dark, and at all times. But this tarpaulin chap,
he takes hold of her hand, and he cries out to me, joyful, "Look here!
This is to be my little wife!" And she says, half bold and half shy, and
half a laughing and half a crying, "Yes, Uncle! If you please."--If I
please!' cried Mr. Peggotty, rolling his head in an ecstasy at the idea;
'Lord, as if I should do anythink else!--"If you please, I am steadier
now, and I have thought better of it, and I'll be as good a little wife
as I can to him, for he's a dear, good fellow!" Then Missis Gummidge,
she claps her hands like a play, and you come in. Theer! the murder's
out!' said Mr. Peggotty--'You come in! It took place this here present
hour; and here's the man that'll marry her, the minute she's out of her
time.'

Ham staggered, as well he might, under the blow Mr. Peggotty dealt
him in his unbounded joy, as a mark of confidence and friendship; but
feeling called upon to say something to us, he said, with much faltering
and great difficulty:

'She warn't no higher than you was, Mas'r Davy--when you first
come--when I thought what she'd grow up to be. I see her grown
up--gent'lmen--like a flower. I'd lay down my life for
her--Mas'r Davy--Oh! most content and cheerful! She's more to
me--gent'lmen--than--she's all to me that ever I can want, and more
than ever I--than ever I could say. I--I love her true. There ain't a
gent'lman in all the land--nor yet sailing upon all the sea--that
can love his lady more than I love her, though there's many a common
man--would say better--what he meant.'

I thought it affecting to see such a sturdy fellow as Ham was now,
trembling in the strength of what he felt for the pretty little creature
who had won his heart. I thought the simple confidence reposed in us by
Mr. Peggotty and by himself, was, in itself, affecting. I was affected
by the story altogether. How far my emotions were influenced by the
recollections of my childhood, I don't know. Whether I had come there
with any lingering fancy that I was still to love little Em'ly, I don't
know. I know that I was filled with pleasure by all this; but, at first,
with an indescribably sensitive pleasure, that a very little would have
changed to pain.

Therefore, if it had depended upon me to touch the prevailing chord
among them with any skill, I should have made a poor hand of it. But it
depended upon Steerforth; and he did it with such address, that in a few
minutes we were all as easy and as happy as it was possible to be.

'Mr. Peggotty,' he said, 'you are a thoroughly good fellow, and deserve
to be as happy as you are tonight. My hand upon it! Ham, I give you
joy, my boy. My hand upon that, too! Daisy, stir the fire, and make it a
brisk one! and Mr. Peggotty, unless you can induce your gentle niece to
come back (for whom I vacate this seat in the corner), I shall go.
Any gap at your fireside on such a night--such a gap least of all--I
wouldn't make, for the wealth of the Indies!'

So Mr. Peggotty went into my old room to fetch little Em'ly. At first
little Em'ly didn't like to come, and then Ham went. Presently they
brought her to the fireside, very much confused, and very shy,--but
she soon became more assured when she found how gently and respectfully
Steerforth spoke to her; how skilfully he avoided anything that would
embarrass her; how he talked to Mr. Peggotty of boats, and ships, and
tides, and fish; how he referred to me about the time when he had seen
Mr. Peggotty at Salem House; how delighted he was with the boat and all
belonging to it; how lightly and easily he carried on, until he brought
us, by degrees, into a charmed circle, and we were all talking away
without any reserve.

Em'ly, indeed, said little all the evening; but she looked, and
listened, and her face got animated, and she was charming. Steerforth
told a story of a dismal shipwreck (which arose out of his talk with Mr.
Peggotty), as if he saw it all before him--and little Em'ly's eyes were
fastened on him all the time, as if she saw it too. He told us a merry
adventure of his own, as a relief to that, with as much gaiety as if the
narrative were as fresh to him as it was to us--and little Em'ly
laughed until the boat rang with the musical sounds, and we all laughed
(Steerforth too), in irresistible sympathy with what was so pleasant and
light-hearted. He got Mr. Peggotty to sing, or rather to roar, 'When
the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow'; and he sang a sailor's
song himself, so pathetically and beautifully, that I could have almost
fancied that the real wind creeping sorrowfully round the house, and
murmuring low through our unbroken silence, was there to listen.

As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despondency with a success
never attained by anyone else (so Mr. Peggotty informed me), since
the decease of the old one. He left her so little leisure for being
miserable, that she said next day she thought she must have been
bewitched.

But he set up no monopoly of the general attention, or the conversation.
When little Em'ly grew more courageous, and talked (but still bashfully)
across the fire to me, of our old wanderings upon the beach, to pick up
shells and pebbles; and when I asked her if she recollected how I used
to be devoted to her; and when we both laughed and reddened, casting
these looks back on the pleasant old times, so unreal to look at now; he
was silent and attentive, and observed us thoughtfully. She sat, at this
time, and all the evening, on the old locker in her old little corner
by the fire--Ham beside her, where I used to sit. I could not satisfy
myself whether it was in her own little tormenting way, or in a maidenly
reserve before us, that she kept quite close to the wall, and away from
him; but I observed that she did so, all the evening.

As I remember, it was almost midnight when we took our leave. We had had
some biscuit and dried fish for supper, and Steerforth had produced from
his pocket a full flask of Hollands, which we men (I may say we men,
now, without a blush) had emptied. We parted merrily; and as they all
stood crowded round the door to light us as far as they could upon our
road, I saw the sweet blue eyes of little Em'ly peeping after us, from
behind Ham, and heard her soft voice calling to us to be careful how we
went.

'A most engaging little Beauty!' said Steerforth, taking my arm. 'Well!
It's a quaint place, and they are quaint company, and it's quite a new
sensation to mix with them.'

'How fortunate we are, too,' I returned, 'to have arrived to witness
their happiness in that intended marriage! I never saw people so happy.
How delightful to see it, and to be made the sharers in their honest
joy, as we have been!'

'That's rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl; isn't he?' said
Steerforth.

He had been so hearty with him, and with them all, that I felt a shock
in this unexpected and cold reply. But turning quickly upon him, and
seeing a laugh in his eyes, I answered, much relieved:

'Ah, Steerforth! It's well for you to joke about the poor! You may
skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from
me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how
exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman's,
or humour a love like my old nurse's, I know that there is not a joy or
sorrow, not an emotion, of such people, that can be indifferent to you.
And I admire and love you for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more!'

He stopped, and, looking in my face, said, 'Daisy, I believe you are
in earnest, and are good. I wish we all were!' Next moment he was
gaily singing Mr. Peggotty's song, as we walked at a round pace back to
Yarmouth.

