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Dickens' Stories About Children Every Child Can Read

by Charles Dickens · English · Gutenberg #32241 · 370,495 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Dickens' Stories About Children Every Child Can Read

Author: Charles Dickens

Editor: Jesse Lyman Hurlbut


        
Release date: May 3, 2010 [eBook #32241]

Language: English

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DICKENS' STORIES ABOUT CHILDREN EVERY CHILD CAN READ

Edited by

REV. JESSE LYMAN HURLBUT, D.D.


[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS.]


Illustrated







[Illustration: Every Child's Library]

The John C. Winston Co.
Philadelphia

Copyright, 1909, By
The John C. Winston Co.




PREFACE.


TO THE YOUNG READER:

Charles Dickens was one of the greatest among the many story-writers of
"the Victorian age;" that is, the middle and latter part of the
Nineteenth Century, when Victoria was Queen of Great Britain. Perhaps he
was the greatest of them all for now, a generation after he passed away,
more people read the stories of Dickens than those by any other author
of that period. In those wonderful writings are found many pictures of
child-life connected with the plan of the novels or stories. These
child-stories have been taken out of their connections and are told by
themselves in this volume. By and by you will read for yourselves, "The
Christmas Carol," "The Chimes," "David Copperfield," "The Old Curiosity
Shop," and the other great books by that fascinating writer, who saw
people whom nobody else ever saw, and made them real. When you read
those books you will meet again these charming children, and will
remember them as the friends of your childhood.

                                                    JESSE L. HURLBUT.




CONTENTS.


                                                      PAGE

  TROTTY VECK AND MEG.  _From "The Chimes"_              9

  TINY TIM.  _From "Christmas Carol"_                   24

  THE RUNAWAY COUPLE.  _From "The Holly-Tree Inn"_      34

  LITTLE DORRIT.  _From "Little Dorrit"_                49

  THE TOY-MAKER AND HIS BLIND DAUGHTER.  _From
      "Cricket on the Hearth"_                          68

  LITTLE NELL.  _From "The Old Curiosity Shop"_         86

  LITTLE DAVID COPPERFIELD.  _From "David
      Copperfield"_                                    123

  JENNY WREN.  _From "Our Mutual Friend"_              178

  PIP'S ADVENTURE.  _From "Great Expectations"_        185

  TODGERS'                                             196

  DICK SWIVELLER AND THE MARCHIONESS                   219

  MR. WARDLE'S SERVANT JOE                             233

  THE BRAVE AND HONEST BOY, OLIVER TWIST               248




ILLUSTRATIONS.


  CHARLES DICKENS                           _Frontispiece_

                                                      PAGE

  "THEY BROKE IN LIKE A GRACE, MY DEAR."                13

  "MR. CLENNAM FOLLOWED HER HOME."                      65

  LITTLE NELL AND HER GRANDFATHER                       86

  DAVID COPPERFIELD AND LITTLE EM'LY                   131

  SEATED ON THE CRYSTAL CARPET WERE TWO GIRLS          179

  "KEEP STILL, YOU LITTLE IMP, OR I'LL CUT YOUR
      THROAT."                                         185

  "MR. TUPMAN, WE ARE OBSERVED!"                       240




I.

TROTTY VECK AND HIS DAUGHTER MEG.


"TROTTY" seems a strange name for an old man, but it was given to Toby
Veck because of his always going at a trot to do his errands; for he was
a ticket porter or messenger and his office was to take letters and
messages for people who were in too great a hurry to send them by post,
which in those days was neither so cheap nor so quick as it is now. He
did not earn very much, and had to be out in all weathers and all day
long. But Toby was of a cheerful disposition, and looked on the bright
side of everything, and was grateful for any small mercies that came in
his way; and so was happier than many people who never knew what it is
to be hungry or in want of comforts. His greatest joy was his dear,
bright, pretty daughter Meg, who loved him dearly.

One cold day, near the end of the year, Toby had been waiting a long
time for a job, trotting up and down in his usual place before the
church, and trying hard to keep himself warm, when the bells chimed
twelve o'clock, which made Toby think of dinner.

"There's nothing," he remarked, carefully feeling his nose to make sure
it was still there, "more regular in coming round than dinner-time, and
nothing less regular in coming round than dinner. That's the great
difference between 'em." He went on talking to himself, trotting up and
down, and never noticing who was coming near to him.

"Why, father, father," said a pleasant voice, and Toby turned to find
his daughter's sweet, bright eyes close to his.

"Why, pet," said he, kissing her and squeezing her blooming face between
his hands, "what's to-do? I didn't expect you to-day, Meg."

"Neither did I expect to come, father," said Meg, nodding and smiling.
"But here I am! And not alone, not alone!"

"Why you don't mean to say," observed Trotty, looking curiously at the
covered basket she carried, "that you----"

"Smell it, father dear," said Meg. "Only smell it!"

Trotty was going to lift up the cover at once, in a great hurry, when
she gaily interposed her hand.

"No, no, no," said Meg, with the glee of a child. "Lengthen it out a
little. Let me just lift up the corner; just a lit-tle, ti-ny cor-ner,
you know," said Meg, suiting the action to the word with the utmost
gentleness, and speaking very softly, as if she were afraid of being
overheard by something inside the basket. "There, now; what's that?"

Toby took the shortest possible sniff at the edge of the basket, and
cried out in rapture:

"Why, it's hot," he said.

But to Meg's great delight he could not guess what it was that smelt so
good.

"Polonies? Trotters? Liver? Pigs' feet? Sausages?" he tried one after
the other. At last he exclaimed in triumph. "Why, what am I a-thinking
of? It's tripe."

And it was.

"And so," said Meg, "I'll lay the cloth at once, father; for I have
brought the tripe in a basin, and tied the basin up in a
pocket-handkerchief; and if I like to be proud for once, and spread that
for a cloth, and call it a cloth, there's nobody to prevent me, is there
father?"

"Not that I know of, my dear," said Toby; "but they're always a-bringing
up some new law or other."

"And according to what I was reading you in the paper the other day,
father, what the judge said, you know, we poor people are supposed to
know them all. Ha, ha! What a mistake! My goodness me, how clever they
think us!"

"Yes, my dear," cried Trotty; "and they'd be very fond of any one of us
that _did_ know 'em all. He'd grow fat upon the work he'd get, that man,
and be popular with the gentlefolks in his neighborhood. Very much so!"

"He'd eat his dinner with an appetite, whoever he was, if it smelt like
this," said Meg cheerfully. "Make haste, for there's a hot potato
besides, and half a pint of fresh-drawn beer in a bottle. Where will you
dine, father--on the post or on the steps? Dear, dear, how grand we are!
Two places to choose from!"

"The steps to-day, my pet," said Trotty. "Steps in dry weather, post in
wet. There's greater conveniency in the steps at all times, because of
the sitting down; but they're rheumatic in the damp."

"Then, here," said Meg, clapping her hands after a moment's bustle;
"here it is all ready! And beautiful it looks! Come, father. Come!"


[Illustration: "They Broke in Like a Grace, My Dear."

                                              Page 13]

And just as Toby was about to sit down to his dinner on the door-steps
of a big house close by, the chimes rang out again, and Toby took off
his hat and said, "Amen."

"Amen to the bells, father?"

"They broke in like a grace, my dear," said Trotty; "they'd say a good
one if they could, I'm sure. Many's the kind thing they say to me. How
often have I heard them bells say, 'Toby Veck, keep a good heart, Toby!'
A million times? More!"

"Well, I never!" cried Meg.

"When things is very bad, then it's 'Toby Veck, Toby Veck, job coming
soon, Toby!'"

"And it comes--at last, father," said Meg, with a touch of sadness in
her pleasant voice.

"Always," answered Toby. "Never fails."

While this discourse was holding, Trotty made no pause in his attack
upon the savory meat before him, but cut and ate, and cut and drank, and
cut and chewed, and dodged about from tripe to hot potato, and from hot
potato back again to tripe, with an unfailing relish. But happening now
to look all round the street--in case anybody should be beckoning from
any door or window for a porter--his eyes, in coming back again, saw Meg
sitting opposite him, with her arms folded, and only busy in watching
his dinner with a smile of happiness.

"Why, Lord forgive me!" said Trotty, dropping his knife and fork. "My
dove! Meg! why didn't you tell me what a beast I was?"

"Father!"

