Chapter: I PASS over all that happened at school, until the anniversary of my
birthday came round in March. Except that Steerforth was more to be
admired than ever, I remember nothing. He was going away at the end of
the half-year, if not sooner, and was more spirited and independent than
before in my eyes, and therefore more engaging than before; but beyond
this I remember nothing. The great remembrance by which that time is
marked in my mind, seems to have swallowed up all lesser recollections,
and to exist alone.

It is even difficult for me to believe that there was a gap of full
two months between my return to Salem House and the arrival of that
birthday. I can only understand that the fact was so, because I know it
must have been so; otherwise I should feel convinced that there was no
interval, and that the one occasion trod upon the other's heels.

How well I recollect the kind of day it was! I smell the fog that hung
about the place; I see the hoar frost, ghostly, through it; I feel my
rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim perspective of
the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and there to light up the
foggy morning, and the breath of the boys wreathing and smoking in the
raw cold as they blow upon their fingers, and tap their feet upon the
floor. It was after breakfast, and we had been summoned in from the
playground, when Mr. Sharp entered and said:

'David Copperfield is to go into the parlour.'

I expected a hamper from Peggotty, and brightened at the order. Some
of the boys about me put in their claim not to be forgotten in the
distribution of the good things, as I got out of my seat with great
alacrity.

'Don't hurry, David,' said Mr. Sharp. 'There's time enough, my boy,
don't hurry.'

I might have been surprised by the feeling tone in which he spoke, if I
had given it a thought; but I gave it none until afterwards. I hurried
away to the parlour; and there I found Mr. Creakle, sitting at his
breakfast with the cane and a newspaper before him, and Mrs. Creakle
with an opened letter in her hand. But no hamper.

'David Copperfield,' said Mrs. Creakle, leading me to a sofa, and
sitting down beside me. 'I want to speak to you very particularly. I
have something to tell you, my child.'

Mr. Creakle, at whom of course I looked, shook his head without looking
at me, and stopped up a sigh with a very large piece of buttered toast.

'You are too young to know how the world changes every day,' said Mrs.
Creakle, 'and how the people in it pass away. But we all have to learn
it, David; some of us when we are young, some of us when we are old,
some of us at all times of our lives.'

I looked at her earnestly.

'When you came away from home at the end of the vacation,' said Mrs.
Creakle, after a pause, 'were they all well?' After another pause, 'Was
your mama well?'

I trembled without distinctly knowing why, and still looked at her
earnestly, making no attempt to answer.

'Because,' said she, 'I grieve to tell you that I hear this morning your
mama is very ill.'

A mist rose between Mrs. Creakle and me, and her figure seemed to move
in it for an instant. Then I felt the burning tears run down my face,
and it was steady again.

'She is very dangerously ill,' she added.

I knew all now.

'She is dead.'

There was no need to tell me so. I had already broken out into a
desolate cry, and felt an orphan in the wide world.

She was very kind to me. She kept me there all day, and left me alone
sometimes; and I cried, and wore myself to sleep, and awoke and
cried again. When I could cry no more, I began to think; and then the
oppression on my breast was heaviest, and my grief a dull pain that
there was no ease for.

And yet my thoughts were idle; not intent on the calamity that weighed
upon my heart, but idly loitering near it. I thought of our house shut
up and hushed. I thought of the little baby, who, Mrs. Creakle said, had
been pining away for some time, and who, they believed, would die too. I
thought of my father's grave in the churchyard, by our house, and of my
mother lying there beneath the tree I knew so well. I stood upon a chair
when I was left alone, and looked into the glass to see how red my eyes
were, and how sorrowful my face. I considered, after some hours were
gone, if my tears were really hard to flow now, as they seemed to be,
what, in connexion with my loss, it would affect me most to think
of when I drew near home--for I was going home to the funeral. I am
sensible of having felt that a dignity attached to me among the rest of
the boys, and that I was important in my affliction.

If ever child were stricken with sincere grief, I was. But I remember
that this importance was a kind of satisfaction to me, when I walked in
the playground that afternoon while the boys were in school. When I
saw them glancing at me out of the windows, as they went up to their
classes, I felt distinguished, and looked more melancholy, and walked
slower. When school was over, and they came out and spoke to me, I felt
it rather good in myself not to be proud to any of them, and to take
exactly the same notice of them all, as before.

I was to go home next night; not by the mail, but by the heavy
night-coach, which was called the Farmer, and was principally used by
country-people travelling short intermediate distances upon the road. We
had no story-telling that evening, and Traddles insisted on lending me
his pillow. I don't know what good he thought it would do me, for I
had one of my own: but it was all he had to lend, poor fellow, except a
sheet of letter-paper full of skeletons; and that he gave me at parting,
as a soother of my sorrows and a contribution to my peace of mind.

I left Salem House upon the morrow afternoon. I little thought then that
I left it, never to return. We travelled very slowly all night, and
did not get into Yarmouth before nine or ten o'clock in the morning. I
looked out for Mr. Barkis, but he was not there; and instead of him a
fat, short-winded, merry-looking, little old man in black, with rusty
little bunches of ribbons at the knees of his breeches, black stockings,
and a broad-brimmed hat, came puffing up to the coach window, and said:

'Master Copperfield?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Will you come with me, young sir, if you please,' he said, opening the
door, 'and I shall have the pleasure of taking you home.'

I put my hand in his, wondering who he was, and we walked away to a
shop in a narrow street, on which was written OMER, DRAPER, TAILOR,
HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER, &c. It was a close and stifling little
shop; full of all sorts of clothing, made and unmade, including
one window full of beaver-hats and bonnets. We went into a little
back-parlour behind the shop, where we found three young women at work
on a quantity of black materials, which were heaped upon the table,
and little bits and cuttings of which were littered all over the floor.
There was a good fire in the room, and a breathless smell of warm black
crape--I did not know what the smell was then, but I know now.

The three young women, who appeared to be very industrious and
comfortable, raised their heads to look at me, and then went on with
their work. Stitch, stitch, stitch. At the same time there came from
a workshop across a little yard outside the window, a regular sound
of hammering that kept a kind of tune: RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat,
RAT--tat-tat, without any variation.

'Well,' said my conductor to one of the three young women. 'How do you
get on, Minnie?'

'We shall be ready by the trying-on time,' she replied gaily, without
looking up. 'Don't you be afraid, father.'

Mr. Omer took off his broad-brimmed hat, and sat down and panted. He was
so fat that he was obliged to pant some time before he could say:

'That's right.'

'Father!' said Minnie, playfully. 'What a porpoise you do grow!'

'Well, I don't know how it is, my dear,' he replied, considering about
it. 'I am rather so.'

'You are such a comfortable man, you see,' said Minnie. 'You take things
so easy.'

'No use taking 'em otherwise, my dear,' said Mr. Omer.

'No, indeed,' returned his daughter. 'We are all pretty gay here, thank
Heaven! Ain't we, father?'

'I hope so, my dear,' said Mr. Omer. 'As I have got my breath now, I
think I'll measure this young scholar. Would you walk into the shop,
Master Copperfield?'

I preceded Mr. Omer, in compliance with his request; and after showing
me a roll of cloth which he said was extra super, and too good mourning
for anything short of parents, he took my various dimensions, and put
them down in a book. While he was recording them he called my attention
to his stock in trade, and to certain fashions which he said had 'just
come up', and to certain other fashions which he said had 'just gone
out'.

'And by that sort of thing we very often lose a little mint of money,'
said Mr. Omer. 'But fashions are like human beings. They come in, nobody
knows when, why, or how; and they go out, nobody knows when, why, or
how. Everything is like life, in my opinion, if you look at it in that
point of view.'

I was too sorrowful to discuss the question, which would possibly have
been beyond me under any circumstances; and Mr. Omer took me back into
the parlour, breathing with some difficulty on the way.