Steerforth and I stayed for more than a fortnight in that part of the
country. We were very much together, I need not say; but occasionally we
were asunder for some hours at a time. He was a good sailor, and I was
but an indifferent one; and when he went out boating with Mr. Peggotty,
which was a favourite amusement of his, I generally remained ashore. My
occupation of Peggotty's spare-room put a constraint upon me, from which
he was free: for, knowing how assiduously she attended on Mr. Barkis
all day, I did not like to remain out late at night; whereas Steerforth,
lying at the Inn, had nothing to consult but his own humour. Thus it
came about, that I heard of his making little treats for the fishermen
at Mr. Peggotty's house of call, 'The Willing Mind', after I was in bed,
and of his being afloat, wrapped in fishermen's clothes, whole moonlight
nights, and coming back when the morning tide was at flood. By this
time, however, I knew that his restless nature and bold spirits
delighted to find a vent in rough toil and hard weather, as in any other
means of excitement that presented itself freshly to him; so none of his
proceedings surprised me.

Another cause of our being sometimes apart, was, that I had naturally an
interest in going over to Blunderstone, and revisiting the old familiar
scenes of my childhood; while Steerforth, after being there once, had
naturally no great interest in going there again. Hence, on three or
four days that I can at once recall, we went our several ways after an
early breakfast, and met again at a late dinner. I had no idea how he
employed his time in the interval, beyond a general knowledge that
he was very popular in the place, and had twenty means of actively
diverting himself where another man might not have found one.

For my own part, my occupation in my solitary pilgrimages was to recall
every yard of the old road as I went along it, and to haunt the old
spots, of which I never tired. I haunted them, as my memory had often
done, and lingered among them as my younger thoughts had lingered when I
was far away. The grave beneath the tree, where both my parents lay--on
which I had looked out, when it was my father's only, with such curious
feelings of compassion, and by which I had stood, so desolate, when it
was opened to receive my pretty mother and her baby--the grave which
Peggotty's own faithful care had ever since kept neat, and made a garden
of, I walked near, by the hour. It lay a little off the churchyard path,
in a quiet corner, not so far removed but I could read the names
upon the stone as I walked to and fro, startled by the sound of the
church-bell when it struck the hour, for it was like a departed voice to
me. My reflections at these times were always associated with the figure
I was to make in life, and the distinguished things I was to do. My
echoing footsteps went to no other tune, but were as constant to that as
if I had come home to build my castles in the air at a living mother's
side.

There were great changes in my old home. The ragged nests, so long
deserted by the rooks, were gone; and the trees were lopped and topped
out of their remembered shapes. The garden had run wild, and half the
windows of the house were shut up. It was occupied, but only by a poor
lunatic gentleman, and the people who took care of him. He was always
sitting at my little window, looking out into the churchyard; and I
wondered whether his rambling thoughts ever went upon any of the fancies
that used to occupy mine, on the rosy mornings when I peeped out of
that same little window in my night-clothes, and saw the sheep quietly
feeding in the light of the rising sun.

Our old neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Grayper, were gone to South America,
and the rain had made its way through the roof of their empty house,
and stained the outer walls. Mr. Chillip was married again to a tall,
raw-boned, high-nosed wife; and they had a weazen little baby, with a
heavy head that it couldn't hold up, and two weak staring eyes, with
which it seemed to be always wondering why it had ever been born.

It was with a singular jumble of sadness and pleasure that I used to
linger about my native place, until the reddening winter sun admonished
me that it was time to start on my returning walk. But, when the place
was left behind, and especially when Steerforth and I were happily
seated over our dinner by a blazing fire, it was delicious to think of
having been there. So it was, though in a softened degree, when I
went to my neat room at night; and, turning over the leaves of the
crocodile-book (which was always there, upon a little table), remembered
with a grateful heart how blest I was in having such a friend as
Steerforth, such a friend as Peggotty, and such a substitute for what I
had lost as my excellent and generous aunt.

MY nearest way to Yarmouth, in coming back from these long walks, was by
a ferry. It landed me on the flat between the town and the sea, which I
could make straight across, and so save myself a considerable circuit by
the high road. Mr. Peggotty's house being on that waste-place, and not
a hundred yards out of my track, I always looked in as I went by.
Steerforth was pretty sure to be there expecting me, and we went on
together through the frosty air and gathering fog towards the twinkling
lights of the town.

One dark evening, when I was later than usual--for I had, that day, been
making my parting visit to Blunderstone, as we were now about to return
home--I found him alone in Mr. Peggotty's house, sitting thoughtfully
before the fire. He was so intent upon his own reflections that he was
quite unconscious of my approach. This, indeed, he might easily have
been if he had been less absorbed, for footsteps fell noiselessly on the
sandy ground outside; but even my entrance failed to rouse him. I was
standing close to him, looking at him; and still, with a heavy brow, he
was lost in his meditations.

He gave such a start when I put my hand upon his shoulder, that he made
me start too.

'You come upon me,' he said, almost angrily, 'like a reproachful ghost!'

'I was obliged to announce myself, somehow,' I replied. 'Have I called
you down from the stars?'

'No,' he answered. 'No.'

'Up from anywhere, then?' said I, taking my seat near him.

'I was looking at the pictures in the fire,' he returned.

'But you are spoiling them for me,' said I, as he stirred it quickly
with a piece of burning wood, striking out of it a train of red-hot
sparks that went careering up the little chimney, and roaring out into
the air.

'You would not have seen them,' he returned. 'I detest this mongrel
time, neither day nor night. How late you are! Where have you been?'

'I have been taking leave of my usual walk,' said I.

'And I have been sitting here,' said Steerforth, glancing round the
room, 'thinking that all the people we found so glad on the night of
our coming down, might--to judge from the present wasted air of the
place--be dispersed, or dead, or come to I don't know what harm. David,
I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years!'

'My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?'

'I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!' he exclaimed. 'I
wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!'

There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed me. He
was more unlike himself than I could have supposed possible.

'It would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of a nephew,'
he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, with
his face towards the fire, 'than to be myself, twenty times richer and
twenty times wiser, and be the torment to myself that I have been, in
this Devil's bark of a boat, within the last half-hour!'

I was so confounded by the alteration in him, that at first I could only
observe him in silence, as he stood leaning his head upon his hand, and
looking gloomily down at the fire. At length I begged him, with all
the earnestness I felt, to tell me what had occurred to cross him so
unusually, and to let me sympathize with him, if I could not hope to
advise him. Before I had well concluded, he began to laugh--fretfully at
first, but soon with returning gaiety.

'Tut, it's nothing, Daisy! nothing!' he replied. 'I told you at the
inn in London, I am heavy company for myself, sometimes. I have been a
nightmare to myself, just now--must have had one, I think. At odd dull
times, nursery tales come up into the memory, unrecognized for what
they are. I believe I have been confounding myself with the bad boy who
"didn't care", and became food for lions--a grander kind of going to
the dogs, I suppose. What old women call the horrors, have been creeping
over me from head to foot. I have been afraid of myself.'