"Sitting here," said Trotty, in a sorrowful manner, "cramming, and
stuffing, and gorging myself, and you before me there, never so much as
breaking your precious fast, nor wanting to, when----"

"But I have broken it, father," interposed his daughter, laughing, "all
to bits. I have had my dinner."

"Nonsense," said Trotty. "Two dinners in one day! It ain't possible! You
might as well tell me that two New Year's days will come together, or
that I have had a gold head all my life, and never changed it."

"I have had my dinner, father, for all that," said Meg, coming nearer to
him. "And if you will go on with yours, I'll tell you how and where, and
how your dinner came to be brought and--and something else besides."

Toby still appeared not to believe her; but she looked into his face
with her clear eyes, and, laying her hand upon his shoulder, motioned
him to go on while the meat was hot. So Trotty took up his knife and
fork again and went to work, but much more slowly than before, and
shaking his head, as if he were not at all pleased with himself.

"I had my dinner, father," said Meg, after a little hesitation,
"with--with Richard. His dinner-time was early; and as he brought his
dinner with him when he came to see me, we--we had it together, father."

Trotty took a little beer and smacked his lips. Then he said "Oh!"
because she waited.

"And Richard says, father--" Meg resumed, then stopped.

"What does Richard say, Meg?" asked Toby.

"Richard says, father--" Another stoppage.

"Richard's a long time saying it," said Toby.

"He says, then, father," Meg continued, lifting up her eyes at last, and
speaking in a tremble, but quite plainly, "another year is nearly gone,
and where is the use of waiting on from year to year, when it is so
unlikely we shall ever be better off than we are now? He says we are
poor now, father, and we shall be poor then; but we are young now, and
years will make us old before we know it. He says that if we wait,
people as poor as we are, until we see our way quite clearly, the way
will be a narrow one indeed--the common way--the grave, father."

A bolder man than Trotty Veck must needs have drawn upon his boldness
largely to deny it. Trotty held his peace.

"And how hard, father, to grow old and die, and think we might have
cheered and helped each other! How hard in all our lives to love each
other, and to grieve, apart, to see each other working, changing,
growing old and gray. Even if I got the better of it, and forgot him
(which I never could), oh, father, dear, how hard to have a heart so
full as mine is now, and live to have it slowly drained out every drop,
without remembering one happy moment of a woman's life to stay behind
and comfort me and make me better!"

Trotty sat quite still. Meg dried her eyes, and said more gaily--that is
to say, with here a laugh and there a sob, and here a laugh and sob
together:

"So Richard says, father, as his work was yesterday made certain for
some time to come, and as I love him and have loved him full three
years--ah, longer than that, if he knew it!--will I marry him on New
Year's Day?"

Just then Richard himself came up to persuade Toby to agree to their
plan; and, almost at the same moment, a footman came out of the house
and ordered them all off the steps, and some gentlemen came out who
called up Trotty, and asked a great many questions, and found a good
deal of fault, telling Richard he was very foolish to want to get
married, which made Toby feel very unhappy, and Richard very angry. So
the lovers went off together sadly; Richard looking gloomy and downcast,
and Meg in tears. Toby, who had a letter given him to carry, and a
sixpence, trotted off in rather low spirits to a very grand house, where
he was told to take the letter in to the gentleman. While he was
waiting, he heard the letter read. It was from Alderman Cute, to tell
Sir Joseph Bowley that one of his tenants named Will Fern, who had come
to London to try to get work, and been brought before him charged with
sleeping in a shed, and asking if Sir Joseph wished him to be dealt
kindly with or otherwise. To Toby's great disappointment, for Sir Joseph
had talked a great deal about being a friend to the poor, the answer was
given that Will Fern might be sent to prison as a vagabond, and made an
example of, though his only fault was that he was poor. On his way home,
Toby, thinking sadly, with his hat pulled down low on his head, ran
against a man dressed like a country-man, carrying a fair-haired little
girl. Toby enquired anxiously if he had hurt either of them. The man
answered no, and seeing Toby had a kind face, he asked him the way to
Alderman Cute's house.

"It's impossible," cried Toby, "that your name is Will Fern?"

"That's my name," said the man.

Thereupon Toby told him what he had just heard, and said, "Don't go
there."

Poor Will told him how he could not make a living in the country, and
had come to London with his orphan niece to try to find a friend of her
mother's and to endeavor to get some work, and, wishing Toby a happy New
Year, was about to trudge wearily off again, when Trotty caught his
hand, saying--

"Stay! The New Year never can be happy to me if I see the child and you
go wandering away without a shelter for your heads. Come home with me.
I'm a poor man, living in a poor place; but I can give you lodging for
one night, and never miss it. Come home with me! Here! I'll take her!"
cried Trotty, lifting up the child. "A pretty one! I'd carry twenty
times her weight and never know I'd got it. Tell me if I go too quick
for you. I'm very fast. I always was!" Trotty said this, taking about
six of his trotting paces to one stride of his tired companion, and with
his thin legs quivering again beneath the load he bore.

"Why, she's as light," said Trotty, trotting in his speech as well as in
his gait--for he couldn't bear to be thanked, and dreaded a moment's
pause--"as light as a feather. Lighter than a peacock's feather--a great
deal lighter. Here we are and here we go!" And, rushing in, he set the
child down before his daughter. The little girl gave one look at Meg's
sweet face and ran into her arms at once, while Trotty ran round the
room, saying, "Here we are and here we go. Here, Uncle Will, come to the
fire. Meg, my precious darling, where's the kettle? Here it is and here
it goes, and it'll bile in no time!"

"Why, father!" said Meg, as she knelt before the child and pulled off
her wet shoes, "you're crazy to-night, I think. I don't know what the
bells would say to that. Poor little feet, how cold they are!"

"Oh, they're warmer now!" exclaimed the child. "They're quite warm now!"

"No, no, no," said Meg. "We haven't rubbed 'em half enough. We're so
busy. And when they're done, we'll brush out the damp hair; and when
that's done, we'll bring some color to the poor pale face with fresh
water; and when that's done, we'll be so gay and brisk and happy!"

The child, sobbing, clasped her round the neck, saying, "O Meg, O dear
Meg!"

"Good gracious me!" said Meg presently, "father's crazy. He's put the
dear child's bonnet on the kettle, and hung the lid behind the door!"

Trotty hastily repaired this mistake, and went off to find some tea and
a rasher of bacon he fancied "he had seen lying somewhere on the
stairs."

He soon came back and made the tea, and before long they were all
enjoying the meal. Trotty and Meg only took a morsel for form's sake
(for they had only a very little, not enough for all), but their delight
was in seeing their visitors eat, and very happy they were--though
Trotty had noticed that Meg was sitting by the fire in tears when they
had come in, and he feared her marriage had been broken off.

After tea Meg took Lilian to bed, and Toby showed Will Fern where he was
to sleep. As he came back past Meg's door he heard the child saying her
prayers, remembering Meg's name and asking for his. Then he went to sit
by the fire and read his paper, and fell asleep to have a wonderful
dream, so terrible and sad, that it was a great relief when he woke.

"And whatever you do, father," said Meg, "don't eat tripe again without
asking some doctor whether it's likely to agree with you; for how you
_have_ been going on! Good gracious!"

She was working with her needle at the little table by the fire,
dressing her simple gown with ribbons for her wedding--so quietly happy,
so blooming and youthful, so full of beautiful promise that he uttered a
great cry as if it were an angel in his house, then flew to clasp her in
his arms.

But he caught his feet in the newspaper, which had fallen on the hearth,
and somebody came rushing in between them.

"No!" cried the voice of this same somebody. A generous and jolly voice
it was! "Not even you; not even you. The first kiss of Meg in the New
Year is mine--mine! I have been waiting outside the house this hour to
hear the bells and claim it. Meg, my precious prize, a happy year! A
life of happy years, my darling wife!"

And Richard smothered her with kisses.

You never in all your life saw anything like Trotty after this, I don't
care where you have lived or what you have seen; you never in your life
saw anything at all approaching him! He kept running up to Meg, and
squeezing her fresh face between his hands and kissing it, going from
her backwards not to lose sight of it, and running up again like a
figure in a magic lantern; and whatever he did, he was constantly
sitting himself down in his chair, and never stopping in it for one
single moment, being--that's the truth--beside himself with joy.

"And to-morrow's your wedding-day, my pet!" cried Trotty. "Your real,
happy wedding-day!"