He then called down a little break-neck range of steps behind a door:
'Bring up that tea and bread-and-butter!' which, after some time,
during which I sat looking about me and thinking, and listening to the
stitching in the room and the tune that was being hammered across the
yard, appeared on a tray, and turned out to be for me.

'I have been acquainted with you,' said Mr. Omer, after watching me
for some minutes, during which I had not made much impression on the
breakfast, for the black things destroyed my appetite, 'I have been
acquainted with you a long time, my young friend.'

'Have you, sir?'

'All your life,' said Mr. Omer. 'I may say before it. I knew your
father before you. He was five foot nine and a half, and he lays in
five-and-twen-ty foot of ground.'

'RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat,' across the yard.

'He lays in five and twen-ty foot of ground, if he lays in a fraction,'
said Mr. Omer, pleasantly. 'It was either his request or her direction,
I forget which.'

'Do you know how my little brother is, sir?' I inquired.

Mr. Omer shook his head.

'RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat.'

'He is in his mother's arms,' said he.

'Oh, poor little fellow! Is he dead?'

'Don't mind it more than you can help,' said Mr. Omer. 'Yes. The baby's
dead.'

My wounds broke out afresh at this intelligence. I left the
scarcely-tasted breakfast, and went and rested my head on another table,
in a corner of the little room, which Minnie hastily cleared, lest I
should spot the mourning that was lying there with my tears. She was
a pretty, good-natured girl, and put my hair away from my eyes with a
soft, kind touch; but she was very cheerful at having nearly finished
her work and being in good time, and was so different from me!

Presently the tune left off, and a good-looking young fellow came across
the yard into the room. He had a hammer in his hand, and his mouth was
full of little nails, which he was obliged to take out before he could
speak.

'Well, Joram!' said Mr. Omer. 'How do you get on?'

'All right,' said Joram. 'Done, sir.'

Minnie coloured a little, and the other two girls smiled at one another.

'What! you were at it by candle-light last night, when I was at the
club, then? Were you?' said Mr. Omer, shutting up one eye.

'Yes,' said Joram. 'As you said we could make a little trip of it, and
go over together, if it was done, Minnie and me--and you.'

'Oh! I thought you were going to leave me out altogether,' said Mr.
Omer, laughing till he coughed.

'--As you was so good as to say that,' resumed the young man, 'why I
turned to with a will, you see. Will you give me your opinion of it?'

'I will,' said Mr. Omer, rising. 'My dear'; and he stopped and turned to
me: 'would you like to see your--'

'No, father,' Minnie interposed.

'I thought it might be agreeable, my dear,' said Mr. Omer. 'But perhaps
you're right.'

I can't say how I knew it was my dear, dear mother's coffin that they
went to look at. I had never heard one making; I had never seen one that
I know of.--but it came into my mind what the noise was, while it was
going on; and when the young man entered, I am sure I knew what he had
been doing.

The work being now finished, the two girls, whose names I had not heard,
brushed the shreds and threads from their dresses, and went into the
shop to put that to rights, and wait for customers. Minnie stayed behind
to fold up what they had made, and pack it in two baskets. This she did
upon her knees, humming a lively little tune the while. Joram, who I had
no doubt was her lover, came in and stole a kiss from her while she was
busy (he didn't appear to mind me, at all), and said her father was gone
for the chaise, and he must make haste and get himself ready. Then he
went out again; and then she put her thimble and scissors in her pocket,
and stuck a needle threaded with black thread neatly in the bosom of her
gown, and put on her outer clothing smartly, at a little glass behind
the door, in which I saw the reflection of her pleased face.

All this I observed, sitting at the table in the corner with my head
leaning on my hand, and my thoughts running on very different things.
The chaise soon came round to the front of the shop, and the baskets
being put in first, I was put in next, and those three followed. I
remember it as a kind of half chaise-cart, half pianoforte-van, painted
of a sombre colour, and drawn by a black horse with a long tail. There
was plenty of room for us all.

I do not think I have ever experienced so strange a feeling in my life
(I am wiser now, perhaps) as that of being with them, remembering how
they had been employed, and seeing them enjoy the ride. I was not angry
with them; I was more afraid of them, as if I were cast away among
creatures with whom I had no community of nature. They were very
cheerful. The old man sat in front to drive, and the two young people
sat behind him, and whenever he spoke to them leaned forward, the one on
one side of his chubby face and the other on the other, and made a great
deal of him. They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and
moped in my corner; scared by their love-making and hilarity, though
it was far from boisterous, and almost wondering that no judgement came
upon them for their hardness of heart.

So, when they stopped to bait the horse, and ate and drank and enjoyed
themselves, I could touch nothing that they touched, but kept my fast
unbroken. So, when we reached home, I dropped out of the chaise behind,
as quickly as possible, that I might not be in their company before
those solemn windows, looking blindly on me like closed eyes once
bright. And oh, how little need I had had to think what would move me to
tears when I came back--seeing the window of my mother's room, and next
it that which, in the better time, was mine!

I was in Peggotty's arms before I got to the door, and she took me into
the house. Her grief burst out when she first saw me; but she controlled
it soon, and spoke in whispers, and walked softly, as if the dead could
be disturbed. She had not been in bed, I found, for a long time. She
sat up at night still, and watched. As long as her poor dear pretty was
above the ground, she said, she would never desert her.

Mr. Murdstone took no heed of me when I went into the parlour where he
was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silently, and pondering in his
elbow-chair. Miss Murdstone, who was busy at her writing-desk, which
was covered with letters and papers, gave me her cold finger-nails, and
asked me, in an iron whisper, if I had been measured for my mourning.

I said: 'Yes.'

'And your shirts,' said Miss Murdstone; 'have you brought 'em home?'

'Yes, ma'am. I have brought home all my clothes.'

This was all the consolation that her firmness administered to me. I do
not doubt that she had a choice pleasure in exhibiting what she called
her self-command, and her firmness, and her strength of mind, and
her common sense, and the whole diabolical catalogue of her unamiable
qualities, on such an occasion. She was particularly proud of her turn
for business; and she showed it now in reducing everything to pen and
ink, and being moved by nothing. All the rest of that day, and from
morning to night afterwards, she sat at that desk, scratching composedly
with a hard pen, speaking in the same imperturbable whisper to
everybody; never relaxing a muscle of her face, or softening a tone of
her voice, or appearing with an atom of her dress astray.

Her brother took a book sometimes, but never read it that I saw. He
would open it and look at it as if he were reading, but would remain for
a whole hour without turning the leaf, and then put it down and walk to
and fro in the room. I used to sit with folded hands watching him, and
counting his footsteps, hour after hour. He very seldom spoke to her,
and never to me. He seemed to be the only restless thing, except the
clocks, in the whole motionless house.

In these days before the funeral, I saw but little of Peggotty, except
that, in passing up or down stairs, I always found her close to the room
where my mother and her baby lay, and except that she came to me every
night, and sat by my bed's head while I went to sleep. A day or
two before the burial--I think it was a day or two before, but I am
conscious of confusion in my mind about that heavy time, with nothing
to mark its progress--she took me into the room. I only recollect that
underneath some white covering on the bed, with a beautiful cleanliness
and freshness all around it, there seemed to me to lie embodied the
solemn stillness that was in the house; and that when she would have
turned the cover gently back, I cried: 'Oh no! oh no!' and held her
hand.

If the funeral had been yesterday, I could not recollect it better. The
very air of the best parlour, when I went in at the door, the bright
condition of the fire, the shining of the wine in the decanters, the
patterns of the glasses and plates, the faint sweet smell of cake, the
odour of Miss Murdstone's dress, and our black clothes. Mr. Chillip is
in the room, and comes to speak to me.

'And how is Master David?' he says, kindly.

I cannot tell him very well. I give him my hand, which he holds in his.

'Dear me!' says Mr. Chillip, meekly smiling, with something shining in
his eye. 'Our little friends grow up around us. They grow out of our
knowledge, ma'am?' This is to Miss Murdstone, who makes no reply.