'You are afraid of nothing else, I think,' said I.

'Perhaps not, and yet may have enough to be afraid of too,' he answered.
'Well! So it goes by! I am not about to be hipped again, David; but I
tell you, my good fellow, once more, that it would have been well for me
(and for more than me) if I had had a steadfast and judicious father!'

His face was always full of expression, but I never saw it express such
a dark kind of earnestness as when he said these words, with his glance
bent on the fire.

'So much for that!' he said, making as if he tossed something light
into the air, with his hand. "'Why, being gone, I am a man again," like
Macbeth. And now for dinner! If I have not (Macbeth-like) broken up the
feast with most admired disorder, Daisy.'

'But where are they all, I wonder!' said I.

'God knows,' said Steerforth. 'After strolling to the ferry looking
for you, I strolled in here and found the place deserted. That set me
thinking, and you found me thinking.'

The advent of Mrs. Gummidge with a basket, explained how the house had
happened to be empty. She had hurried out to buy something that was
needed, against Mr. Peggotty's return with the tide; and had left the
door open in the meanwhile, lest Ham and little Em'ly, with whom it was
an early night, should come home while she was gone. Steerforth, after
very much improving Mrs. Gummidge's spirits by a cheerful salutation and
a jocose embrace, took my arm, and hurried me away.

He had improved his own spirits, no less than Mrs. Gummidge's, for
they were again at their usual flow, and he was full of vivacious
conversation as we went along.

'And so,' he said, gaily, 'we abandon this buccaneer life tomorrow, do
we?'

'So we agreed,' I returned. 'And our places by the coach are taken, you
know.'

'Ay! there's no help for it, I suppose,' said Steerforth. 'I have
almost forgotten that there is anything to do in the world but to go out
tossing on the sea here. I wish there was not.'

'As long as the novelty should last,' said I, laughing.

'Like enough,' he returned; 'though there's a sarcastic meaning in that
observation for an amiable piece of innocence like my young friend.
Well! I dare say I am a capricious fellow, David. I know I am; but
while the iron is hot, I can strike it vigorously too. I could pass
a reasonably good examination already, as a pilot in these waters, I
think.'

'Mr. Peggotty says you are a wonder,' I returned.

'A nautical phenomenon, eh?' laughed Steerforth.

'Indeed he does, and you know how truly; I know how ardent you are
in any pursuit you follow, and how easily you can master it. And that
amazes me most in you, Steerforth--that you should be contented with
such fitful uses of your powers.'

'Contented?' he answered, merrily. 'I am never contented, except with
your freshness, my gentle Daisy. As to fitfulness, I have never learnt
the art of binding myself to any of the wheels on which the Ixions of
these days are turning round and round. I missed it somehow in a bad
apprenticeship, and now don't care about it.---You know I have bought a
boat down here?'

'What an extraordinary fellow you are, Steerforth!' I exclaimed,
stopping--for this was the first I had heard of it. 'When you may never
care to come near the place again!'

'I don't know that,' he returned. 'I have taken a fancy to the place. At
all events,' walking me briskly on, 'I have bought a boat that was for
sale--a clipper, Mr. Peggotty says; and so she is--and Mr. Peggotty will
be master of her in my absence.'

'Now I understand you, Steerforth!' said I, exultingly. 'You pretend
to have bought it for yourself, but you have really done so to confer
a benefit on him. I might have known as much at first, knowing you.
My dear kind Steerforth, how can I tell you what I think of your
generosity?'

'Tush!' he answered, turning red. 'The less said, the better.'

'Didn't I know?' cried I, 'didn't I say that there was not a joy, or
sorrow, or any emotion of such honest hearts that was indifferent to
you?'

'Aye, aye,' he answered, 'you told me all that. There let it rest. We
have said enough!'

Afraid of offending him by pursuing the subject when he made so light
of it, I only pursued it in my thoughts as we went on at even a quicker
pace than before.

'She must be newly rigged,' said Steerforth, 'and I shall leave Littimer
behind to see it done, that I may know she is quite complete. Did I tell
you Littimer had come down?'

'No.'

'Oh yes! came down this morning, with a letter from my mother.'

As our looks met, I observed that he was pale even to his lips, though
he looked very steadily at me. I feared that some difference between him
and his mother might have led to his being in the frame of mind in which
I had found him at the solitary fireside. I hinted so.

'Oh no!' he said, shaking his head, and giving a slight laugh. 'Nothing
of the sort! Yes. He is come down, that man of mine.'

'The same as ever?' said I.

'The same as ever,' said Steerforth. 'Distant and quiet as the North
Pole. He shall see to the boat being fresh named. She's the "Stormy
Petrel" now. What does Mr. Peggotty care for Stormy Petrels! I'll have
her christened again.'

'By what name?' I asked.

'The "Little Em'ly".'

As he had continued to look steadily at me, I took it as a reminder that
he objected to being extolled for his consideration. I could not help
showing in my face how much it pleased me, but I said little, and he
resumed his usual smile, and seemed relieved.

'But see here,' he said, looking before us, 'where the original little
Em'ly comes! And that fellow with her, eh? Upon my soul, he's a true
knight. He never leaves her!'

Ham was a boat-builder in these days, having improved a natural
ingenuity in that handicraft, until he had become a skilled workman. He
was in his working-dress, and looked rugged enough, but manly withal,
and a very fit protector for the blooming little creature at his
side. Indeed, there was a frankness in his face, an honesty, and an
undisguised show of his pride in her, and his love for her, which were,
to me, the best of good looks. I thought, as they came towards us, that
they were well matched even in that particular.

She withdrew her hand timidly from his arm as we stopped to speak to
them, and blushed as she gave it to Steerforth and to me. When they
passed on, after we had exchanged a few words, she did not like to
replace that hand, but, still appearing timid and constrained, walked
by herself. I thought all this very pretty and engaging, and Steerforth
seemed to think so too, as we looked after them fading away in the light
of a young moon.

Suddenly there passed us--evidently following them--a young woman whose
approach we had not observed, but whose face I saw as she went by, and
thought I had a faint remembrance of. She was lightly dressed; looked
bold, and haggard, and flaunting, and poor; but seemed, for the time, to
have given all that to the wind which was blowing, and to have nothing
in her mind but going after them. As the dark distant level, absorbing
their figures into itself, left but itself visible between us and the
sea and clouds, her figure disappeared in like manner, still no nearer
to them than before.

'That is a black shadow to be following the girl,' said Steerforth,
standing still; 'what does it mean?'

He spoke in a low voice that sounded almost strange to Me.

'She must have it in her mind to beg of them, I think,' said I.