"To-day!" cried Richard, shaking hands with him. "To-day. The chimes are
ringing in the New Year. Hear them!"

They _were_ ringing! Bless their sturdy hearts, they _were_ ringing!
Great bells as they were--melodious, deep-mouthed, noble bells, cast in
no common metal, made by no common founder--when had they ever chimed
like that before?

Trotty was backing off to that wonderful chair again, when the child,
who had been awakened by the noise, came running in half-dressed.

"Why, here she is!" cried Trotty, catching her up. "Here's little
Lilian! Ha, ha, ha! Here we are and here we go. Oh, here we are and here
we go again! And here we are and here we go! And Uncle Will, too!"

Before Will Fern could make the least reply, a band of music burst into
the room, attended by a flock of neighbors, screaming, "A Happy New
Year, Meg!" "A happy wedding!" "Many of 'em!" and other fragmentary
good-wishes of that sort. The Drum (who was a private friend of
Trotty's) then stepped forward and said:

"Trotty Veck, my boy, it's got about that your daughter is going to be
married to-morrow. There ain't a soul that knows you that don't wish you
well, or that knows her and don't wish her well. Or that knows you both,
and don't wish you both all the happiness the New Year can bring. And
here we are to play it in and dance it in accordingly."

Then Mrs. Chickenstalker came in (a good-humored, nice-looking woman
who, to the delight of all, turned out to be the friend of Lilian's
mother, for whom Will Fern had come to look), with a stone pitcher full
of "flip," to wish Meg joy, and then the music struck up, and Trotty,
making Meg and Richard second couple, led off Mrs. Chickenstalker down
the dance, and danced it in a step unknown before or since, founded on
his own peculiar trot.




II.

TINY TIM.


IT will surprise you all very much to hear that there was once a man who
did not like Christmas. In fact, he had been heard on several occasions
to use the word _humbug_ with regard to it. His name was Scrooge, and he
was a hard, sour-tempered man of business, intent only on saving and
making money, and caring nothing for anyone. He paid the poor,
hard-working clerk in his office as little as he could possibly get the
work done for, and lived on as little as possible himself, alone, in two
dismal rooms. He was never merry or comfortable or happy, and he hated
other people to be so, and that was the reason why he hated Christmas,
because people _will_ be happy at Christmas, you know, if they possibly
can, and like to have a little money to make themselves and others
comfortable.

Well, it was Christmas eve, a very cold and foggy one, and Mr. Scrooge,
having given his poor clerk permission very unwillingly to spend
Christmas day at home, locked up his office and went home himself in a
very bad temper, and with a cold in his head. After having taken some
gruel as he sat over a miserable fire in his dismal room, he got into
bed, and had some wonderful and disagreeable dreams, to which we will
leave him, whilst we see how Tiny Tim, the son of his poor clerk, spent
Christmas day.

The name of this clerk was Bob Cratchit. He had a wife and five other
children besides Tim, who was a weak and delicate little cripple, and
for this reason was dearly loved by his father and the rest of the
family; not but what he was a dear little boy, too, gentle and patient
and loving, with a sweet face of his own, which no one could help
looking at.

Whenever he could spare the time, it was Mr. Cratchit's delight to carry
his little boy out on his shoulder to see the shops and the people; and
to-day he had taken him to church for the first time.

"Whatever has got your precious father and your brother Tiny Tim!"
exclaimed Mrs. Cratchit, "here's dinner all ready to be dished up. I've
never known him so late on Christmas day before."

"Here he is, mother!" cried Belinda, and "here he is!" cried the other
children.

In came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter,
exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare
clothes darned up and brushed, to look just as well as possible; and
Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch,
and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!

"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.

"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.

"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden dropping in his high spirits; for
he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church, and had come home
rampant. "Not coming upon Christmas day!"

Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so
she came out sooner than had been agreed upon from behind the
closet-door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits
hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might
hear the pudding singing in the copper kettle.

"And how did Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit.

"As good as gold and better," replied his father. "I think, wife, the
child gets thoughtful, sitting at home so much. He told me, coming home,
that he hoped the people in church who saw he was a cripple, would be
pleased to remember on Christmas day who it was who made the lame to
walk."

"Bless his sweet heart!" said the mother in a trembling voice, and the
father's voice trembled, too, as he remarked that "Tiny Tim was growing
strong and hearty at last."

His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny
Tim before another word was spoken, led by his brother and sister to his
stool beside the fire; while Bob, Master Peter, and the two young
Cratchits (who seemed to be everywhere at once) went to fetch the goose,
with which they soon returned in high procession.

Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of
all birds; a perfect marvel, to which a black swan was a matter of
course--and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Mrs.
Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing
hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with tremendous vigor; Miss
Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob
took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young
Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and,
mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest
they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At
last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a
breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the
carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did,
and when the long-expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of
delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two
young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and
feebly cried Hurrah!

There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was
such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size, and cheapness were
the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed
potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as
Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a
bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at that! Yet everyone had
had enough, and the youngest Cratchits, in particular, were steeped in
sage and onions to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by
Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too nervous to bear
witnesses--to take up the pudding and bring it in.

Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning
out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back yard and
stolen it, while they were merry with the goose--a supposition at which
the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were
supposed.

Halloo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A
smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an
eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a
laundress' next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute
Mrs. Cratchit entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding
like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of
half-a-quartern of lighted brandy, and decorated with Christmas holly
stuck into the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he
regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since
their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that, now the weight was off her
mind, she would confess she had her doubts about the quantity of flour.
Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it
was a small pudding for a large family. It would have been really wicked
to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth
swept, and the fire made up. The hot stuff in the jug being tasted, and
considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a
shovel full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew
round the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a
one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass. Two
tumblers and a custard cup without a handle.

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden
goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while
the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob
proposed:

"A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"

Which all the family re-echoed.

"God bless us everyone!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

Now I told you that Mr. Scrooge had some disagreeable and wonderful
dreams on Christmas eve, and so he had; and in one of them he dreamt
that a Christmas spirit showed him his clerk's home; he saw them all
gathered round the fire, and heard them drink his health, and Tiny Tim's
song, and he took special note of Tiny Tim himself.

How Mr. Scrooge spent Christmas day we do not know. He may have remained
in bed, having a cold, but on Christmas night he had more dreams, and
in one of his dreams the spirit took him again to his clerk's poor home.
The mother was doing some needlework, seated by the table, a tear
dropped on it now and then, and she said, poor thing, that the work,
which was black, hurt her eyes. The children sat, sad and silent, about
the room, except Tiny Tim, who was not there. Upstairs the father, with
his face hidden in his hands, sat beside a little bed, on which lay a
tiny figure, white and still. "My little child, my pretty little child,"
he sobbed, as the tears fell through his fingers on to the floor. "Tiny
Tim died because his father was too poor to give him what was necessary
to make him well; _you_ kept him poor;" said the dream-spirit to Mr.
Scrooge. The father kissed the cold, little face on the bed, and went
downstairs, where the sprays of holly still remained about the humble
room; and taking his hat, went out, with a wistful glance at the little
crutch in the corner as he shut the door. Mr. Scrooge saw all this, and
many more things as strange and sad, the spirit took care of that; but,
wonderful to relate, he woke the next morning feeling a different
man--feeling as he had never felt in his life before. For after all, you
know that what he had seen was no more than a dream; he knew that Tiny
Tim was not dead, and Scrooge was resolved that Tiny Tim should not die
if he could help it.

"Why, I am as light as a feather, and as happy as an angel, and as merry
as a schoolboy," Scrooge said to himself as he skipped into the next
room to breakfast and threw on all the coals at once, and put two lumps
of sugar in his tea. "I hope everybody had a merry Christmas, and here's
a happy New Year to all the world."

On that morning, the day after Christmas poor Bob Cratchit crept into
the office a few minutes late, expecting to be roundly abused and
scolded for it, but no such thing; his master was there with his back to
a good fire, and actually smiling, and he shook hands with his clerk,
telling him heartily he was going to raise his salary and asking quite
affectionately after Tiny Tim! "And mind you make up a good fire in your
room before you set to work, Bob," he said, as he closed his own door.

