David Copperfield, Charles Dickens [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

the little mirror with the oyster-shell frame. I thought of myself, lying here, when that first great change was being wrought at home. I thought of the blue-eyed child who had enchanted me. I thought of Steerforth: and a foolish, fearful fancy came upon me of his being near at hand, and liable to be met at any turn.

“ ’Tis like to be long,” said Mr. Peggotty, in a low voice, “afore the boat finds new tenants. They look upon ’t, down heer, as being unfortunate now!”

“Does it belong to anybody in the neighbourhood?” I asked.

“To a mast-maker up town,” said Mr. Peggotty. “I’m a-going to give the key to him tonight.”

We looked into the other little room, and came back to Mrs. Gummidge, sitting on the locker, whom Mr. Peggotty, putting the light on the chimneypiece, requested to rise, that he might carry it outside the door before extinguishing the candle.

“Dan’l,” said Mrs. Gummidge, suddenly deserting her basket, and clinging to his arm “my dear Dan’l, the parting words I speak in this house is, I mustn’t be left behind. Doen’t ye think of leaving me behind, Dan’l! Oh, doen’t ye ever do it!”

Mr. Peggotty, taken aback, looked from Mrs. Gummidge to me, and from me to Mrs. Gummidge, as if he had been awakened from a sleep.

“Doen’t ye, dearest Dan’l, doen’t ye!” cried Mrs. Gummidge, fervently. “Take me ’long with you, Dan’l, take me ’long with you and Em’ly! I’ll be your servant, constant and trew. If there’s slaves in them parts where you’re a-going, I’ll be bound to you for one, and happy, but doen’t ye leave me behind, Dan’l, that’s a deary dear!”

“My good soul,” said Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, “you doen’t know what a long voyage, and what a hard life ’tis!”

“Yes, I do, Dan’l! I can guess!” cried Mrs. Gummidge. “But my parting words under this roof is, I shall go into the house and die, if I am not took. I can dig, Dan’l. I can work. I can live hard. I can be loving and patient now⁠—more than you think, Dan’l, if you’ll on’y try me. I wouldn’t touch the ’lowance, not if I was dying of want, Dan’l Peggotty; but I’ll go with you and Em’ly, if you’ll on’y let me, to the world’s end! I know how ’tis; I know you think that I am lone and lorn; but, deary love, ’tan’t so no more! I ain’t sat here, so long, a-watching, and a-thinking of your trials, without some good being done me. Mas’r Davy, speak to him for me! I knows his ways, and Em’ly’s, and I knows their sorrows, and can be a comfort to ’em, some odd times, and labour for ’em allus! Dan’l, deary Dan’l, let me go ’long with you!”

And Mrs. Gummidge took his hand, and kissed it with a homely pathos and affection, in a homely rapture of devotion and gratitude, that he well deserved.

We brought the locker out, extinguished the candle, fastened the door on the outside, and left the old boat close shut up, a dark speck in the cloudy night. Next day, when we were returning to London outside the coach, Mrs. Gummidge and her basket were on the seat behind, and Mrs. Gummidge was happy.

LII I Assist at an Explosion

When the time Mr. Micawber had appointed so mysteriously, was within four-and-twenty hours of being come, my aunt and I consulted how we should proceed; for my aunt was very unwilling to leave Dora. Ah! how easily I carried Dora up and down stairs, now!

We were disposed, notwithstanding Mr. Micawber’s stipulation for my aunt’s attendance, to arrange that she should stay at home, and be represented by Mr. Dick and me. In short, we had resolved to take this course, when Dora again unsettled us by declaring that she never would forgive herself, and never would forgive her bad boy, if my aunt remained behind, on any pretence.

“I won’t speak to you,” said Dora, shaking her curls at my aunt. “I’ll be disagreeable! I’ll make Jip bark at you all day. I shall be sure that you really are a cross old thing, if you don’t go!”

“Tut, Blossom!” laughed my aunt. “You know you can’t do without me!”

“Yes, I can,” said Dora. “You are no use to me at all. You never run up and down stairs for me, all day long. You never sit and tell me stories about Doady, when his shoes were worn out, and he was covered with dust⁠—oh, what a poor little mite of a fellow! You never do anything at all to please me, do you, dear?” Dora made haste to kiss my aunt, and say, “Yes, you do! I’m only joking!”⁠—lest my aunt should think she really meant it.

“But, aunt,” said Dora, coaxingly, “now listen. You must go. I shall tease you, till you let me have my own way about it. I shall lead my naughty boy such a life, if he don’t make you go. I shall make myself so disagreeable⁠—and so will Jip! You’ll wish you had gone, like a good thing, for ever and ever so long, if you don’t go. Besides,” said Dora, putting back her hair, and looking wonderingly at my aunt and me, “why shouldn’t you both go? I am not very ill indeed. Am I?”

“Why, what a question!” cried my aunt.

“What a fancy!” said I.

“Yes! I know I am a silly little thing!” said Dora, slowly looking from one of us to the other, and then putting up her pretty lips to kiss us as she lay upon her couch. “Well, then, you must both go, or I shall not believe you; and then I shall cry!”

I saw, in my aunt’s face, that she began to give way now, and Dora brightened again, as she saw it too.

“You’ll come back with so much to tell me, that it’ll take at least a week to make me understand!” said Dora. “Because I know I shan’t understand, for a length of time, if there’s any business in it. And