'A beggar would be no novelty,' said Steerforth; 'but it is a strange
thing that the beggar should take that shape tonight.'

'Why?' I asked.

'For no better reason, truly, than because I was thinking,' he said,
after a pause, 'of something like it, when it came by. Where the Devil
did it come from, I wonder!'

'From the shadow of this wall, I think,' said I, as we emerged upon a
road on which a wall abutted.

'It's gone!' he returned, looking over his shoulder. 'And all ill go
with it. Now for our dinner!'

But he looked again over his shoulder towards the sea-line glimmering
afar off, and yet again. And he wondered about it, in some broken
expressions, several times, in the short remainder of our walk; and only
seemed to forget it when the light of fire and candle shone upon us,
seated warm and merry, at table.

Littimer was there, and had his usual effect upon me. When I said to
him that I hoped Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle were well, he answered
respectfully (and of course respectably), that they were tolerably well,
he thanked me, and had sent their compliments. This was all, and yet he
seemed to me to say as plainly as a man could say: 'You are very young,
sir; you are exceedingly young.'

We had almost finished dinner, when taking a step or two towards the
table, from the corner where he kept watch upon us, or rather upon me,
as I felt, he said to his master:

'I beg your pardon, sir. Miss Mowcher is down here.'

'Who?' cried Steerforth, much astonished.

'Miss Mowcher, sir.'

'Why, what on earth does she do here?' said Steerforth.

'It appears to be her native part of the country, sir. She informs me
that she makes one of her professional visits here, every year, sir.
I met her in the street this afternoon, and she wished to know if she
might have the honour of waiting on you after dinner, sir.'

'Do you know the Giantess in question, Daisy?' inquired Steerforth.

I was obliged to confess--I felt ashamed, even of being at this
disadvantage before Littimer--that Miss Mowcher and I were wholly
unacquainted.

'Then you shall know her,' said Steerforth, 'for she is one of the seven
wonders of the world. When Miss Mowcher comes, show her in.'

I felt some curiosity and excitement about this lady, especially as
Steerforth burst into a fit of laughing when I referred to her, and
positively refused to answer any question of which I made her the
subject. I remained, therefore, in a state of considerable expectation
until the cloth had been removed some half an hour, and we were sitting
over our decanter of wine before the fire, when the door opened, and
Littimer, with his habitual serenity quite undisturbed, announced:

'Miss Mowcher!'

I looked at the doorway and saw nothing. I was still looking at
the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher was a long while making her
appearance, when, to my infinite astonishment, there came waddling round
a sofa which stood between me and it, a pursy dwarf, of about forty
or forty-five, with a very large head and face, a pair of roguish grey
eyes, and such extremely little arms, that, to enable herself to lay a
finger archly against her snub nose, as she ogled Steerforth, she was
obliged to meet the finger half-way, and lay her nose against it.
Her chin, which was what is called a double chin, was so fat that it
entirely swallowed up the strings of her bonnet, bow and all. Throat she
had none; waist she had none; legs she had none, worth mentioning; for
though she was more than full-sized down to where her waist would have
been, if she had had any, and though she terminated, as human beings
generally do, in a pair of feet, she was so short that she stood at a
common-sized chair as at a table, resting a bag she carried on the seat.
This lady--dressed in an off-hand, easy style; bringing her nose and her
forefinger together, with the difficulty I have described; standing with
her head necessarily on one side, and, with one of her sharp eyes shut
up, making an uncommonly knowing face--after ogling Steerforth for a few
moments, broke into a torrent of words.

'What! My flower!' she pleasantly began, shaking her large head at him.
'You're there, are you! Oh, you naughty boy, fie for shame, what do you
do so far away from home? Up to mischief, I'll be bound. Oh, you're a
downy fellow, Steerforth, so you are, and I'm another, ain't I? Ha, ha,
ha! You'd have betted a hundred pound to five, now, that you wouldn't
have seen me here, wouldn't you? Bless you, man alive, I'm everywhere.
I'm here and there, and where not, like the conjurer's half-crown in the
lady's handkercher. Talking of handkerchers--and talking of ladies--what
a comfort you are to your blessed mother, ain't you, my dear boy, over
one of my shoulders, and I don't say which!'

Miss Mowcher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her discourse, threw
back the strings, and sat down, panting, on a footstool in front of
the fire--making a kind of arbour of the dining table, which spread its
mahogany shelter above her head.

'Oh my stars and what's-their-names!' she went on, clapping a hand on
each of her little knees, and glancing shrewdly at me, 'I'm of too full
a habit, that's the fact, Steerforth. After a flight of stairs, it gives
me as much trouble to draw every breath I want, as if it was a bucket of
water. If you saw me looking out of an upper window, you'd think I was a
fine woman, wouldn't you?'

'I should think that, wherever I saw you,' replied Steerforth.

'Go along, you dog, do!' cried the little creature, making a whisk at
him with the handkerchief with which she was wiping her face, 'and don't
be impudent! But I give you my word and honour I was at Lady Mithers's
last week--THERE'S a woman! How SHE wears!--and Mithers himself came
into the room where I was waiting for her--THERE'S a man! How HE wears!
and his wig too, for he's had it these ten years--and he went on at
that rate in the complimentary line, that I began to think I should be
obliged to ring the bell. Ha! ha! ha! He's a pleasant wretch, but he
wants principle.'

'What were you doing for Lady Mithers?' asked Steerforth.

'That's tellings, my blessed infant,' she retorted, tapping her nose
again, screwing up her face, and twinkling her eyes like an imp of
supernatural intelligence. 'Never YOU mind! You'd like to know whether
I stop her hair from falling off, or dye it, or touch up her
complexion, or improve her eyebrows, wouldn't you? And so you shall, my
darling--when I tell you! Do you know what my great grandfather's name
was?'

'No,' said Steerforth.

'It was Walker, my sweet pet,' replied Miss Mowcher, 'and he came of a
long line of Walkers, that I inherit all the Hookey estates from.'

I never beheld anything approaching to Miss Mowcher's wink except Miss
Mowcher's self-possession. She had a wonderful way too, when listening
to what was said to her, or when waiting for an answer to what she had
said herself, of pausing with her head cunningly on one side, and one
eye turned up like a magpie's. Altogether I was lost in amazement,
and sat staring at her, quite oblivious, I am afraid, of the laws of
politeness.

She had by this time drawn the chair to her side, and was busily engaged
in producing from the bag (plunging in her short arm to the shoulder, at
every dive) a number of small bottles, sponges, combs, brushes, bits of
flannel, little pairs of curling-irons, and other instruments, which
she tumbled in a heap upon the chair. From this employment she suddenly
desisted, and said to Steerforth, much to my confusion:

'Who's your friend?'

'Mr. Copperfield,' said Steerforth; 'he wants to know you.'