'There is a great improvement here, ma'am?' says Mr. Chillip.

Miss Murdstone merely answers with a frown and a formal bend: Mr.
Chillip, discomfited, goes into a corner, keeping me with him, and opens
his mouth no more.

I remark this, because I remark everything that happens, not because
I care about myself, or have done since I came home. And now the bell
begins to sound, and Mr. Omer and another come to make us ready. As
Peggotty was wont to tell me, long ago, the followers of my father to
the same grave were made ready in the same room.

There are Mr. Murdstone, our neighbour Mr. Grayper, Mr. Chillip, and
I. When we go out to the door, the Bearers and their load are in the
garden; and they move before us down the path, and past the elms, and
through the gate, and into the churchyard, where I have so often heard
the birds sing on a summer morning.

We stand around the grave. The day seems different to me from every
other day, and the light not of the same colour--of a sadder colour.
Now there is a solemn hush, which we have brought from home with what is
resting in the mould; and while we stand bareheaded, I hear the voice
of the clergyman, sounding remote in the open air, and yet distinct and
plain, saying: 'I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord!'
Then I hear sobs; and, standing apart among the lookers-on, I see that
good and faithful servant, whom of all the people upon earth I love the
best, and unto whom my childish heart is certain that the Lord will one
day say: 'Well done.'

There are many faces that I know, among the little crowd; faces that I
knew in church, when mine was always wondering there; faces that first
saw my mother, when she came to the village in her youthful bloom. I do
not mind them--I mind nothing but my grief--and yet I see and know them
all; and even in the background, far away, see Minnie looking on, and
her eye glancing on her sweetheart, who is near me.

It is over, and the earth is filled in, and we turn to come away. Before
us stands our house, so pretty and unchanged, so linked in my mind with
the young idea of what is gone, that all my sorrow has been nothing to
the sorrow it calls forth. But they take me on; and Mr. Chillip talks to
me; and when we get home, puts some water to my lips; and when I ask his
leave to go up to my room, dismisses me with the gentleness of a woman.

All this, I say, is yesterday's event. Events of later date have floated
from me to the shore where all forgotten things will reappear, but this
stands like a high rock in the ocean.

I knew that Peggotty would come to me in my room. The Sabbath stillness
of the time (the day was so like Sunday! I have forgotten that) was
suited to us both. She sat down by my side upon my little bed; and
holding my hand, and sometimes putting it to her lips, and sometimes
smoothing it with hers, as she might have comforted my little brother,
told me, in her way, all that she had to tell concerning what had
happened.

'She was never well,' said Peggotty, 'for a long time. She was uncertain
in her mind, and not happy. When her baby was born, I thought at first
she would get better, but she was more delicate, and sunk a little every
day. She used to like to sit alone before her baby came, and then she
cried; but afterwards she used to sing to it--so soft, that I once
thought, when I heard her, it was like a voice up in the air, that was
rising away.

'I think she got to be more timid, and more frightened-like, of late;
and that a hard word was like a blow to her. But she was always the same
to me. She never changed to her foolish Peggotty, didn't my sweet girl.'

Here Peggotty stopped, and softly beat upon my hand a little while.

'The last time that I saw her like her own old self, was the night when
you came home, my dear. The day you went away, she said to me, "I never
shall see my pretty darling again. Something tells me so, that tells the
truth, I know."

'She tried to hold up after that; and many a time, when they told her
she was thoughtless and light-hearted, made believe to be so; but it was
all a bygone then. She never told her husband what she had told me--she
was afraid of saying it to anybody else--till one night, a little more
than a week before it happened, when she said to him: "My dear, I think
I am dying."

'"It's off my mind now, Peggotty," she told me, when I laid her in her
bed that night. "He will believe it more and more, poor fellow, every
day for a few days to come; and then it will be past. I am very tired.
If this is sleep, sit by me while I sleep: don't leave me. God bless
both my children! God protect and keep my fatherless boy!"

'I never left her afterwards,' said Peggotty. 'She often talked to them
two downstairs--for she loved them; she couldn't bear not to love anyone
who was about her--but when they went away from her bed-side, she always
turned to me, as if there was rest where Peggotty was, and never fell
asleep in any other way.

'On the last night, in the evening, she kissed me, and said: "If my baby
should die too, Peggotty, please let them lay him in my arms, and bury
us together." (It was done; for the poor lamb lived but a day beyond
her.) "Let my dearest boy go with us to our resting-place," she said,
"and tell him that his mother, when she lay here, blessed him not once,
but a thousand times."'

Another silence followed this, and another gentle beating on my hand.

'It was pretty far in the night,' said Peggotty, 'when she asked me for
some drink; and when she had taken it, gave me such a patient smile, the
dear!--so beautiful!

'Daybreak had come, and the sun was rising, when she said to me, how
kind and considerate Mr. Copperfield had always been to her, and how
he had borne with her, and told her, when she doubted herself, that
a loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom, and that he was a
happy man in hers. "Peggotty, my dear," she said then, "put me nearer to
you," for she was very weak. "Lay your good arm underneath my neck," she
said, "and turn me to you, for your face is going far off, and I want it
to be near." I put it as she asked; and oh Davy! the time had come when
my first parting words to you were true--when she was glad to lay her
poor head on her stupid cross old Peggotty's arm--and she died like a
child that had gone to sleep!'


Thus ended Peggotty's narration. From the moment of my knowing of the
death of my mother, the idea of her as she had been of late had vanished
from me. I remembered her, from that instant, only as the young mother
of my earliest impressions, who had been used to wind her bright curls
round and round her finger, and to dance with me at twilight in the
parlour. What Peggotty had told me now, was so far from bringing me back
to the later period, that it rooted the earlier image in my mind. It may
be curious, but it is true. In her death she winged her way back to her
calm untroubled youth, and cancelled all the rest.

The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the
little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for
ever on her bosom.




The first act of business Miss Murdstone performed when the day of the
solemnity was over, and light was freely admitted into the house, was
to give Peggotty a month's warning. Much as Peggotty would have disliked
such a service, I believe she would have retained it, for my sake, in
preference to the best upon earth. She told me we must part, and told me
why; and we condoled with one another, in all sincerity.

As to me or my future, not a word was said, or a step taken. Happy
they would have been, I dare say, if they could have dismissed me at a
month's warning too. I mustered courage once, to ask Miss Murdstone when
I was going back to school; and she answered dryly, she believed I was
not going back at all. I was told nothing more. I was very anxious to
know what was going to be done with me, and so was Peggotty; but neither
she nor I could pick up any information on the subject.

There was one change in my condition, which, while it relieved me of
a great deal of present uneasiness, might have made me, if I had been
capable of considering it closely, yet more uncomfortable about the
future. It was this. The constraint that had been put upon me, was quite
abandoned. I was so far from being required to keep my dull post in
the parlour, that on several occasions, when I took my seat there, Miss
Murdstone frowned to me to go away. I was so far from being warned off
from Peggotty's society, that, provided I was not in Mr. Murdstone's, I
was never sought out or inquired for. At first I was in daily dread of
his taking my education in hand again, or of Miss Murdstone's
devoting herself to it; but I soon began to think that such fears were
groundless, and that all I had to anticipate was neglect.

I do not conceive that this discovery gave me much pain then. I was
still giddy with the shock of my mother's death, and in a kind of
stunned state as to all tributary things. I can recollect, indeed, to
have speculated, at odd times, on the possibility of my not being taught
any more, or cared for any more; and growing up to be a shabby, moody
man, lounging an idle life away, about the village; as well as on the
feasibility of my getting rid of this picture by going away somewhere,
like the hero in a story, to seek my fortune: but these were transient
visions, daydreams I sat looking at sometimes, as if they were faintly
painted or written on the wall of my room, and which, as they melted
away, left the wall blank again.

'Peggotty,' I said in a thoughtful whisper, one evening, when I was
warming my hands at the kitchen fire, 'Mr. Murdstone likes me less than
he used to. He never liked me much, Peggotty; but he would rather not
even see me now, if he can help it.'