Bob could hardly believe his eyes and ears, but it was all true. Such
doings as they had on New Year's day had never been seen before in the
Cratchits' home, nor such a turkey as Mr. Scrooge sent them for dinner.
Tiny Tim had his share too, for Tiny Tim did not die, not a bit of it.
Mr. Scrooge was a second father to him from that day, he wanted for
nothing, and grew up strong and hearty. Mr. Scrooge loved him, and well
he might, for was it not Tiny Tim who had without knowing it, through
the Christmas dream-spirit, touched his hard heart and caused him to
become a good and happy man?




III.

THE RUNAWAY COUPLE.


THE Boots at the Holly Tree Inn was the young man named Cobbs, who
blacked the shoes, and ran errands, and waited on the people at the inn;
and this is the story that he told, one day.

"Supposing a young gentleman not eight years old was to run away with a
fine young woman of seven, would you consider that a queer start? That
there is a start as I--the Boots at the Holly Tree Inn--have seen with
my own eyes; and I cleaned the shoes they ran away in, and they was so
little that I couldn't get my hand into 'em.

"Master Harry Walmers' father, he lived at the Elms, away by Shooter's
Hill, six or seven miles from London. He was uncommon proud of Master
Harry, as he was his only child; but he didn't spoil him neither. He was
a gentleman that had a will of his own, and an eye of his own, and that
would be minded. Consequently, though he made quite a companion of the
fine bright boy, still he kept the command over him, and the child _was_
a child. I was under-gardener there at that time; and one morning
Master Harry, he comes to me and says--

"'Cobbs, how should you spell Norah, if you was asked?' and then begun
cutting it in print, all over the fence.

"He couldn't say he had taken particular notice of children before that;
but really it was pretty to see them two mites a-going about the place
together, deep in love. And the courage of the boy! Bless your soul,
he'd have throwed off his little hat, and tucked up his little sleeves,
and gone in at a lion, he would, if they had happened to meet one and
she had been frightened of him. One day he stops along, with her, where
Boots was hoeing weeds in the gravel, and says--speaking up, 'Cobbs,' he
says, 'I like you.' 'Do you, sir? I'm proud to hear it.' 'Yes, I do,
Cobbs. Why do I like you, do you think, Cobbs?' 'Don't know, Master
Harry, I am sure.' 'Because Norah likes you, Cobbs.' 'Indeed, sir?
That's very gratifying.' 'Gratifying, Cobbs? It's better than millions
of the brightest diamonds to be liked by Norah.' 'Certainly, sir.'
'You're going away, ain't you, Cobbs?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Would you like
another situation, Cobbs?' 'Well, sir, I shouldn't object, if it was a
good 'un.' 'Then, Cobbs,' says he, 'you shall be our head-gardener when
we are married.' And he tucks her, in her little sky-blue mantle, under
his arm, and walks away.

"It was better than a picter, and equal to a play, to see them babies
with their long, bright, curling hair, their sparkling eyes, and their
beautiful light tread, a-rambling about the garden, deep in love. Boots
was of opinion that the birds believed they was birds, and kept up with
'em, singing to please 'em. Sometimes, they would creep under the Tulip
tree, and would sit there with their arms round one another's necks, and
their soft cheeks touching, a-reading about the prince and the dragon,
and the good and bad enchanters, and the king's fair daughter. Sometimes
he would hear them planning about having a house in a forest, keeping
bees and a cow, and living entirely on milk and honey. Once he came upon
them by the pond, and heard Master Harry say, 'Adorable Norah, kiss me,
and say you love me to distraction, or I'll jump in headforemost.' And
Boots made no question he would have done it, if she hadn't done as he
asked her.

"'Cobbs,' says Master Harry, one evening, when Cobbs was watering the
flowers, 'I am going on a visit, this present mid-summer, to my
grandmamma's at York.'

"'Are you, indeed, sir? I hope you'll have a pleasant time. I am going
into Yorkshire myself when I leave here.'

"'Are you going to your grandmamma's, Cobbs?'

"'No, sir. I haven't got such a thing.'

"'Not as a grandmamma, Cobbs?'

"'No, sir.'

"The boy looked on at the watering of the flowers for a little while and
then said, 'I shall be very glad, indeed, to go, Cobbs--Norah's going.'

"'You'll be all right then, sir,' says Cobbs, 'with your beautiful
sweetheart by your side.'

"'Cobbs,' returned the boy, flushing, 'I never let anybody joke about it
when I can prevent them.'

"'It wasn't a joke, sir,' says Cobbs, with humility--'wasn't so meant.'

"'I am glad of that, Cobbs, because I like you! you know, and you're
going to live with us, Cobbs.

"'Sir.'

"'What do you think my grandmamma gives me, when I go down there?'

"'I couldn't so much as make a guess, sir.'

"'A Bank of England five-pound note, Cobbs.'[A]

"'Whew!' says Cobbs, 'that's a spanking sum of money, Master Harry.'

"'A person could do a great deal with such a sum of money as that.
Couldn't a person, Cobbs?'

"'I believe you, sir!'

"'Cobbs,' said the boy, 'I'll tell you a secret. At Norah's house they
have been joking her about me, and pretending to laugh at our being
engaged. Pretending to make game of it, Cobbs!'

"'Such, sir,' says Cobbs, 'is the wickedness of human natur'.'

"The boy, looking exactly like his father, stood for a few minutes with
his glowing face towards the sunset, and then departed with, 'Good
night, Cobbs. I'm going in.'

"I was the Boots at the Holly Tree Inn when one summer afternoon the
coach drives up, and out of the coach gets these two children.

"The guard says to our governor, the inn-keeper, 'I don't quite make out
these little passengers, but the young gentleman's words was, that they
were to be brought here.' The young gentleman gets out; hands his lady
out; gives the driver something for himself; says to our governor,
'We're to stop here to-night, please. Sitting-room and two bedrooms will
be required. Chops and cherry-pudding for two!' and tucks her, in her
little sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks into the house much
bolder than brass.

"Boots leaves me to judge what the amazement of that establishment was
when those two tiny creatures, all alone by themselves, was marched into
the parlor--much more so when he, who had seen them without their seeing
him, gave the governor his views of the errand they was upon. 'Cobbs,'
says the governor, 'if this is so, I must set off myself to York and
quiet their friends' minds. In which case you must keep your eye upon
'em, and humor 'em, till I come back. But, before I take these measures,
Cobbs, I should wish you to find out from themselves whether your
opinions is correct.' 'Sir, to you,' says Cobbs, 'that shall be done
directly.'

"So Boots goes up stairs to the parlor, and there he finds Master Harry
on an enormous sofa a-drying the eyes of Miss Norah with his
pocket-hankecher. Their little legs were entirely off the ground of
course, and it really is not possible for Boots to express to me how
small them children looked.

"'It's Cobbs! It's Cobbs!' cries Master Harry, and comes running to him,
and catching hold of his hand. Miss Norah comes running to him on
t'other side, and catching hold of his t'other hand, and they both jump
for joy.

"'I see you a-getting out, sir,' says Cobbs. 'I thought it was you. I
thought I couldn't be mistaken in your height and figure. What's the
object of your journey, sir? Are you going to be married?'

"'We are going to be married, Cobbs, at Gretna Green,' returned the boy.
'We have run away on purpose. Norah has been in rather low spirits,
Cobbs; but she'll be happy, now we have found you to be our friend.'

"'Thank you, sir, and thank _you_, miss,' says Cobbs, 'for your good
opinion. Did you bring any luggage with you, sir?'

"If I will believe Boots when he gives me his word and honor upon it,
the lady had got a parasol, a smelling-bottle, a round and a half of
cold buttered toast, eight peppermint drops, and a hair-brush--seemingly
a doll's. The gentleman had got about half a dozen yards of string, a
knife, three or four sheets of writing-paper folded up surprisingly
small, an orange, and a china mug with his name upon it.

"'What may be the exact natur' of your plans, sir?' says Cobbs.

"'To go on,' replied the boy--which the courage of that boy was
something wonderful!--'in the morning, and be married to-morrow.'

"'Just so, sir,' says Cobbs. 'Would it meet your views, sir, if I was to
go with you?'

"When Cobbs said this, they both jumped for joy again, and cried out,
'Oh, yes, yes, Cobbs! Yes!'

"'Well, sir,' says Cobbs. 'If you will excuse my having the freedom to
give an opinion, what I should recommend would be this. I'm acquainted
with a pony, sir, which, put in a phaeton that I could borrow, would
take you and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Jr. (myself driving, if you agree), to
the end of your journey in a very short space of time. I am not
altogether sure, sir, that this pony will be at liberty to-morrow, but
even if you had to wait over to-morrow for him, it might be worth your
while. As to the small account for your board here, sir, in case you was
to find yourself running at all short, that don't signify, because I'm a
part proprietor of this inn, and it could stand over.'