'Well, then, he shall! I thought he looked as if he did!' returned Miss
Mowcher, waddling up to me, bag in hand, and laughing on me as she came.
'Face like a peach!' standing on tiptoe to pinch my cheek as I
sat. 'Quite tempting! I'm very fond of peaches. Happy to make your
acquaintance, Mr. Copperfield, I'm sure.'

I said that I congratulated myself on having the honour to make hers,
and that the happiness was mutual.

'Oh, my goodness, how polite we are!' exclaimed Miss Mowcher, making a
preposterous attempt to cover her large face with her morsel of a hand.
'What a world of gammon and spinnage it is, though, ain't it!'

This was addressed confidentially to both of us, as the morsel of a
hand came away from the face, and buried itself, arm and all, in the bag
again.

'What do you mean, Miss Mowcher?' said Steerforth.

'Ha! ha! ha! What a refreshing set of humbugs we are, to be sure, ain't
we, my sweet child?' replied that morsel of a woman, feeling in the bag
with her head on one side and her eye in the air. 'Look here!' taking
something out. 'Scraps of the Russian Prince's nails. Prince Alphabet
turned topsy-turvy, I call him, for his name's got all the letters in
it, higgledy-piggledy.'

'The Russian Prince is a client of yours, is he?' said Steerforth.

'I believe you, my pet,' replied Miss Mowcher. 'I keep his nails in
order for him. Twice a week! Fingers and toes.'

'He pays well, I hope?' said Steerforth.

'Pays, as he speaks, my dear child--through the nose,' replied Miss
Mowcher. 'None of your close shavers the Prince ain't. You'd say so, if
you saw his moustachios. Red by nature, black by art.'

'By your art, of course,' said Steerforth.

Miss Mowcher winked assent. 'Forced to send for me. Couldn't help it.
The climate affected his dye; it did very well in Russia, but it was no
go here. You never saw such a rusty Prince in all your born days as he
was. Like old iron!' 'Is that why you called him a humbug, just now?'
inquired Steerforth.

'Oh, you're a broth of a boy, ain't you?' returned Miss Mowcher, shaking
her head violently. 'I said, what a set of humbugs we were in general,
and I showed you the scraps of the Prince's nails to prove it. The
Prince's nails do more for me in private families of the genteel sort,
than all my talents put together. I always carry 'em about. They're the
best introduction. If Miss Mowcher cuts the Prince's nails, she must be
all right. I give 'em away to the young ladies. They put 'em in albums,
I believe. Ha! ha! ha! Upon my life, "the whole social system" (as
the men call it when they make speeches in Parliament) is a system of
Prince's nails!' said this least of women, trying to fold her short
arms, and nodding her large head.

Steerforth laughed heartily, and I laughed too. Miss Mowcher continuing
all the time to shake her head (which was very much on one side), and to
look into the air with one eye, and to wink with the other.

'Well, well!' she said, smiting her small knees, and rising, 'this is
not business. Come, Steerforth, let's explore the polar regions, and
have it over.'

She then selected two or three of the little instruments, and a
little bottle, and asked (to my surprise) if the table would bear. On
Steerforth's replying in the affirmative, she pushed a chair against it,
and begging the assistance of my hand, mounted up, pretty nimbly, to the
top, as if it were a stage.

'If either of you saw my ankles,' she said, when she was safely
elevated, 'say so, and I'll go home and destroy myself!'

'I did not,' said Steerforth.

'I did not,' said I.

'Well then,' cried Miss Mowcher, 'I'll consent to live. Now, ducky,
ducky, ducky, come to Mrs. Bond and be killed.'

This was an invocation to Steerforth to place himself under her hands;
who, accordingly, sat himself down, with his back to the table, and
his laughing face towards me, and submitted his head to her inspection,
evidently for no other purpose than our entertainment. To see Miss
Mowcher standing over him, looking at his rich profusion of brown
hair through a large round magnifying glass, which she took out of her
pocket, was a most amazing spectacle.

'You're a pretty fellow!' said Miss Mowcher, after a brief inspection.
'You'd be as bald as a friar on the top of your head in twelve months,
but for me. Just half a minute, my young friend, and we'll give you a
polishing that shall keep your curls on for the next ten years!'

With this, she tilted some of the contents of the little bottle on to
one of the little bits of flannel, and, again imparting some of the
virtues of that preparation to one of the little brushes, began rubbing
and scraping away with both on the crown of Steerforth's head in the
busiest manner I ever witnessed, talking all the time.

'There's Charley Pyegrave, the duke's son,' she said. 'You know
Charley?' peeping round into his face.

'A little,' said Steerforth.

'What a man HE is! THERE'S a whisker! As to Charley's legs, if they
were only a pair (which they ain't), they'd defy competition. Would you
believe he tried to do without me--in the Life-Guards, too?'

'Mad!' said Steerforth.

'It looks like it. However, mad or sane, he tried,' returned Miss
Mowcher. 'What does he do, but, lo and behold you, he goes into a
perfumer's shop, and wants to buy a bottle of the Madagascar Liquid.'

'Charley does?' said Steerforth.

'Charley does. But they haven't got any of the Madagascar Liquid.'

'What is it? Something to drink?' asked Steerforth.

'To drink?' returned Miss Mowcher, stopping to slap his cheek. 'To
doctor his own moustachios with, you know. There was a woman in the
shop--elderly female--quite a Griffin--who had never even heard of it
by name. "Begging pardon, sir," said the Griffin to Charley, "it's
not--not--not ROUGE, is it?" "Rouge," said Charley to the Griffin. "What
the unmentionable to ears polite, do you think I want with rouge?" "No
offence, sir," said the Griffin; "we have it asked for by so many names,
I thought it might be." Now that, my child,' continued Miss Mowcher,
rubbing all the time as busily as ever, 'is another instance of
the refreshing humbug I was speaking of. I do something in that way
myself--perhaps a good deal--perhaps a little--sharp's the word, my dear
boy--never mind!'

'In what way do you mean? In the rouge way?' said Steerforth.

'Put this and that together, my tender pupil,' returned the wary
Mowcher, touching her nose, 'work it by the rule of Secrets in all
trades, and the product will give you the desired result. I say I do a
little in that way myself. One Dowager, SHE calls it lip-salve. Another,
SHE calls it gloves. Another, SHE calls it tucker-edging. Another, SHE
calls it a fan. I call it whatever THEY call it. I supply it for 'em,
but we keep up the trick so, to one another, and make believe with
such a face, that they'd as soon think of laying it on, before a whole
drawing-room, as before me. And when I wait upon 'em, they'll say to
me sometimes--WITH IT ON--thick, and no mistake--"How am I looking,
Mowcher? Am I pale?" Ha! ha! ha! ha! Isn't THAT refreshing, my young
friend!'