'Perhaps it's his sorrow,' said Peggotty, stroking my hair.

'I am sure, Peggotty, I am sorry too. If I believed it was his sorrow,
I should not think of it at all. But it's not that; oh, no, it's not
that.'

'How do you know it's not that?' said Peggotty, after a silence.

'Oh, his sorrow is another and quite a different thing. He is sorry at
this moment, sitting by the fireside with Miss Murdstone; but if I was
to go in, Peggotty, he would be something besides.'

'What would he be?' said Peggotty.

'Angry,' I answered, with an involuntary imitation of his dark frown.
'If he was only sorry, he wouldn't look at me as he does. I am only
sorry, and it makes me feel kinder.'

Peggotty said nothing for a little while; and I warmed my hands, as
silent as she.

'Davy,' she said at length.

'Yes, Peggotty?' 'I have tried, my dear, all ways I could think of--all
the ways there are, and all the ways there ain't, in short--to get a
suitable service here, in Blunderstone; but there's no such a thing, my
love.'

'And what do you mean to do, Peggotty,' says I, wistfully. 'Do you mean
to go and seek your fortune?'

'I expect I shall be forced to go to Yarmouth,' replied Peggotty, 'and
live there.'

'You might have gone farther off,' I said, brightening a little, 'and
been as bad as lost. I shall see you sometimes, my dear old Peggotty,
there. You won't be quite at the other end of the world, will you?'

'Contrary ways, please God!' cried Peggotty, with great animation. 'As
long as you are here, my pet, I shall come over every week of my life to
see you. One day, every week of my life!'

I felt a great weight taken off my mind by this promise: but even this
was not all, for Peggotty went on to say:

'I'm a-going, Davy, you see, to my brother's, first, for another
fortnight's visit--just till I have had time to look about me, and
get to be something like myself again. Now, I have been thinking that
perhaps, as they don't want you here at present, you might be let to go
along with me.'

If anything, short of being in a different relation to every one about
me, Peggotty excepted, could have given me a sense of pleasure at that
time, it would have been this project of all others. The idea of being
again surrounded by those honest faces, shining welcome on me; of
renewing the peacefulness of the sweet Sunday morning, when the bells
were ringing, the stones dropping in the water, and the shadowy ships
breaking through the mist; of roaming up and down with little Em'ly,
telling her my troubles, and finding charms against them in the shells
and pebbles on the beach; made a calm in my heart. It was ruffled next
moment, to be sure, by a doubt of Miss Murdstone's giving her consent;
but even that was set at rest soon, for she came out to take an evening
grope in the store-closet while we were yet in conversation, and
Peggotty, with a boldness that amazed me, broached the topic on the
spot.

'The boy will be idle there,' said Miss Murdstone, looking into a
pickle-jar, 'and idleness is the root of all evil. But, to be sure, he
would be idle here--or anywhere, in my opinion.'

Peggotty had an angry answer ready, I could see; but she swallowed it
for my sake, and remained silent.

'Humph!' said Miss Murdstone, still keeping her eye on the pickles;
'it is of more importance than anything else--it is of paramount
importance--that my brother should not be disturbed or made
uncomfortable. I suppose I had better say yes.'

I thanked her, without making any demonstration of joy, lest it should
induce her to withdraw her assent. Nor could I help thinking this a
prudent course, since she looked at me out of the pickle-jar, with
as great an access of sourness as if her black eyes had absorbed its
contents. However, the permission was given, and was never retracted;
for when the month was out, Peggotty and I were ready to depart.

Mr. Barkis came into the house for Peggotty's boxes. I had never known
him to pass the garden-gate before, but on this occasion he came into
the house. And he gave me a look as he shouldered the largest box and
went out, which I thought had meaning in it, if meaning could ever be
said to find its way into Mr. Barkis's visage.

Peggotty was naturally in low spirits at leaving what had been her home
so many years, and where the two strong attachments of her life--for
my mother and myself--had been formed. She had been walking in the
churchyard, too, very early; and she got into the cart, and sat in it
with her handkerchief at her eyes.

So long as she remained in this condition, Mr. Barkis gave no sign
of life whatever. He sat in his usual place and attitude like a great
stuffed figure. But when she began to look about her, and to speak to
me, he nodded his head and grinned several times. I have not the least
notion at whom, or what he meant by it.

'It's a beautiful day, Mr. Barkis!' I said, as an act of politeness.

'It ain't bad,' said Mr. Barkis, who generally qualified his speech, and
rarely committed himself.

'Peggotty is quite comfortable now, Mr. Barkis,' I remarked, for his
satisfaction.

'Is she, though?' said Mr. Barkis.

After reflecting about it, with a sagacious air, Mr. Barkis eyed her,
and said:

'ARE you pretty comfortable?'

Peggotty laughed, and answered in the affirmative.

'But really and truly, you know. Are you?' growled Mr. Barkis, sliding
nearer to her on the seat, and nudging her with his elbow. 'Are you?
Really and truly pretty comfortable? Are you? Eh?'

At each of these inquiries Mr. Barkis shuffled nearer to her, and gave
her another nudge; so that at last we were all crowded together in the
left-hand corner of the cart, and I was so squeezed that I could hardly
bear it.

Peggotty calling his attention to my sufferings, Mr. Barkis gave me a
little more room at once, and got away by degrees. But I could not help
observing that he seemed to think he had hit upon a wonderful expedient
for expressing himself in a neat, agreeable, and pointed manner, without
the inconvenience of inventing conversation. He manifestly chuckled over
it for some time. By and by he turned to Peggotty again, and repeating,
'Are you pretty comfortable though?' bore down upon us as before, until
the breath was nearly edged out of my body. By and by he made another
descent upon us with the same inquiry, and the same result. At length,
I got up whenever I saw him coming, and standing on the foot-board,
pretended to look at the prospect; after which I did very well.

He was so polite as to stop at a public-house, expressly on our account,
and entertain us with broiled mutton and beer. Even when Peggotty was
in the act of drinking, he was seized with one of those approaches, and
almost choked her. But as we drew nearer to the end of our journey, he
had more to do and less time for gallantry; and when we got on Yarmouth
pavement, we were all too much shaken and jolted, I apprehend, to have
any leisure for anything else.

Mr. Peggotty and Ham waited for us at the old place. They received me
and Peggotty in an affectionate manner, and shook hands with Mr. Barkis,
who, with his hat on the very back of his head, and a shame-faced leer
upon his countenance, and pervading his very legs, presented but a
vacant appearance, I thought. They each took one of Peggotty's trunks,
and we were going away, when Mr. Barkis solemnly made a sign to me with
his forefinger to come under an archway.

'I say,' growled Mr. Barkis, 'it was all right.'

I looked up into his face, and answered, with an attempt to be very
profound: 'Oh!'

'It didn't come to a end there,' said Mr. Barkis, nodding
confidentially. 'It was all right.'

Again I answered, 'Oh!'

'You know who was willin',' said my friend. 'It was Barkis, and Barkis
only.'

I nodded assent.

'It's all right,' said Mr. Barkis, shaking hands; 'I'm a friend of
your'n. You made it all right, first. It's all right.'

In his attempts to be particularly lucid, Mr. Barkis was so extremely
mysterious, that I might have stood looking in his face for an hour, and
most assuredly should have got as much information out of it as out
of the face of a clock that had stopped, but for Peggotty's calling me
away. As we were going along, she asked me what he had said; and I told
her he had said it was all right.

'Like his impudence,' said Peggotty, 'but I don't mind that! Davy dear,
what should you think if I was to think of being married?'

'Why--I suppose you would like me as much then, Peggotty, as you do
now?' I returned, after a little consideration.

Greatly to the astonishment of the passengers in the street, as well as
of her relations going on before, the good soul was obliged to stop and
embrace me on the spot, with many protestations of her unalterable love.