"Boots tells me that when they clapped their hands and jumped for joy
again, and called him, 'Good Cobbs!' and 'Dear Cobbs!' and bent across
him to kiss one another in the delight of their trusting hearts, he felt
himself the meanest rascal for deceiving 'em that ever was born.

"'Is there anything you want just at present, sir?' says Cobbs, mortally
ashamed of himself.

"'We would like some cakes after dinner,' answered Master Harry, folding
his arms, putting out one leg, and looking straight at him, 'and two
apples--and jam. With dinner, we should like to have toast and water.
But Norah has always been accustomed to half a glass of currant wine at
dessert. And so have I.'

"'It shall be ordered at the bar, sir,' says Cobbs, and away he went.

"'The way in which the women of that house--without exception--everyone
of 'em--married and single, took to that boy when they heard the story,
Boots considers surprising. It was as much as he could do to keep 'em
from dashing into the room and kissing him. They climbed up all sorts of
places, at the risk of their lives, to look at him through a pane of
glass. They were seven deep at the key-hole. They were out of their
minds about him and his bold spirit.

"In the evening Boots went into the room, to see how the runaway couple
was getting on. The gentleman was on the window-seat, supporting the
lady in his arms. She had tears upon her face, and was lying, very tired
and half-asleep, with her head upon his shoulder.

"'Mrs. Harry Walmers, Jr., tired, sir?' says Cobbs.

"'Yes, she is tired, Cobbs; but she is not used to be away from home,
and she has been in low spirits again. Cobbs, do you think you could
bring a biffin, please?'

"'I ask your pardon, sir,' says Cobbs. 'What was it you--'

"'I think a Norfolk biffin[B] would rouse her, Cobbs. She is very fond
of them.'

"Boots withdrew in search of the required restorative, and, when he
brought it in, the gentleman handed it to the lady, and fed her with a
spoon, and took a little himself. The lady being heavy with sleep, and
rather cross. 'What should you think, sir,' says Cobbs, 'of a chamber
candlestick?' The gentleman approved; the chambermaid went first, up the
great staircase; the lady, in her sky-blue mantle, followed, gallantly
led by the gentleman; the gentleman kissed her at the door, and retired
to his own room, where Boots softly locked him up.

"Boots couldn't but feel what a base deceiver he was when they asked him
at breakfast (they had ordered sweet milk-and-water, and toast and
currant jelly, overnight) about the pony. It really was as much as he
could do, he don't mind confessing to me, to look them two young things
in the face, and think how wicked he had grown up to be. Howsomever, he
went on a-lying like a Trojan, about the pony. He told 'em it did so
unfortunately happen that the pony was half-clipped, you see, and that
he couldn't be taken out in that state for fear that it should strike to
his inside. But that he'd be finished clipping in the course of the day,
and that to-morrow morning at eight o'clock the phaeton would be ready.
Boots' view of the whole case, looking back upon it in my room, is, that
Mrs. Harry Walmers, Jr., was beginning to give in. She hadn't had her
hair curled when she went to bed, and she didn't seem quite up to
brushing it herself, and it's getting in her eyes put her out. But
nothing put out Master Harry. He sat behind his breakfast cup, a-tearing
away at the jelly, as if he had been his own father.

"After breakfast Boots is inclined to think that they drawed
soldiers--at least, he knows that many such was found in the fireplace,
all on horseback. In the course of the morning Master Harry rang the
bell--it was surprising how that there boy did carry on--and said in a
sprightly way, 'Cobbs, is there any good walks in this neighborhood?'

"'Yes, sir,' says Cobbs. 'There's Love Lane.'

"'Get out with you, Cobbs!'--that was that there boy's
expression--'you're joking.'

"'Begging your pardon, sir,' says Cobbs, 'there really is Love Lane. And
a pleasant walk it is, and proud I shall be to show it to yourself and
Mrs. Harry Walmers, Jr.'

"'Norah, dear,' said Master Harry, 'this is curious. We really ought to
see Love Lane. Put on your bonnet, my sweetest darling, and we will go
there with Cobbs.'

"Boots leaves me to judge what a beast he felt himself to be, when that
young pair told him, as they all three jogged along together, that they
had made up their minds to give him two thousand guineas a year as
head-gardener, on account of his being so true a friend to 'em. Boots
could have wished at the moment that the earth would have opened and
swallowed him up; he felt so mean with their beaming eyes a-looking at
him, and believing him. Well, sir, he turned the conversation as well as
he could, and he took 'em down Love Lane to the water-meadows, and there
Master Harry would have drowned himself in half a moment more, a-getting
out a water-lily for her--but nothing frightened that boy. Well, sir,
they was tired out. All being so new and strange to 'em, they was tired
as tired could be. And they laid down on a bank of daisies, like the
children in the wood, leastways meadows, and fell asleep.

"Well, sir, they woke up at last, and then one thing was getting pretty
clear to Boots, namely, that Mrs. Harry Walmers', Jr., temper was on the
move. When Master Harry took her round the waist she said he 'teased her
so,' and when he says, 'Norah, my young May Moon, your Harry tease you?'
she tells him, 'Yes; and I want to go home!'

"However, Master Harry he kept up, and his noble heart was as fond as
ever. Mrs. Walmers turned very sleepy about dusk and began to cry.
Therefore, Mrs. Walmers went off to bed as per yesterday; and Master
Harry ditto repeated.

"About eleven or twelve at night comes back the inn-keeper in a chaise,
along with Mr. Walmers and an elderly lady. Mr. Walmers looks amused and
very serious, both at once, and says to our missis, 'We are very much
indebted to you, ma'am, for your kind care of our little children, which
we can never sufficiently acknowledge. Pray, ma'am where is my boy?' Our
missis says, 'Cobbs has the dear children in charge, sir. Cobbs, show
forty!' Then he says to Cobbs, 'Ah, Cobbs! I am glad to see _you_. I
understand you was here!' And Cobbs says, 'Yes, sir. Your most obedient,
sir.'

"I may be surprised to hear Boots say it, perhaps, but Boots assures me
that his heart beat like a hammer, going up-stairs. 'I beg your pardon,
sir,' says he, while unlocking the door; 'I hope you are not angry with
Master Harry. For Master Harry is a fine boy, sir, and will do you
credit and honor.' And Boots signifies to me that if the fine boy's
father had contradicted him in the daring state of mind in which he then
was, he thinks he should have 'fetched him a crack,' and taken the
consequences.

"But Mr. Walmers only says, 'No, Cobbs. No, my good fellow. Thank you!'
And the door being open, goes in.

"Boots goes in too, holding the light, and he sees Mr. Walmers go up to
the bedside, bend gently down, and kiss the little sleeping face. Then
he stands looking at it for a minute, looking wonderfully like it; and
then he gently shakes the little shoulder.

"'Harry, my dear boy! Harry!'

"Master Harry starts up and looks at him. Looks at Cobbs, too. Such is
the honor of that mite that he looks at Cobbs to see whether he has
brought him into trouble.

"'I am not angry, my child. I only want you to dress yourself and come
home.'

"'Yes, pa.'

"Master Harry dresses himself quickly. His breast begins to swell when
he has nearly finished, and it swells more and more as he stands
a-looking at his father; his father standing a-looking at him, the quiet
image of him.

"'Please may I'--the spirit of that little creatur', and the way he kept
his rising tears down!--'Please, dear pa--may I--kiss Norah before I
go?'

"'You may, my child.'

"So he takes Master Harry in his hand, and Boots leads the way with the
candle, and they come to that other bedroom; where the elderly lady is
seated by the bed, and poor little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Jr., is fast
asleep. There the father lifts the child up to the pillow, and he lays
his little face down for an instant by the little warm face of poor
unconscious little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Jr., and gently draws it to
him--a sight so touching to the chambermaids who are peeping through the
door that one of them calls out, 'It's a shame to part 'em!' But this
chambermaid was always, as Boots informs me, a soft-hearted one. Not
that there was any harm in that girl. Far from it."

FOOTNOTES:

[A] For the benefit of some of our young readers, it may be well to
explain that this is about the same as a bill of twenty-five dollars
would be in America.