I never did in my days behold anything like Mowcher as she stood upon
the dining table, intensely enjoying this refreshment, rubbing busily at
Steerforth's head, and winking at me over it.

'Ah!' she said. 'Such things are not much in demand hereabouts. That
sets me off again! I haven't seen a pretty woman since I've been here,
jemmy.'

'No?' said Steerforth.

'Not the ghost of one,' replied Miss Mowcher.

'We could show her the substance of one, I think?' said Steerforth,
addressing his eyes to mine. 'Eh, Daisy?'

'Yes, indeed,' said I.

'Aha?' cried the little creature, glancing sharply at my face, and then
peeping round at Steerforth's. 'Umph?'

The first exclamation sounded like a question put to both of us, and the
second like a question put to Steerforth only. She seemed to have found
no answer to either, but continued to rub, with her head on one side and
her eye turned up, as if she were looking for an answer in the air and
were confident of its appearing presently.

'A sister of yours, Mr. Copperfield?' she cried, after a pause, and
still keeping the same look-out. 'Aye, aye?'

'No,' said Steerforth, before I could reply. 'Nothing of the sort. On
the contrary, Mr. Copperfield used--or I am much mistaken--to have a
great admiration for her.'

'Why, hasn't he now?' returned Miss Mowcher. 'Is he fickle? Oh, for
shame! Did he sip every flower, and change every hour, until Polly his
passion requited?--Is her name Polly?'

The Elfin suddenness with which she pounced upon me with this question,
and a searching look, quite disconcerted me for a moment.

'No, Miss Mowcher,' I replied. 'Her name is Emily.'

'Aha?' she cried exactly as before. 'Umph? What a rattle I am! Mr.
Copperfield, ain't I volatile?'

Her tone and look implied something that was not agreeable to me in
connexion with the subject. So I said, in a graver manner than any of us
had yet assumed: 'She is as virtuous as she is pretty. She is engaged
to be married to a most worthy and deserving man in her own station of
life. I esteem her for her good sense, as much as I admire her for her
good looks.'

'Well said!' cried Steerforth. 'Hear, hear, hear! Now I'll quench the
curiosity of this little Fatima, my dear Daisy, by leaving her nothing
to guess at. She is at present apprenticed, Miss Mowcher, or articled,
or whatever it may be, to Omer and Joram, Haberdashers, Milliners, and
so forth, in this town. Do you observe? Omer and Joram. The promise of
which my friend has spoken, is made and entered into with her cousin;
Christian name, Ham; surname, Peggotty; occupation, boat-builder;
also of this town. She lives with a relative; Christian name, unknown;
surname, Peggotty; occupation, seafaring; also of this town. She is the
prettiest and most engaging little fairy in the world. I admire her--as
my friend does--exceedingly. If it were not that I might appear to
disparage her Intended, which I know my friend would not like, I would
add, that to me she seems to be throwing herself away; that I am sure
she might do better; and that I swear she was born to be a lady.'

Miss Mowcher listened to these words, which were very slowly and
distinctly spoken, with her head on one side, and her eye in the air
as if she were still looking for that answer. When he ceased she became
brisk again in an instant, and rattled away with surprising volubility.

'Oh! And that's all about it, is it?' she exclaimed, trimming his
whiskers with a little restless pair of scissors, that went glancing
round his head in all directions. 'Very well: very well! Quite a long
story. Ought to end "and they lived happy ever afterwards"; oughtn't
it? Ah! What's that game at forfeits? I love my love with an E, because
she's enticing; I hate her with an E, because she's engaged. I took her
to the sign of the exquisite, and treated her with an elopement, her
name's Emily, and she lives in the east? Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Copperfield,
ain't I volatile?'

Merely looking at me with extravagant slyness, and not waiting for any
reply, she continued, without drawing breath:

'There! If ever any scapegrace was trimmed and touched up to perfection,
you are, Steerforth. If I understand any noddle in the world, I
understand yours. Do you hear me when I tell you that, my darling? I
understand yours,' peeping down into his face. 'Now you may mizzle,
jemmy (as we say at Court), and if Mr. Copperfield will take the chair
I'll operate on him.'

'What do you say, Daisy?' inquired Steerforth, laughing, and resigning
his seat. 'Will you be improved?'

'Thank you, Miss Mowcher, not this evening.'

'Don't say no,' returned the little woman, looking at me with the aspect
of a connoisseur; 'a little bit more eyebrow?'

'Thank you,' I returned, 'some other time.'

'Have it carried half a quarter of an inch towards the temple,' said
Miss Mowcher. 'We can do it in a fortnight.'

'No, I thank you. Not at present.'

'Go in for a tip,' she urged. 'No? Let's get the scaffolding up, then,
for a pair of whiskers. Come!'

I could not help blushing as I declined, for I felt we were on my weak
point, now. But Miss Mowcher, finding that I was not at present disposed
for any decoration within the range of her art, and that I was, for the
time being, proof against the blandishments of the small bottle which
she held up before one eye to enforce her persuasions, said we would
make a beginning on an early day, and requested the aid of my hand to
descend from her elevated station. Thus assisted, she skipped down with
much agility, and began to tie her double chin into her bonnet.

'The fee,' said Steerforth, 'is--'

'Five bob,' replied Miss Mowcher, 'and dirt cheap, my chicken. Ain't I
volatile, Mr. Copperfield?'

I replied politely: 'Not at all.' But I thought she was rather so, when
she tossed up his two half-crowns like a goblin pieman, caught them,
dropped them in her pocket, and gave it a loud slap.

'That's the Till!' observed Miss Mowcher, standing at the chair again,
and replacing in the bag a miscellaneous collection of little objects
she had emptied out of it. 'Have I got all my traps? It seems so. It
won't do to be like long Ned Beadwood, when they took him to church "to
marry him to somebody", as he says, and left the bride behind. Ha! ha!
ha! A wicked rascal, Ned, but droll! Now, I know I'm going to break
your hearts, but I am forced to leave you. You must call up all your
fortitude, and try to bear it. Good-bye, Mr. Copperfield! Take care of
yourself, jockey of Norfolk! How I have been rattling on! It's all
the fault of you two wretches. I forgive you! "Bob swore!"--as the
Englishman said for "Good night", when he first learnt French, and
thought it so like English. "Bob swore," my ducks!'

With the bag slung over her arm, and rattling as she waddled away, she
waddled to the door, where she stopped to inquire if she should leave
us a lock of her hair. 'Ain't I volatile?' she added, as a commentary on
this offer, and, with her finger on her nose, departed.