'Tell me what should you say, darling?' she asked again, when this was
over, and we were walking on.

'If you were thinking of being married--to Mr. Barkis, Peggotty?'

'Yes,' said Peggotty.

'I should think it would be a very good thing. For then you know,
Peggotty, you would always have the horse and cart to bring you over to
see me, and could come for nothing, and be sure of coming.'

'The sense of the dear!' cried Peggotty. 'What I have been thinking
of, this month back! Yes, my precious; and I think I should be more
independent altogether, you see; let alone my working with a better
heart in my own house, than I could in anybody else's now. I don't know
what I might be fit for, now, as a servant to a stranger. And I shall be
always near my pretty's resting-place,' said Peggotty, musing, 'and be
able to see it when I like; and when I lie down to rest, I may be laid
not far off from my darling girl!'

We neither of us said anything for a little while.

'But I wouldn't so much as give it another thought,' said Peggotty,
cheerily 'if my Davy was anyways against it--not if I had been asked in
church thirty times three times over, and was wearing out the ring in my
pocket.'

'Look at me, Peggotty,' I replied; 'and see if I am not really glad, and
don't truly wish it!' As indeed I did, with all my heart.

'Well, my life,' said Peggotty, giving me a squeeze, 'I have thought of
it night and day, every way I can, and I hope the right way; but I'll
think of it again, and speak to my brother about it, and in the meantime
we'll keep it to ourselves, Davy, you and me. Barkis is a good plain
creature,' said Peggotty, 'and if I tried to do my duty by him, I think
it would be my fault if I wasn't--if I wasn't pretty comfortable,'
said Peggotty, laughing heartily. This quotation from Mr. Barkis was
so appropriate, and tickled us both so much, that we laughed again and
again, and were quite in a pleasant humour when we came within view of
Mr. Peggotty's cottage.

It looked just the same, except that it may, perhaps, have shrunk a
little in my eyes; and Mrs. Gummidge was waiting at the door as if she
had stood there ever since. All within was the same, down to the seaweed
in the blue mug in my bedroom. I went into the out-house to look about
me; and the very same lobsters, crabs, and crawfish possessed by the
same desire to pinch the world in general, appeared to be in the same
state of conglomeration in the same old corner.

But there was no little Em'ly to be seen, so I asked Mr. Peggotty where
she was.

'She's at school, sir,' said Mr. Peggotty, wiping the heat consequent
on the porterage of Peggotty's box from his forehead; 'she'll be home,'
looking at the Dutch clock, 'in from twenty minutes to half-an-hour's
time. We all on us feel the loss of her, bless ye!'

Mrs. Gummidge moaned.

'Cheer up, Mawther!' cried Mr. Peggotty.

'I feel it more than anybody else,' said Mrs. Gummidge; 'I'm a lone
lorn creetur', and she used to be a'most the only thing that didn't go
contrary with me.'

Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head, applied herself to
blowing the fire. Mr. Peggotty, looking round upon us while she was so
engaged, said in a low voice, which he shaded with his hand: 'The old
'un!' From this I rightly conjectured that no improvement had taken
place since my last visit in the state of Mrs. Gummidge's spirits.

Now, the whole place was, or it should have been, quite as delightful
a place as ever; and yet it did not impress me in the same way. I felt
rather disappointed with it. Perhaps it was because little Em'ly was
not at home. I knew the way by which she would come, and presently found
myself strolling along the path to meet her.

A figure appeared in the distance before long, and I soon knew it to be
Em'ly, who was a little creature still in stature, though she was grown.
But when she drew nearer, and I saw her blue eyes looking bluer, and her
dimpled face looking brighter, and her whole self prettier and gayer, a
curious feeling came over me that made me pretend not to know her, and
pass by as if I were looking at something a long way off. I have done
such a thing since in later life, or I am mistaken.

Little Em'ly didn't care a bit. She saw me well enough; but instead of
turning round and calling after me, ran away laughing. This obliged me
to run after her, and she ran so fast that we were very near the cottage
before I caught her.

'Oh, it's you, is it?' said little Em'ly.

'Why, you knew who it was, Em'ly,' said I.

'And didn't YOU know who it was?' said Em'ly. I was going to kiss her,
but she covered her cherry lips with her hands, and said she wasn't a
baby now, and ran away, laughing more than ever, into the house.

She seemed to delight in teasing me, which was a change in her I
wondered at very much. The tea table was ready, and our little locker
was put out in its old place, but instead of coming to sit by me, she
went and bestowed her company upon that grumbling Mrs. Gummidge: and on
Mr. Peggotty's inquiring why, rumpled her hair all over her face to hide
it, and could do nothing but laugh.

'A little puss, it is!' said Mr. Peggotty, patting her with his great
hand.

'So sh' is! so sh' is!' cried Ham. 'Mas'r Davy bor', so sh' is!' and he
sat and chuckled at her for some time, in a state of mingled admiration
and delight, that made his face a burning red.

Little Em'ly was spoiled by them all, in fact; and by no one more than
Mr. Peggotty himself, whom she could have coaxed into anything, by
only going and laying her cheek against his rough whisker. That was my
opinion, at least, when I saw her do it; and I held Mr. Peggotty to be
thoroughly in the right. But she was so affectionate and sweet-natured,
and had such a pleasant manner of being both sly and shy at once, that
she captivated me more than ever.

She was tender-hearted, too; for when, as we sat round the fire after
tea, an allusion was made by Mr. Peggotty over his pipe to the loss
I had sustained, the tears stood in her eyes, and she looked at me so
kindly across the table, that I felt quite thankful to her.

'Ah!' said Mr. Peggotty, taking up her curls, and running them over his
hand like water, 'here's another orphan, you see, sir. And here,' said
Mr. Peggotty, giving Ham a backhanded knock in the chest, 'is another of
'em, though he don't look much like it.'

'If I had you for my guardian, Mr. Peggotty,' said I, shaking my head,
'I don't think I should FEEL much like it.'

'Well said, Mas'r Davy bor'!' cried Ham, in an ecstasy. 'Hoorah! Well
said! Nor more you wouldn't! Hor! Hor!'--Here he returned Mr. Peggotty's
back-hander, and little Em'ly got up and kissed Mr. Peggotty. 'And how's
your friend, sir?' said Mr. Peggotty to me.

'Steerforth?' said I.

'That's the name!' cried Mr. Peggotty, turning to Ham. 'I knowed it was
something in our way.'

'You said it was Rudderford,' observed Ham, laughing.

'Well!' retorted Mr. Peggotty. 'And ye steer with a rudder, don't ye? It
ain't fur off. How is he, sir?'

'He was very well indeed when I came away, Mr. Peggotty.'

'There's a friend!' said Mr. Peggotty, stretching out his pipe. 'There's
a friend, if you talk of friends! Why, Lord love my heart alive, if it
ain't a treat to look at him!'

'He is very handsome, is he not?' said I, my heart warming with this
praise.

'Handsome!' cried Mr. Peggotty. 'He stands up to you like--like a--why I
don't know what he don't stand up to you like. He's so bold!'

'Yes! That's just his character,' said I. 'He's as brave as a lion, and
you can't think how frank he is, Mr. Peggotty.'

'And I do suppose, now,' said Mr. Peggotty, looking at me through the
smoke of his pipe, 'that in the way of book-larning he'd take the wind
out of a'most anything.'

'Yes,' said I, delighted; 'he knows everything. He is astonishingly
clever.'

'There's a friend!' murmured Mr. Peggotty, with a grave toss of his
head.

'Nothing seems to cost him any trouble,' said I. 'He knows a task if he
only looks at it. He is the best cricketer you ever saw. He will give
you almost as many men as you like at draughts, and beat you easily.'

Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: 'Of course
he will.'

'He is such a speaker,' I pursued, 'that he can win anybody over; and I
don't know what you'd say if you were to hear him sing, Mr. Peggotty.'

Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: 'I have no
doubt of it.'

