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

were among the first opinions⁠—if they may be so called⁠—that I ever derived from what I saw.

Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlour fire, alone. I had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I must have read very perspicuously, or the poor soul must have been deeply interested, for I remember she had a cloudy impression, after I had done, that they were a sort of vegetable. I was tired of reading, and dead sleepy; but having leave, as a high treat, to sit up until my mother came home from spending the evening at a neighbour’s, I would rather have died upon my post (of course) than have gone to bed. I had reached that stage of sleepiness when Peggotty seemed to swell and grow immensely large. I propped my eyelids open with my two forefingers, and looked perseveringly at her as she sat at work; at the little bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread⁠—how old it looked, being so wrinkled in all directions!⁠—at the little house with a thatched roof, where the yard-measure lived; at her work-box with a sliding lid, with a view of St. Paul’s Cathedral (with a pink dome) painted on the top; at the brass thimble on her finger; at herself, whom I thought lovely. I felt so sleepy, that I knew if I lost sight of anything for a moment, I was gone.

“Peggotty,” says I, suddenly, “were you ever married?”

“Lord, Master Davy,” replied Peggotty. “What’s put marriage in your head?”

She answered with such a start, that it quite awoke me. And then she stopped in her work, and looked at me, with her needle drawn out to its thread’s length.

“But were you ever married, Peggotty?” says I. “You are a very handsome woman, an’t you?”

I thought her in a different style from my mother, certainly; but of another school of beauty, I considered her a perfect example. There was a red velvet footstool in the best parlour, on which my mother had painted a nosegay. The groundwork of that stool, and Peggotty’s complexion appeared to me to be one and the same thing. The stool was smooth, and Peggotty was rough, but that made no difference.

“Me handsome, Davy!” said Peggotty. “Lawk, no, my dear! But what put marriage in your head?”

“I don’t know!⁠—You mustn’t marry more than one person at a time, may you, Peggotty?”

“Certainly not,” says Peggotty, with the promptest decision.

“But if you marry a person, and the person dies, why then you may marry another person, mayn’t you, Peggotty?”

“You may,” says Peggotty, “if you choose, my dear. That’s a matter of opinion.”

“But what is your opinion, Peggotty?” said I.

I asked her, and looked curiously at her, because she looked so curiously at me.

“My opinion is,” said Peggotty, taking her eyes from me, after a little indecision and going on with her work, “that I never was married myself, Master Davy, and that I don’t expect to be. That’s all I know about the subject.”

“You an’t cross, I suppose, Peggotty, are you?” said I, after sitting quiet for a minute.

I really thought she was, she had been so short with me; but I was quite mistaken: for she laid aside her work (which was a stocking of her own), and opening her arms wide, took my curly head within them, and gave it a good squeeze. I know it was a good squeeze, because, being very plump, whenever she made any little exertion after she was dressed, some of the buttons on the back of her gown flew off. And I recollect two bursting to the opposite side of the parlour, while she was hugging me.

“Now let me hear some more about the Crorkindills,” said Peggotty, who was not quite right in the name yet, “for I an’t heard half enough.”

I couldn’t quite understand why Peggotty looked so queer, or why she was so ready to go back to the crocodiles. However, we returned to those monsters, with fresh wakefulness on my part, and we left their eggs in the sand for the sun to hatch; and we ran away from them, and baffled them by constantly turning, which they were unable to do quickly, on account of their unwieldy make; and we went into the water after them, as natives, and put sharp pieces of timber down their throats; and in short we ran the whole crocodile gauntlet. I did, at least; but I had my doubts of Peggotty, who was thoughtfully sticking her needle into various parts of her face and arms, all the time.

We had exhausted the crocodiles, and begun with the alligators, when the garden-bell rang. We went out to the door; and there was my mother, looking unusually pretty, I thought, and with her a gentleman with beautiful black hair and whiskers, who had walked home with us from church last Sunday.

As my mother stooped down on the threshold to take me in her arms and kiss me, the gentleman said I was a more highly privileged little fellow than a monarch⁠—or something like that; for my later understanding comes, I am sensible, to my aid here.

“What does that mean?” I asked him, over her shoulder.

He patted me on the head; but somehow, I didn’t like him or his deep voice, and I was jealous that his hand should touch my mother’s in touching me⁠—which it did. I put it away, as well as I could.

“Oh, Davy!” remonstrated my mother.

“Dear boy!” said the gentleman. “I cannot wonder at his devotion!”

I never saw such a beautiful colour on my mother’s face before. She gently chid me for being rude; and, keeping me close to her shawl, turned to thank the gentleman for taking so much trouble as to bring her home. She put out her hand to him as she spoke, and, as he met it with his own, she glanced, I thought, at me.

“Let us say ‘good night,’ my fine boy,” said the gentleman, when he had bent his head⁠—I saw him!⁠—over my