Steerforth laughed to that degree, that it was impossible for me to help
laughing too; though I am not sure I should have done so, but for this
inducement. When we had had our laugh quite out, which was after some
time, he told me that Miss Mowcher had quite an extensive connexion, and
made herself useful to a variety of people in a variety of ways. Some
people trifled with her as a mere oddity, he said; but she was as
shrewdly and sharply observant as anyone he knew, and as long-headed as
she was short-armed. He told me that what she had said of being here,
and there, and everywhere, was true enough; for she made little darts
into the provinces, and seemed to pick up customers everywhere, and to
know everybody. I asked him what her disposition was: whether it was at
all mischievous, and if her sympathies were generally on the right side
of things: but, not succeeding in attracting his attention to these
questions after two or three attempts, I forbore or forgot to repeat
them. He told me instead, with much rapidity, a good deal about her
skill, and her profits; and about her being a scientific cupper, if I
should ever have occasion for her service in that capacity.

She was the principal theme of our conversation during the evening:
and when we parted for the night Steerforth called after me over the
banisters, 'Bob swore!' as I went downstairs.

I was surprised, when I came to Mr. Barkis's house, to find Ham walking
up and down in front of it, and still more surprised to learn from him
that little Em'ly was inside. I naturally inquired why he was not there
too, instead of pacing the streets by himself?

'Why, you see, Mas'r Davy,' he rejoined, in a hesitating manner, 'Em'ly,
she's talking to some 'un in here.'

'I should have thought,' said I, smiling, 'that that was a reason for
your being in here too, Ham.'

'Well, Mas'r Davy, in a general way, so 't would be,' he returned;
'but look'ee here, Mas'r Davy,' lowering his voice, and speaking very
gravely. 'It's a young woman, sir--a young woman, that Em'ly knowed
once, and doen't ought to know no more.'

When I heard these words, a light began to fall upon the figure I had
seen following them, some hours ago.

'It's a poor wurem, Mas'r Davy,' said Ham, 'as is trod under foot by all
the town. Up street and down street. The mowld o' the churchyard don't
hold any that the folk shrink away from, more.'

'Did I see her tonight, Ham, on the sand, after we met you?'

'Keeping us in sight?' said Ham. 'It's like you did, Mas'r Davy. Not
that I know'd then, she was theer, sir, but along of her creeping soon
arterwards under Em'ly's little winder, when she see the light come,
and whispering "Em'ly, Em'ly, for Christ's sake, have a woman's heart
towards me. I was once like you!" Those was solemn words, Mas'r Davy,
fur to hear!'

'They were indeed, Ham. What did Em'ly do?' 'Says Em'ly, "Martha, is
it you? Oh, Martha, can it be you?"--for they had sat at work together,
many a day, at Mr. Omer's.'

'I recollect her now!' cried I, recalling one of the two girls I had
seen when I first went there. 'I recollect her quite well!'

'Martha Endell,' said Ham. 'Two or three year older than Em'ly, but was
at the school with her.'

'I never heard her name,' said I. 'I didn't mean to interrupt you.'

'For the matter o' that, Mas'r Davy,' replied Ham, 'all's told a'most
in them words, "Em'ly, Em'ly, for Christ's sake, have a woman's heart
towards me. I was once like you!" She wanted to speak to Em'ly. Em'ly
couldn't speak to her theer, for her loving uncle was come home, and
he wouldn't--no, Mas'r Davy,' said Ham, with great earnestness, 'he
couldn't, kind-natur'd, tender-hearted as he is, see them two together,
side by side, for all the treasures that's wrecked in the sea.'

I felt how true this was. I knew it, on the instant, quite as well as
Ham.

'So Em'ly writes in pencil on a bit of paper,' he pursued, 'and gives it
to her out o' winder to bring here. "Show that," she says, "to my aunt,
Mrs. Barkis, and she'll set you down by her fire, for the love of me,
till uncle is gone out, and I can come." By and by she tells me what
I tell you, Mas'r Davy, and asks me to bring her. What can I do? She
doen't ought to know any such, but I can't deny her, when the tears is
on her face.'

He put his hand into the breast of his shaggy jacket, and took out with
great care a pretty little purse.

'And if I could deny her when the tears was on her face, Mas'r Davy,'
said Ham, tenderly adjusting it on the rough palm of his hand, 'how
could I deny her when she give me this to carry for her--knowing what
she brought it for? Such a toy as it is!' said Ham, thoughtfully looking
on it. 'With such a little money in it, Em'ly my dear.'

I shook him warmly by the hand when he had put it away again--for that
was more satisfactory to me than saying anything--and we walked up
and down, for a minute or two, in silence. The door opened then, and
Peggotty appeared, beckoning to Ham to come in. I would have kept away,
but she came after me, entreating me to come in too. Even then, I
would have avoided the room where they all were, but for its being the
neat-tiled kitchen I have mentioned more than once. The door opening
immediately into it, I found myself among them before I considered
whither I was going.

The girl--the same I had seen upon the sands--was near the fire. She
was sitting on the ground, with her head and one arm lying on a chair.
I fancied, from the disposition of her figure, that Em'ly had but newly
risen from the chair, and that the forlorn head might perhaps have been
lying on her lap. I saw but little of the girl's face, over which her
hair fell loose and scattered, as if she had been disordering it with
her own hands; but I saw that she was young, and of a fair complexion.
Peggotty had been crying. So had little Em'ly. Not a word was spoken
when we first went in; and the Dutch clock by the dresser seemed, in the
silence, to tick twice as loud as usual. Em'ly spoke first.

'Martha wants,' she said to Ham, 'to go to London.'

'Why to London?' returned Ham.

He stood between them, looking on the prostrate girl with a mixture of
compassion for her, and of jealousy of her holding any companionship
with her whom he loved so well, which I have always remembered
distinctly. They both spoke as if she were ill; in a soft, suppressed
tone that was plainly heard, although it hardly rose above a whisper.

'Better there than here,' said a third voice aloud--Martha's, though she
did not move. 'No one knows me there. Everybody knows me here.'

'What will she do there?' inquired Ham.

She lifted up her head, and looked darkly round at him for a moment;
then laid it down again, and curved her right arm about her neck, as
a woman in a fever, or in an agony of pain from a shot, might twist
herself.

'She will try to do well,' said little Em'ly. 'You don't know what she
has said to us. Does he--do they--aunt?'

Peggotty shook her head compassionately.

'I'll try,' said Martha, 'if you'll help me away. I never can do worse
than I have done here. I may do better. Oh!' with a dreadful shiver,
'take me out of these streets, where the whole town knows me from a
child!'

As Em'ly held out her hand to Ham, I saw him put in it a little canvas
bag. She took it, as if she thought it were her purse, and made a step
or two forward; but finding her mistake, came back to where he had
retired near me, and showed it to him.

'It's all yourn, Em'ly,' I could hear him say. 'I haven't nowt in all
the wureld that ain't yourn, my dear. It ain't of no delight to me,
except for you!'