'Then, he's such a generous, fine, noble fellow,' said I, quite carried
away by my favourite theme, 'that it's hardly possible to give him as
much praise as he deserves. I am sure I can never feel thankful enough
for the generosity with which he has protected me, so much younger and
lower in the school than himself.'

I was running on, very fast indeed, when my eyes rested on little
Em'ly's face, which was bent forward over the table, listening with the
deepest attention, her breath held, her blue eyes sparkling like jewels,
and the colour mantling in her cheeks. She looked so extraordinarily
earnest and pretty, that I stopped in a sort of wonder; and they all
observed her at the same time, for as I stopped, they laughed and looked
at her.

'Em'ly is like me,' said Peggotty, 'and would like to see him.'

Em'ly was confused by our all observing her, and hung down her head,
and her face was covered with blushes. Glancing up presently through her
stray curls, and seeing that we were all looking at her still (I am sure
I, for one, could have looked at her for hours), she ran away, and kept
away till it was nearly bedtime.

I lay down in the old little bed in the stern of the boat, and the wind
came moaning on across the flat as it had done before. But I could not
help fancying, now, that it moaned of those who were gone; and instead
of thinking that the sea might rise in the night and float the boat
away, I thought of the sea that had risen, since I last heard those
sounds, and drowned my happy home. I recollect, as the wind and water
began to sound fainter in my ears, putting a short clause into my
prayers, petitioning that I might grow up to marry little Em'ly, and so
dropping lovingly asleep.

The days passed pretty much as they had passed before, except--it was
a great exception--that little Em'ly and I seldom wandered on the beach
now. She had tasks to learn, and needle-work to do; and was absent
during a great part of each day. But I felt that we should not have had
those old wanderings, even if it had been otherwise. Wild and full of
childish whims as Em'ly was, she was more of a little woman than I
had supposed. She seemed to have got a great distance away from me,
in little more than a year. She liked me, but she laughed at me, and
tormented me; and when I went to meet her, stole home another way, and
was laughing at the door when I came back, disappointed. The best times
were when she sat quietly at work in the doorway, and I sat on the
wooden step at her feet, reading to her. It seems to me, at this
hour, that I have never seen such sunlight as on those bright April
afternoons; that I have never seen such a sunny little figure as I used
to see, sitting in the doorway of the old boat; that I have never beheld
such sky, such water, such glorified ships sailing away into golden air.

On the very first evening after our arrival, Mr. Barkis appeared in an
exceedingly vacant and awkward condition, and with a bundle of oranges
tied up in a handkerchief. As he made no allusion of any kind to this
property, he was supposed to have left it behind him by accident when
he went away; until Ham, running after him to restore it, came back with
the information that it was intended for Peggotty. After that occasion
he appeared every evening at exactly the same hour, and always with a
little bundle, to which he never alluded, and which he regularly put
behind the door and left there. These offerings of affection were of a
most various and eccentric description. Among them I remember a double
set of pigs' trotters, a huge pin-cushion, half a bushel or so of
apples, a pair of jet earrings, some Spanish onions, a box of dominoes,
a canary bird and cage, and a leg of pickled pork.

Mr. Barkis's wooing, as I remember it, was altogether of a peculiar
kind. He very seldom said anything; but would sit by the fire in much
the same attitude as he sat in his cart, and stare heavily at Peggotty,
who was opposite. One night, being, as I suppose, inspired by love, he
made a dart at the bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread, and put
it in his waistcoat-pocket and carried it off. After that, his great
delight was to produce it when it was wanted, sticking to the lining of
his pocket, in a partially melted state, and pocket it again when it was
done with. He seemed to enjoy himself very much, and not to feel at all
called upon to talk. Even when he took Peggotty out for a walk on the
flats, he had no uneasiness on that head, I believe; contenting himself
with now and then asking her if she was pretty comfortable; and I
remember that sometimes, after he was gone, Peggotty would throw her
apron over her face, and laugh for half-an-hour. Indeed, we were
all more or less amused, except that miserable Mrs. Gummidge, whose
courtship would appear to have been of an exactly parallel nature, she
was so continually reminded by these transactions of the old one.

At length, when the term of my visit was nearly expired, it was given
out that Peggotty and Mr. Barkis were going to make a day's holiday
together, and that little Em'ly and I were to accompany them. I had but
a broken sleep the night before, in anticipation of the pleasure of
a whole day with Em'ly. We were all astir betimes in the morning; and
while we were yet at breakfast, Mr. Barkis appeared in the distance,
driving a chaise-cart towards the object of his affections.

Peggotty was dressed as usual, in her neat and quiet mourning; but Mr.
Barkis bloomed in a new blue coat, of which the tailor had given him
such good measure, that the cuffs would have rendered gloves unnecessary
in the coldest weather, while the collar was so high that it pushed his
hair up on end on the top of his head. His bright buttons, too, were
of the largest size. Rendered complete by drab pantaloons and a buff
waistcoat, I thought Mr. Barkis a phenomenon of respectability.

When we were all in a bustle outside the door, I found that Mr. Peggotty
was prepared with an old shoe, which was to be thrown after us for luck,
and which he offered to Mrs. Gummidge for that purpose.

'No. It had better be done by somebody else, Dan'l,' said Mrs. Gummidge.
'I'm a lone lorn creetur' myself, and everythink that reminds me of
creetur's that ain't lone and lorn, goes contrary with me.'

'Come, old gal!' cried Mr. Peggotty. 'Take and heave it.'

'No, Dan'l,' returned Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head.
'If I felt less, I could do more. You don't feel like me, Dan'l; thinks
don't go contrary with you, nor you with them; you had better do it
yourself.'

But here Peggotty, who had been going about from one to another in a
hurried way, kissing everybody, called out from the cart, in which we
all were by this time (Em'ly and I on two little chairs, side by side),
that Mrs. Gummidge must do it. So Mrs. Gummidge did it; and, I am sorry
to relate, cast a damp upon the festive character of our departure, by
immediately bursting into tears, and sinking subdued into the arms of
Ham, with the declaration that she knowed she was a burden, and had
better be carried to the House at once. Which I really thought was a
sensible idea, that Ham might have acted on.

Away we went, however, on our holiday excursion; and the first thing
we did was to stop at a church, where Mr. Barkis tied the horse to some
rails, and went in with Peggotty, leaving little Em'ly and me alone in
the chaise. I took that occasion to put my arm round Em'ly's waist, and
propose that as I was going away so very soon now, we should determine
to be very affectionate to one another, and very happy, all day. Little
Em'ly consenting, and allowing me to kiss her, I became desperate;
informing her, I recollect, that I never could love another, and that
I was prepared to shed the blood of anybody who should aspire to her
affections.

How merry little Em'ly made herself about it! With what a demure
assumption of being immensely older and wiser than I, the fairy little
woman said I was 'a silly boy'; and then laughed so charmingly that
I forgot the pain of being called by that disparaging name, in the
pleasure of looking at her.

Mr. Barkis and Peggotty were a good while in the church, but came out at
last, and then we drove away into the country. As we were going along,
Mr. Barkis turned to me, and said, with a wink,--by the by, I should
hardly have thought, before, that he could wink:

'What name was it as I wrote up in the cart?'

'Clara Peggotty,' I answered.

'What name would it be as I should write up now, if there was a tilt
here?'

'Clara Peggotty, again?' I suggested.

'Clara Peggotty BARKIS!' he returned, and burst into a roar of laughter
that shook the chaise.

In a word, they were married, and had gone into the church for no other
purpose. Peggotty was resolved that it should be quietly done; and
the clerk had given her away, and there had been no witnesses of the
ceremony. She was a little confused when Mr. Barkis made this abrupt
announcement of their union, and could not hug me enough in token of her
unimpaired affection; but she soon became herself again, and said she
was very glad it was over.