[B] A biffin is a red apple, growing near Norfolk, and generally eaten
after having been baked.




IV.

LITTLE DORRIT.


MANY years ago, when people could be put in prison for debt, a poor
gentleman, who was unfortunate enough to lose all his money, was brought
to the Marshalsea prison, which was the prison where debtors were kept.
As there seemed no prospect of being able to pay his debts, his wife and
their two little children came to live there with him. The elder child
was a boy of three; the younger a little girl of two years old, and not
long afterwards another little girl was born. The three children played
in the courtyard, and on the whole were happy, for they were too young
to remember a happier state of things.

But the youngest child, who had never been outside the prison walls, was
a thoughtful little creature, and wondered what the outside world could
be like. Her great friend, the turnkey, who was also her godfather,
became very fond of her, and as soon as she could walk and talk he
brought a little arm-chair and stood it by his fire at the lodge, and
coaxed her with cheap toys to come and sit with him. In return the child
loved him dearly, and would often bring her doll to dress and undress
as she sat in the little arm-chair. She was still a very tiny creature
when she began to understand that everyone did not live locked up inside
high walls with spikes at the top, and though she and the rest of the
family might pass through the door that the great key opened, her father
could not; and she would look at him with a wondering pity in her tender
little heart.

One day, she was sitting in the lodge gazing wistfully up at the sky
through the barred window. The turnkey, after watching her some time,
said:

"Thinking of the fields, ain't you?"

"Where are they?" she asked.

"Why, they're--over there, my dear," said the turnkey, waving his key
vaguely, "just about there."

"Does anybody open them and shut them? Are they locked?"

"Well," said the turnkey, not knowing what to say, "not in general."

"Are they pretty, Bob?" She called him Bob, because he wished it.

"Lovely. Full of flowers. There's buttercups, and there's daisies, and
there's--" here he hesitated not knowing the names of many
flowers--"there's dandelions, and all manner of games."

"Is it very pleasant to be there, Bob?"

"Prime," said the turnkey.

"Was father ever there?"

"Hem!" coughed the turnkey. "O yes, he was there, sometimes."

"Is he sorry not to be there now?"

"N--not particular," said the turnkey.

"Nor any of the people?" she asked, glancing at the listless crowd
within. "O are you quite sure and certain, Bob?"

At this point, Bob gave in and changed the subject to candy. But after
this chat, the turnkey and little Amy would go out on his free Sunday
afternoons to some meadows or green lanes, and she would pick grass and
flowers to bring home, while he smoked his pipe; and then they would go
to some tea-gardens for shrimps and tea and other delicacies, and would
come back hand in hand, unless she was very tired and had fallen asleep
on his shoulder.

When Amy was only eight years old, her mother died; and the poor father
was more helpless and broken-down than ever, and as Fanny was a careless
child and Edward idle, the little one, who had the bravest and truest
heart, was led by her love and unselfishness to be the little mother of
the forlorn family, and struggled to get some little education for
herself and her brother and sister.

At first, such a baby could do little more than sit with her father,
deserting her livelier place by the high fender, and quietly watching
him. But this made her so far necessary to him that he became accustomed
to her, and began to be sensible of missing her when she was not there.
Through this little gate, she passed out of her childhood into the
care-laden world.

What her pitiful look saw, at that early time, in her father, in her
sister, in her brother, in the jail; how much or how little of the
wretched truth it pleased God to make plain to her, lies hidden with
many mysteries. It is enough that she was inspired to be something which
was not what the rest were, and to be that something, different and
laborious, for the sake of the rest. Inspired? Yes. Shall we speak of a
poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by love and
self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life?

The family stayed so long in the prison that the old man came to be
known as "The Father of the Marshalsea;" and little Amy, who had never
known any other home, as "The Child of the Marshalsea."

At thirteen she could read and keep accounts--that is, could put down in
words and figures how much the bare necessaries that they wanted would
cost, and how much less they had to buy them with. She had been, by
snatches of a few weeks at a time, to an evening school outside, and got
her sister and brother sent to day-schools from time to time during
three or four years. There was no teaching for any of them at home; but
she knew well--no one better--that a man so broken as to be the Father
of the Marshalsea, could be no father to his own children.

To these scanty means of improvement, she added another of her own
contriving. Once among the crowd of prisoners there appeared a
dancing-master. Her sister had a great desire to learn the
dancing-master's art, and seemed to have a taste that way. At thirteen
years old, the Child of the Marshalsea presented herself to the
dancing-master, with a little bag in her hand, and offered her humble
petition.

"If you please, I was born here, sir."

"Oh! you are the young lady, are you?" said the dancing-master,
surveying the small figure and uplifted face.

"Yes, sir."

"And what can I do for you?" said the dancing-master.

"Nothing for me, sir, thank you," anxiously undrawing the strings of the
little bag; "but if, while you stay here, you could be so kind as to
teach my sister cheap--"

"My child, I'll teach her for nothing," said the dancing-master,
shutting up the bag. He was as good-natured a dancing-master as ever
danced to the Insolvent Court, and he kept his word. The sister was so
apt a pupil, and the dancing-master had such abundant time to give her,
that wonderful progress was made. Indeed, the dancing-master was so
proud of it, and so wishful to show it before he left, to a few select
friends among the collegians (the debtors in the prison were called
"collegians"), that at six o'clock on a certain fine morning, an
exhibition was held in the yard--the college-rooms being of too small
size for the purpose--in which so much ground was covered, and the steps
were so well executed, that the dancing-master, having to play his
fiddle besides, was thoroughly tired out.

The success of this beginning, which led to the dancing-master's
continuing his teaching after his release, led the poor child to try
again. She watched and waited months for a seamstress. In the fullness
of time a milliner came in, sent there like all the rest for a debt
which she could not pay; and to her she went to ask a favor for
herself.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am," she said, looking timidly round the door of
the milliner, whom she found in tears and in bed: "but I was born here."

Everybody seemed to hear of her as soon as they arrived; for the
milliner sat up in bed, drying her eyes, and said, just as the
dancing-master had said:

"Oh! _you_ are the child, are you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I am sorry I haven't got anything for you," said the milliner, shaking
her head.

"It's not that, ma'am. If you please, I want to learn needlework."

"Why should you do that," returned the milliner, "with me before you? It
has not done me much good."

"Nothing--whatever it is--seems to have done anybody much good who comes
here," she returned in her simple way; "but I want to learn, just the
same."

"I am afraid you are so weak, you see," the milliner objected.

"I don't think I am weak, ma'am."

"And you are so very, very little, you see," the milliner objected.

"Yes, I am afraid I am very little indeed," returned the Child of the
Marshalsea; and so began to sob over that unfortunate smallness of
hers, which came so often in her way. The milliner--who was not unkind
or hardhearted, only badly in debt--was touched, took her in hand with
good-will, found her the most patient and earnest of pupils, and made
her a good workwoman.

In course of time, the Father of the Marshalsea gradually developed a
new trait of character. He was very greatly ashamed of having his two
daughters work for their living; and tried to make it appear that they
were only doing work for pleasure, not for pay. But at the same time he
would take money from any one who would give it to him, without any
sense of shame. With the same hand that had pocketed a fellow-prisoner's
half-crown half an hour ago, he would wipe away the tears that streamed
over his cheeks if anything was spoken of his daughters' earning their
bread. So, over and above her other daily cares, the Child of the
Marshalsea had always upon her the care of keeping up the make-believe
that they were all idle beggars together.

The sister became a dancer. There was a ruined uncle in the family
group--ruined by his brother, the Father of the Marshalsea, and knowing
no more how, than his ruiner did, but taking the fact as something that
could not be helped. Naturally a retired and simple man, he had shown no
particular sense of being ruined, at the time when that calamity fell
upon him, further than he left off washing himself when the shock was
announced, and never took to washing his face and hands any more. He had
been a rather poor musician in his better days; and when he fell with
his brother, supported himself in a poor way by playing a clarionet as
dirty as himself in a small theatre band. It was the theatre in which
his niece became a dancer; he had been a fixture there a long time when
she took her poor station in it; and he accepted the task of serving as
her guardian, just as he would have accepted an illness, a legacy, a
feast, starvation--anything but soap.

To enable this girl to earn her few weekly shillings, it was necessary
for the Child of the Marshalsea to go through a careful form with her
father.