The tears rose freshly in her eyes, but she turned away and went to
Martha. What she gave her, I don't know. I saw her stooping over her,
and putting money in her bosom. She whispered something, as she asked
was that enough? 'More than enough,' the other said, and took her hand
and kissed it.

Then Martha arose, and gathering her shawl about her, covering her
face with it, and weeping aloud, went slowly to the door. She stopped
a moment before going out, as if she would have uttered something or
turned back; but no word passed her lips. Making the same low, dreary,
wretched moaning in her shawl, she went away.

As the door closed, little Em'ly looked at us three in a hurried manner
and then hid her face in her hands, and fell to sobbing.

'Doen't, Em'ly!' said Ham, tapping her gently on the shoulder. 'Doen't,
my dear! You doen't ought to cry so, pretty!'

'Oh, Ham!' she exclaimed, still weeping pitifully, 'I am not so good a
girl as I ought to be! I know I have not the thankful heart, sometimes,
I ought to have!'

'Yes, yes, you have, I'm sure,' said Ham.

'No! no! no!' cried little Em'ly, sobbing, and shaking her head. 'I am
not as good a girl as I ought to be. Not near! not near!' And still she
cried, as if her heart would break.

'I try your love too much. I know I do!' she sobbed. 'I'm often cross to
you, and changeable with you, when I ought to be far different. You are
never so to me. Why am I ever so to you, when I should think of nothing
but how to be grateful, and to make you happy!'

'You always make me so,' said Ham, 'my dear! I am happy in the sight of
you. I am happy, all day long, in the thoughts of you.'

'Ah! that's not enough!' she cried. 'That is because you are good; not
because I am! Oh, my dear, it might have been a better fortune for
you, if you had been fond of someone else--of someone steadier and
much worthier than me, who was all bound up in you, and never vain and
changeable like me!'

'Poor little tender-heart,' said Ham, in a low voice. 'Martha has
overset her, altogether.'

'Please, aunt,' sobbed Em'ly, 'come here, and let me lay my head upon
you. Oh, I am very miserable tonight, aunt! Oh, I am not as good a girl
as I ought to be. I am not, I know!'

Peggotty had hastened to the chair before the fire. Em'ly, with her
arms around her neck, kneeled by her, looking up most earnestly into her
face.

'Oh, pray, aunt, try to help me! Ham, dear, try to help me! Mr. David,
for the sake of old times, do, please, try to help me! I want to be a
better girl than I am. I want to feel a hundred times more thankful than
I do. I want to feel more, what a blessed thing it is to be the wife of
a good man, and to lead a peaceful life. Oh me, oh me! Oh my heart, my
heart!'

She dropped her face on my old nurse's breast, and, ceasing this
supplication, which in its agony and grief was half a woman's, half a
child's, as all her manner was (being, in that, more natural, and better
suited to her beauty, as I thought, than any other manner could have
been), wept silently, while my old nurse hushed her like an infant.

She got calmer by degrees, and then we soothed her; now talking
encouragingly, and now jesting a little with her, until she began to
raise her head and speak to us. So we got on, until she was able to
smile, and then to laugh, and then to sit up, half ashamed; while
Peggotty recalled her stray ringlets, dried her eyes, and made her neat
again, lest her uncle should wonder, when she got home, why his darling
had been crying.

I saw her do, that night, what I had never seen her do before. I saw her
innocently kiss her chosen husband on the cheek, and creep close to his
bluff form as if it were her best support. When they went away together,
in the waning moonlight, and I looked after them, comparing their
departure in my mind with Martha's, I saw that she held his arm with
both her hands, and still kept close to him.

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

completion: During his stay at the Steerforth home, David is much impressed with Littimer, a servant there. "He surrounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability, and walked secure in it. It would have been next to impossible to suspect him of anything wrong, he was so thoroughly respectable," David says of Littimer. Finally, David and Steerforth leave for Yarmouth and, arriving late, spend the night at an inn. The next morning, David goes alone to visit Mr. Barkis and Peggotty. On the way he comes to Mr. Omer's shop, which is now listed as OMER AND JORAM. David goes inside and talks to Mr. Omer, who tells him that Little Em'ly works in his shop as a seamstress and that she mixes well with the other girls -- apparently because of her rare beauty and her dream of becoming a "lady." David calls on Peggotty, who at first fails to recognize him. She takes David upstairs to see Mr. Barkis, now a rheumatic invalid confined to bed. Steerforth arrives a little later, and after dinner, he and David set out for the Peggotty houseboat. As they walk along the shore, Steerforth comments that "the sea roars as if it were hungry" for them. They arrive just as the engagement between little Em'ly and Ham is being announced. The family is overjoyed, and the jubilant Mr. Peggotty exclaims that "no wrong can touch my Em'ly." David and Steerforth are welcomed into the celebration, and when Steerforth leaves the Peggotty home, he remarks that Ham is "rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl, isn't he?" David feels a shock in this unexpected and cold comment. But, "seeing a laugh in his eyes," he thinks that Steerforth must be joking. "Ah, Steerforth! . . . When I see how perfectly you understand them . . . I know that there is not a joy or sorrow, not an emotion, of such people that can be indifferent to you." Steerforth replies, "I believe you are in earnest, and are good. I wish we all were!" During the visit, which lasts for more than two weeks, Steerforth spends a great deal of time boating with Mr. Peggotty, while David visits his old home at Blunderstone. The old neighbors have moved and his parents' graves have been cared for by Peggotty; David feels "a singular jumble of sadness and pleasure" about his early years here. One evening, David is surprised to find Steerforth in a despondent mood. He does not tell David what is bothering him, but says only that he wishes "with all my soul I could guide myself better." The mood is only momentary, however, and he soon improves his spirits and tells David that he has bought a used boat, renaming it the Little Em'ly. Mr. Peggotty will be the "captain" in Steerforth's absence. David believes this to be evidence of his friend's charity toward Mr. Peggotty. Later, Steerforth's austere and respectable servant, Littimer, arrives with a letter from Steerforth's mother. Then there is another arrival -- Miss Mowcher, a fat, middle-aged dwarf, who is a hairdresser for wealthy families. Steerforth describes Little Em'ly to the dwarf as "The prettiest and most engaging little fairy in the world . . . I swear she was born to be a lady." Later, David walks back to the Barkis house and finds Ham waiting outside for Em'ly. She is in the house talking to Martha Endell, a girl who once worked with her at Mr. Omer's. Ham explains to David that Martha Endell is a "fallen woman," and because Mr. Peggotty would not want Em'ly to speak to her, she earlier gave the girl a note telling her to meet her at the Barkis cottage. Ham gives Martha some money so that she can go to London, where she is not known. After Martha leaves, little Em'ly sobs, "I am not as good a girl as I ought to be! Not near! Not near!"