We drove to a little inn in a by-road, where we were expected, and
where we had a very comfortable dinner, and passed the day with great
satisfaction. If Peggotty had been married every day for the last ten
years, she could hardly have been more at her ease about it; it made no
sort of difference in her: she was just the same as ever, and went
out for a stroll with little Em'ly and me before tea, while Mr. Barkis
philosophically smoked his pipe, and enjoyed himself, I suppose, with
the contemplation of his happiness. If so, it sharpened his appetite;
for I distinctly call to mind that, although he had eaten a good deal of
pork and greens at dinner, and had finished off with a fowl or two, he
was obliged to have cold boiled bacon for tea, and disposed of a large
quantity without any emotion.

I have often thought, since, what an odd, innocent, out-of-the-way kind
of wedding it must have been! We got into the chaise again soon after
dark, and drove cosily back, looking up at the stars, and talking about
them. I was their chief exponent, and opened Mr. Barkis's mind to
an amazing extent. I told him all I knew, but he would have believed
anything I might have taken it into my head to impart to him; for he
had a profound veneration for my abilities, and informed his wife in my
hearing, on that very occasion, that I was 'a young Roeshus'--by which I
think he meant prodigy.

When we had exhausted the subject of the stars, or rather when I had
exhausted the mental faculties of Mr. Barkis, little Em'ly and I made a
cloak of an old wrapper, and sat under it for the rest of the journey.
Ah, how I loved her! What happiness (I thought) if we were married,
and were going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the fields,
never growing older, never growing wiser, children ever, rambling hand
in hand through sunshine and among flowery meadows, laying down our
heads on moss at night, in a sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried
by the birds when we were dead! Some such picture, with no real world in
it, bright with the light of our innocence, and vague as the stars afar
off, was in my mind all the way. I am glad to think there were two such
guileless hearts at Peggotty's marriage as little Em'ly's and mine. I
am glad to think the Loves and Graces took such airy forms in its homely
procession.

Well, we came to the old boat again in good time at night; and there
Mr. and Mrs. Barkis bade us good-bye, and drove away snugly to their
own home. I felt then, for the first time, that I had lost Peggotty. I
should have gone to bed with a sore heart indeed under any other roof
but that which sheltered little Em'ly's head.

Mr. Peggotty and Ham knew what was in my thoughts as well as I did, and
were ready with some supper and their hospitable faces to drive it away.
Little Em'ly came and sat beside me on the locker for the only time in
all that visit; and it was altogether a wonderful close to a wonderful
day.

It was a night tide; and soon after we went to bed, Mr. Peggotty and Ham
went out to fish. I felt very brave at being left alone in the solitary
house, the protector of Em'ly and Mrs. Gummidge, and only wished that
a lion or a serpent, or any ill-disposed monster, would make an attack
upon us, that I might destroy him, and cover myself with glory. But as
nothing of the sort happened to be walking about on Yarmouth flats that
night, I provided the best substitute I could by dreaming of dragons
until morning.

With morning came Peggotty; who called to me, as usual, under my window
as if Mr. Barkis the carrier had been from first to last a dream too.
After breakfast she took me to her own home, and a beautiful little
home it was. Of all the moveables in it, I must have been impressed by
a certain old bureau of some dark wood in the parlour (the tile-floored
kitchen was the general sitting-room), with a retreating top which
opened, let down, and became a desk, within which was a large quarto
edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs. This precious volume, of which I do
not recollect one word, I immediately discovered and immediately applied
myself to; and I never visited the house afterwards, but I kneeled on
a chair, opened the casket where this gem was enshrined, spread my arms
over the desk, and fell to devouring the book afresh. I was chiefly
edified, I am afraid, by the pictures, which were numerous, and
represented all kinds of dismal horrors; but the Martyrs and Peggotty's
house have been inseparable in my mind ever since, and are now.

I took leave of Mr. Peggotty, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge, and little
Em'ly, that day; and passed the night at Peggotty's, in a little room
in the roof (with the Crocodile Book on a shelf by the bed's head) which
was to be always mine, Peggotty said, and should always be kept for me
in exactly the same state.

'Young or old, Davy dear, as long as I am alive and have this house over
my head,' said Peggotty, 'you shall find it as if I expected you here
directly minute. I shall keep it every day, as I used to keep your old
little room, my darling; and if you was to go to China, you might think
of it as being kept just the same, all the time you were away.'

I felt the truth and constancy of my dear old nurse, with all my heart,
and thanked her as well as I could. That was not very well, for she
spoke to me thus, with her arms round my neck, in the morning, and I was
going home in the morning, and I went home in the morning, with herself
and Mr. Barkis in the cart. They left me at the gate, not easily or
lightly; and it was a strange sight to me to see the cart go on, taking
Peggotty away, and leaving me under the old elm-trees looking at the
house, in which there was no face to look on mine with love or liking
any more.

And now I fell into a state of neglect, which I cannot look back upon
without compassion. I fell at once into a solitary condition,--apart
from all friendly notice, apart from the society of all other boys of
my own age, apart from all companionship but my own spiritless
thoughts,--which seems to cast its gloom upon this paper as I write.

What would I have given, to have been sent to the hardest school that
ever was kept!--to have been taught something, anyhow, anywhere! No
such hope dawned upon me. They disliked me; and they sullenly, sternly,
steadily, overlooked me. I think Mr. Murdstone's means were straitened
at about this time; but it is little to the purpose. He could not bear
me; and in putting me from him he tried, as I believe, to put away the
notion that I had any claim upon him--and succeeded.

I was not actively ill-used. I was not beaten, or starved; but the wrong
that was done to me had no intervals of relenting, and was done in a
systematic, passionless manner. Day after day, week after week, month
after month, I was coldly neglected. I wonder sometimes, when I think
of it, what they would have done if I had been taken with an illness;
whether I should have lain down in my lonely room, and languished
through it in my usual solitary way, or whether anybody would have
helped me out.

When Mr. and Miss Murdstone were at home, I took my meals with them; in
their absence, I ate and drank by myself. At all times I lounged about
the house and neighbourhood quite disregarded, except that they were
jealous of my making any friends: thinking, perhaps, that if I did, I
might complain to someone. For this reason, though Mr. Chillip often
asked me to go and see him (he was a widower, having, some years before
that, lost a little small light-haired wife, whom I can just remember
connecting in my own thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat), it was
but seldom that I enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his
closet of a surgery; reading some book that was new to me, with
the smell of the whole Pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding
something in a mortar under his mild directions.

For the same reason, added no doubt to the old dislike of her, I was
seldom allowed to visit Peggotty. Faithful to her promise, she either
came to see me, or met me somewhere near, once every week, and never
empty-handed; but many and bitter were the disappointments I had, in
being refused permission to pay a visit to her at her house. Some few
times, however, at long intervals, I was allowed to go there; and then
I found out that Mr. Barkis was something of a miser, or as Peggotty
dutifully expressed it, was 'a little near', and kept a heap of money
in a box under his bed, which he pretended was only full of coats
and trousers. In this coffer, his riches hid themselves with such a
tenacious modesty, that the smallest instalments could only be tempted
out by artifice; so that Peggotty had to prepare a long and elaborate
scheme, a very Gunpowder Plot, for every Saturday's expenses.

All this time I was so conscious of the waste of any promise I had
given, and of my being utterly neglected, that I should have been
perfectly miserable, I have no doubt, but for the old books. They were
my only comfort; and I was as true to them as they were to me, and read
them over and over I don't know how many times more.

I now approach a period of my life, which I can never lose the
remembrance of, while I remember anything: and the recollection of
which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a ghost, and
haunted happier times.

I had been out, one day, loitering somewhere, in the listless,
meditative manner that my way of life engendered, when, turning the
corner of a lane near our house, I came upon Mr. Murdstone walking with
a gentleman. I was confused, and was going by them, when the gentleman
cried:

'What! Brooks!'

'No, sir, David Copperfield,' I said.

'Don't tell me. You are Brooks,' said the gentleman. 'You are Brooks of
Sheffield. That's your name.'