"Fanny is not going to live with us, just now, father. She will be here
a good deal in the day, but she is going to live outside with uncle."

"You surprise me. Why?"

"I think uncle wants a companion, father. He should be attended to and
looked after."

"A companion? He passes much of his time here. And you attend and look
after him, Amy, a great deal more than ever your sister will. You all go
out so much; you all go out so much."

This was to keep up the form and pretense of his having no idea that Amy
herself went out by the day to work.

"But we are always very glad to come home father; now, are we not? And
as to Fanny, perhaps besides keeping uncle company and taking care of
him, it may be as well for her not quite to live here always. She was
not born here as I was you know, father."

"Well, Amy, well. I don't quite follow you, but it's natural I suppose
that Fanny should prefer to be outside, and even that you often should,
too. So, you and Fanny and your uncle, my dear, shall have your own way.
Good, good. I'll not meddle; don't mind me."

To get her brother out of the prison; out of the low work of running
errands for the prisoners outside, and out of the bad company into which
he had fallen, was her hardest task. At eighteen years of age her
brother Edward would have dragged on from hand to mouth, from hour to
hour, from penny to penny, until eighty. Nobody got into the prison from
whom he gained anything useful or good, and she could find no patron
for him but her old friend and godfather, the turnkey.

"Dear Bob," said she, "what is to become of poor Tip?" His name was
Edward, and Ted had been changed into Tip, within the walls.

The turnkey had strong opinions of his own as to what would become of
poor Tip, and had even gone so far with the view of preventing their
fulfilment, as to talk to Tip in urging him to run away and serve his
country as a soldier. But Tip had thanked him, and said he didn't seem
to care for his country.

"Well, my dear," said the turnkey, "something ought to be done with him.
Suppose I try and get him into the law?"

"That would be so good of you, Bob!"

The turnkey now began to speak to the lawyers as they passed in and out
of the prison. He spoke so perseveringly that a stool and twelve
shillings a week were at last found for Tip in the office of a lawyer at
Clifford's Inn, in the Palace Court.

Tip idled in Clifford's Inn for six months, and at the end of that term
sauntered back one evening with his hands in his pockets, and remarked
to his sister that he was not going back again.

"Not going back again?" said the poor little anxious Child of the
Marshalsea, always calculating and planning for Tip, in the front rank
of her charges.

"I am so tired of it," said Tip, "that I have cut it."

Tip tired of everything. With intervals of Marshalsea lounging, and
errand-running, his small second mother, aided by her trusty friend, got
him into a warehouse, into a market garden, into the hop trade, into the
law again, into an auctioneer's, into a brewery, into a stockbroker's,
into the law again, into a coach office, into a wagon office, into the
law again, into a general dealer's, into a distillery, into the law
again, into a wool house, into a dry goods house, into the fish-market,
into the foreign fruit trade, and into the docks. But whatever Tip went
into he came out of tired, announcing that he had cut it. Wherever he
went, this useless Tip appeared to take the prison walls with him, and
to set them up in such trade or calling; and to prowl about within their
narrow limits in the old slipshod, purposeless, down-at-heel way; until
the real immovable Marshalsea walls asserted their power over him and
brought him back.

Nevertheless, the brave little creature did so fix her heart on her
brother's rescue that, while he was ringing out these doleful changes,
she pinched and scraped enough together to ship him for Canada. When he
was tired of nothing to do, and disposed in its turn to cut even that,
he graciously consented to go to Canada. And there was grief in her
bosom over parting with him, and joy in the hope of his being put in a
straight course at last.

"God bless you, dear Tip. Don't be too proud to come and see us, when
you have made your fortune."

"All right!" said Tip, and went.

But not all the way to Canada; in fact, not further than Liverpool.
After making the voyage to that port from London, he found himself so
strongly impelled to cut the vessel, that he resolved to walk back
again. Carrying out which intention, he presented himself before her at
the expiration of a month, in rags, without shoes, and much more tired
than ever.

At length, after another period of running errands, he found a pursuit
for himself, and announced it.

"Amy, I have got a situation."

"Have you really and truly, Tip?"

"All right. I shall do now. You needn't look anxious about me any more,
old girl."

"What is it, Tip?"

"Why, you know Slingo by sight?"

"Not the man they call the dealer?"

"That's the chap. He'll be out on Monday, and he's going to give me a
berth."

"What is he a dealer in, Tip?"

"Horses. All right! I shall do now, Amy."

She lost sight of him for months afterwards, and only heard from him
once. A whisper passed among the elder prisoners that he had been seen
at a mock auction in Moorfields, pretending to buy plated articles for
real silver, and paying for them with the greatest liberality in
bank-notes; but it never reached her ears. One evening she was alone at
work--standing up at the window, to save the twilight lingering above
the wall--when he opened the door and walked in.

She kissed and welcomed him; but was afraid to ask him any question. He
saw how anxious and timid she was, and appeared sorry.

"I am afraid, Amy, you'll be vexed this time. Upon my life I am!"

"I am very sorry to hear you say so, Tip. Have you come back?"

"Why--yes."

"Not expecting this time that what you had found would answer very well,
I am less surprised and sorry than I might have been, Tip."

"Ah! But that's not the worst of it."

"Not the worst of it?"

"Don't look so startled. No, Amy, not the worst of it. I have come back,
you see; but--_don't_ look so startled--I have come back in what I may
call a new way. I am off the volunteer list altogether. I am in now, as
one of the regulars. I'm here in prison for debt, like everybody else."

"Oh! Don't say that you are a prisoner, Tip! Don't, don't!"

"Well, I don't want to say it," he returned in unwilling tone; "but if
you can't understand me without my saying it, what am I to do? I am in
for forty pound odd."

For the first time in all those years, she sunk under her cares. She
cried, with her clasped hands lifted above her head, that it would kill
their father if he ever knew it; and fell down at Tip's worthless feet.

It was easier for Tip to bring her to her senses than for her to bring
_him_ to understand that the Father of the Marshalsea would be beside
himself if he knew the truth. Tip thought that there was nothing strange
in being there a prisoner, but he agreed that his father should not be
told about it. There were plenty of reasons that could be given for his
return; it was accounted for to the father in the usual way; and the
collegians, with a better understanding of the kind fraud than Tip,
stood by it faithfully.

This was the life, and this the history, of the Child of the Marshalsea,
at twenty-two. With a still abiding interest in the one miserable yard
and block of houses as her birthplace and home, she passed to and fro in
it shrinking now, with a womanly consciousness that she was pointed out
to everyone. Since she had begun to work beyond the walls, she had found
it necessary to hide where she lived, and to come and go secretly as she
could, between the free city and the iron gates, outside of which she
had never slept in her life. Her original timidity had grown with this
concealment, and her light step and her little figure shunned the
thronged streets while they passed along them.

Worldly wise in hard and poor necessities, she was innocent in all
things else. Innocent, in the mist through which she saw her father, and
the prison, and the dark living river that flowed through it and flowed
on.

[Illustration: "Mr. Clennam Followed Her Home."

                                       Page 65]

This was the life, and this the history, of Little Dorrit, until the son
of a lady, Mrs. Clennam, to whose house Amy went to do needlework,
became interested in the pale, patient little creature. He followed
her to her home one day and when he found that it was the debtor's
prison, he walked in. Learning her sad history from her father, Arthur
Clennam resolved to do his best to try to get him released and to help
them all.

One day when he was walking home with Amy to try to find out the names
of some of the people her father owed money to, a voice was heard
calling, "Little mother, little mother," and a strange figure came
bouncing up to them and fell down, scattering her basketful of potatoes
on the ground. "Oh Maggie," said Amy, "what a clumsy child you are!"

She was about eight and twenty, with large bones, large features, large
hands and feet, large eyes, and no hair. Amy told Mr. Clennam that
Maggie was the granddaughter of her old nurse, who had been dead a long
time, and that her grandmother had been very unkind to her and beat her.

"When Maggie was ten years old she had a fever, and she has never grown
older since."

"Ten years old," said Maggie. "But what a nice hospital! So comfortable,
wasn't it? Such a 'e'v'nly place! Such beds there is there! Such
lemonades! Such oranges! Such delicious broth and wine! Such chicking!
Oh, AIN'T it a delightful place to stop at!"

"Poor Maggie thought that a hospital was the nicest place in all the
world, because she had never seen another home as good. For years and
years she looked back to the hospital as a sort of heaven on earth."