At these words, I observed the gentleman more attentively. His laugh
coming to my remembrance too, I knew him to be Mr. Quinion, whom I
had gone over to Lowestoft with Mr. Murdstone to see, before--it is no
matter--I need not recall when.

'And how do you get on, and where are you being educated, Brooks?' said
Mr. Quinion.

He had put his hand upon my shoulder, and turned me about, to walk
with them. I did not know what to reply, and glanced dubiously at Mr.
Murdstone.

'He is at home at present,' said the latter. 'He is not being educated
anywhere. I don't know what to do with him. He is a difficult subject.'

That old, double look was on me for a moment; and then his eyes darkened
with a frown, as it turned, in its aversion, elsewhere.

'Humph!' said Mr. Quinion, looking at us both, I thought. 'Fine
weather!'

Silence ensued, and I was considering how I could best disengage my
shoulder from his hand, and go away, when he said:

'I suppose you are a pretty sharp fellow still? Eh, Brooks?'

'Aye! He is sharp enough,' said Mr. Murdstone, impatiently. 'You had
better let him go. He will not thank you for troubling him.'

On this hint, Mr. Quinion released me, and I made the best of my
way home. Looking back as I turned into the front garden, I saw Mr.
Murdstone leaning against the wicket of the churchyard, and Mr. Quinion
talking to him. They were both looking after me, and I felt that they
were speaking of me.

Mr. Quinion lay at our house that night. After breakfast, the next
morning, I had put my chair away, and was going out of the room, when
Mr. Murdstone called me back. He then gravely repaired to another table,
where his sister sat herself at her desk. Mr. Quinion, with his hands
in his pockets, stood looking out of window; and I stood looking at them
all.

'David,' said Mr. Murdstone, 'to the young this is a world for action;
not for moping and droning in.' --'As you do,' added his sister.

'Jane Murdstone, leave it to me, if you please. I say, David, to the
young this is a world for action, and not for moping and droning in. It
is especially so for a young boy of your disposition, which requires a
great deal of correcting; and to which no greater service can be done
than to force it to conform to the ways of the working world, and to
bend it and break it.'

'For stubbornness won't do here,' said his sister 'What it wants is, to
be crushed. And crushed it must be. Shall be, too!'

He gave her a look, half in remonstrance, half in approval, and went on:

'I suppose you know, David, that I am not rich. At any rate, you know it
now. You have received some considerable education already. Education is
costly; and even if it were not, and I could afford it, I am of opinion
that it would not be at all advantageous to you to be kept at school.
What is before you, is a fight with the world; and the sooner you begin
it, the better.'

I think it occurred to me that I had already begun it, in my poor way:
but it occurs to me now, whether or no.

'You have heard the "counting-house" mentioned sometimes,' said Mr.
Murdstone.

'The counting-house, sir?' I repeated. 'Of Murdstone and Grinby, in the
wine trade,' he replied.

I suppose I looked uncertain, for he went on hastily:

'You have heard the "counting-house" mentioned, or the business, or the
cellars, or the wharf, or something about it.'

'I think I have heard the business mentioned, sir,' I said, remembering
what I vaguely knew of his and his sister's resources. 'But I don't know
when.'

'It does not matter when,' he returned. 'Mr. Quinion manages that
business.'

I glanced at the latter deferentially as he stood looking out of window.

'Mr. Quinion suggests that it gives employment to some other boys,
and that he sees no reason why it shouldn't, on the same terms, give
employment to you.'

'He having,' Mr. Quinion observed in a low voice, and half turning
round, 'no other prospect, Murdstone.'

Mr. Murdstone, with an impatient, even an angry gesture, resumed,
without noticing what he had said:

'Those terms are, that you will earn enough for yourself to provide for
your eating and drinking, and pocket-money. Your lodging (which I have
arranged for) will be paid by me. So will your washing--'

'--Which will be kept down to my estimate,' said his sister.

'Your clothes will be looked after for you, too,' said Mr. Murdstone;
'as you will not be able, yet awhile, to get them for yourself. So you
are now going to London, David, with Mr. Quinion, to begin the world on
your own account.'

'In short, you are provided for,' observed his sister; 'and will please
to do your duty.'

Though I quite understood that the purpose of this announcement was
to get rid of me, I have no distinct remembrance whether it pleased
or frightened me. My impression is, that I was in a state of confusion
about it, and, oscillating between the two points, touched neither. Nor
had I much time for the clearing of my thoughts, as Mr. Quinion was to
go upon the morrow.

Behold me, on the morrow, in a much-worn little white hat, with a black
crape round it for my mother, a black jacket, and a pair of hard, stiff
corduroy trousers--which Miss Murdstone considered the best armour for
the legs in that fight with the world which was now to come off. Behold
me so attired, and with my little worldly all before me in a small
trunk, sitting, a lone lorn child (as Mrs. Gummidge might have said),
in the post-chaise that was carrying Mr. Quinion to the London coach at
Yarmouth! See, how our house and church are lessening in the distance;
how the grave beneath the tree is blotted out by intervening objects;
how the spire points upwards from my old playground no more, and the sky
is empty!

 David's tenth birthday falls on a foggy school day during March, and he is called into Mr. Creakle's parlor, happily anticipating a basket from Peggotty. Instead he is told by the proprietor's wife that his mother has died. "If ever child were stricken with sincere grief, I was," says David, as he prepares to return home by night-coach the next afternoon, not imagining that he is "never to return" to Salem House. David is met in Yarmouth by Mr. Omer who, along with his three daughters, makes a living preparing funeral arrangements. David is fitted for a funeral suit, and over tea he learns from the funeral arranger that his infant brother has also died and "is in his mother's arms." Peggotty meets David at the door and ushers him into a silent house, where even the Murdstones don't speak to one another. Miss Murdstone sits imperturbably at her desk each day, writing; Mr. Murdstone alternately sits and paces silently. A day or two before the funeral, Peggotty takes David to his mother's room to see her laid out. After the funeral, Miss Murdstone gives Peggotty a month's notice and hints that David will not be returning to school. David's presence in the house is almost ignored by the Murdstones, and once more he is able to visit in the kitchen with Peggotty. She tells him that she will return to Yarmouth to live, and that perhaps , David can come and stay with her for a short time. Permission is given by Miss Murdstone, and at the end of the month, Barkis calls to take them on a journey. After a bumpy ride, during which Barkis quizzes Peggotty about her "situation," they arrive in Yarmouth and are welcomed by Ham and Mr. Peggotty. On the way, Peggotty tells David that she intends to marry Barkis unless "my Davy . . . . . . any-ways against it." David says that he is happy for her. The household is much the same as David remembers, although little Em'ly has grown more beautiful and has become the family favorite. Mr. Peggotty inquires about Steerforth, and David launches into a long description of Steerforth's noble character while little Em'ly listens intently. David prays that evening that he "might grow up to marry little Em'ly." Each evening Barkis courts Peggotty by calling at the house with a gift and sits silently in the parlor while Peggotty sews. One day, just before the end of his visit, David, little Em'ly, Peggotty, and Mr. Barkis take a holiday trip together. Mr. Barkis stops the coach at a church, and he and Peggotty go inside. Alone with Em'ly, David professes his love for her, and Em'ly allows him to kiss her. When the couple returns from the church, David learns that Mr. Barkis and Peggotty have just been married. David returns to the Murdstones and is neglected again. Most of his days are spent reading or daydreaming, with an occasional visit to Mr. Chillip, the family doctor who presided at David's birth. Peggotty comes once a week to see David, and on one trip, she indicates that Mr. Barkis is "something of a miser." One day, Mr. Murdstone tells David that educating him serves no purpose; what David needs is a fight with the world -- and "the sooner . . . the better." Mr. Quinion, the manager of Murdstone and Grinby, wine merchants, has been summoned to escort David to London, where he will work to provide his "eating, drinking, and pocket-money." David realizes that the Murdstones simply want to get rid of him.