"Then when she came out, her grandmother did not know what to do with
her, and was very unkind. But after some time Maggie tried to improve,
and was very attentive and industrious and now she can earn her own
living entirely, sir!"

Amy did not say who had taken pains to teach and encourage the poor
half-witted creature, but Mr. Clennam guessed from the name "little
mother" and the fondness of the poor creature for Amy.

One cold, wet evening, Amy and Maggie went to Mr. Clennam's house to
thank him for having freed Edward from the prison, and on coming out
found it was too late to get home, as the gate was locked. They tried to
get in at Maggie's lodgings, but, though they knocked twice, the people
were asleep. As Amy did not wish to disturb them, they wandered about
all night, sometimes sitting at the gate of the prison, Maggie shivering
and whimpering.

"It will soon be over, dear," said patient Amy.

"Oh, it's all very well for you, mother," said Maggie, "but I'm a poor
thing, only ten years old."

Thanks to Mr. Clennam, a great change took place in the fortunes of the
family, and not long after this wretched night it was discovered that
Mr. Dorrit was owner of a large property, and they became very rich.

But Little Dorrit never forgot, as, sad to say, the rest of the family
did, the friends who had been kind to them in their poverty; and when,
in his turn, Mr. Clennam became a prisoner in the Marshalsea, Little
Dorrit came to comfort and console him, and after many changes of
fortune she became his wife, and they lived happy ever after.




V.

THE TOY-MAKER AND HIS BLIND DAUGHTER.


CALEB PLUMMER and his blind daughter lived alone in a little cracked
nutshell of a house. They were toy-makers, and their house, which was so
small that it might have been knocked to pieces with a hammer, and
carried away in a cart, was stuck like a toadstool on to the premises of
Messrs. Gruff & Tackleton, the toy merchants for whom they worked--the
latter of whom was himself both Gruff and Tackleton in one.

I am saying that Caleb and his blind daughter lived here. I should say
Caleb did, while his daughter lived in an enchanted palace, which her
father's love had created for her. She did not know that the ceilings
were cracked, the plaster tumbling down, and the woodwork rotten; that
everything was old and ugly and poverty-stricken about her, and that her
father was a gray-haired, stooping old man, and the master for whom they
worked a hard and brutal taskmaster; oh, dear no, she fancied a pretty,
cosy, compact little home full of tokens of a kind master's care, a
smart, brisk, gallant-looking father, and a handsome and noble-looking
toy merchant who was an angel of goodness.

This was all Caleb's doing. When his blind daughter was a baby he had
determined, in his great love and pity for her, that her loss of sight
should be turned into a blessing, and her life as happy as he could make
it. And she was happy; everything about her she saw with her father's
eyes, in the rainbow-colored light with which it was his care and
pleasure to invest it.

Caleb and his daughter were at work together in their usual
working-room, which served them for their ordinary living-room as well;
and a strange place it was. There were houses in it, finished and
unfinished, for dolls of all stations in life. Tenement houses for dolls
of moderate means; kitchens and single apartments for dolls of the lower
classes; capital town residences for dolls of high estate. Some of these
establishments were already furnished with a view to the needs of dolls
of little money; others could be fitted on the most expensive scale, at
a moment's notice, from whole shelves of chairs and tables, sofas,
bedsteads, and upholstery. The nobility and gentry and public in
general, for whose use these doll-houses were planned, lay, here and
there, in baskets, staring straight up at the ceiling; but in showing
their degrees in society, and keeping them in their own stations (which
is found to be exceedingly difficult in real life), the makers of these
dolls had far improved on nature, for they, not resting on such marks as
satin, cotton-print, and bits of rag, had made differences which allowed
of no mistake. Thus, the doll-lady of high rank had wax limbs of perfect
shape; but only she and those of her grade; the next grade in the social
scale being made of leather; and the next coarse linen stuff. As to the
common-people, they had just so many matches out of tinder-boxes for
their arms and legs, and there they were--established in their place at
once, beyond the possibility of getting out of it.

There were various other samples of his handicraft besides dolls in
Caleb Plummer's room. There were Noah's Arks, in which the birds and
beasts were an uncommonly tight fit, I assure you; though they could be
crammed in, anyhow, at the roof, and rattled and shaken into the
smallest compass. Most of these Noah's Arks had knockers on the doors;
perhaps not exactly suitable to an Ark as suggestive of morning callers
and a postman, yet a pleasant finish to the outside of the building.
There were scores of melancholy little carts, which, when the wheels
went round, performed most doleful music. Many small fiddles, drums, and
other instruments of torture; no end of cannon, shields, swords, spears,
and guns. There were little tumblers in red breeches, incessantly
swarming up high obstacles of red-tape, and coming down, head first,
upon the other side; and there were innumerable old gentlemen of
respectable, even venerable, appearance, flying like crazy people over
pegs, inserted, for the purpose, in their own street-doors. There were
beasts of all sorts, horses, in particular, of every breed, from the
spotted barrel on four pegs, with a small tippet for a mane, to the fine
rocking horse on his highest mettle.

"You were out in the rain last night in your beautiful new overcoat,"
said Bertha.

"Yes, in my beautiful new overcoat," answered Caleb, glancing to where a
roughly-made garment of sackcloth was hung up to dry.

"How glad I am you bought it, father."

"And of such a tailor! quite a fashionable tailor; a bright blue cloth,
with bright buttons; it's a deal too good a coat for me."

"Too good!" cried the blind girl, stopping to laugh and clap her
hands--"as if anything was too good for my handsome father, with his
smiling face, and black hair, and his straight figure, as if _any_ thing
could be too good for my handsome father!"

"I'm half ashamed to wear it, though," said Caleb, watching the effect
of what he said upon her brightening face; "upon my word. When I hear
the boys and people say behind me: 'Halloa! Here's a swell!' I don't
know which way to look. And when the beggar wouldn't go away last night;
and, when I said I was a very common man, said 'No, your honor! Bless
your honor, don't say that!' I was quite ashamed. I really felt as if I
hadn't a right to wear it."

Happy blind girl! How merry she was in her joy!

"I see you, father," she said, clasping her hands, "as plainly as if I
had the eyes I never want when you are with me. A blue coat!"----

"Bright blue," said Caleb.

"Yes, yes! Bright blue!" exclaimed the girl, turning up her radiant
face; "the color I can just remember in the blessed sky! You told me it
was blue before! A bright blue coat----"

"Made loose to the figure," suggested Caleb.

"Yes! loose to the figure!" cried the blind girl, laughing heartily;
"and in it you, dear father, with your merry eye, your smiling face,
your free step, and your dark hair; looking so young and handsome!"

"Halloa! Halloa!" said Caleb. "I shall be vain presently."

"I think you are already," cried the blind girl, pointing at him, in her
glee. "I know you, father! Ha, ha, ha! I've found you out, you see!"

How different the picture in her mind from Caleb, as he sat observing
her! She had spoken of his free step. She was right in that. For years
and years he never once had crossed that threshold at his own slow pace,
but with a footfall made ready for her ear, and never had he, when his
heart was heaviest, forgotten the light tread that was to render hers so
cheerful and courageous.

"There we are," said Caleb, falling back a pace or two to form the
better judgment of his work; "as near the real thing as sixpen'orth of
halfpence is to sixpence. What a pity that the whole front of the house
opens at once! If there was only a staircase in it now, and regular
doors to the rooms to go in at! but that's the worst of my calling. I'm
always fooling myself, and cheating myself."

"You are speaking quite softly. You are not tired, father?"

"Tired," echoed Caleb, with a great burst in his manner, "what should
tire me, Bertha? _I_ was never tired. What does it mean?"

To give the greater force to his words, he stopped himself in an
imitation of two small stretching and yawning figures on the
mantel-shelf, who were shown as in one eternal state of weariness from
the waist upwards; and hummed a bit of a song. It was a drinking song,
something about a sparkling bowl; and he sang it with an air of a
devil-may-care voice, that made his face a thousand times more meager
and more thoughtful than ever.

"What! you're singing, are you?" said Tackleton, the toy-seller for whom
he worked, putting his head in at the door. "Go it! _I_ can't sing."

Nobody would have thought that Tackleton _could_ sing. He hadn't what is
generally termed a singing face, by any means.

"I can't afford to sing," said Tackleton. "I'm glad you can. I hope you
can afford to work, too. Hardly time for both, I should think?"

"If you could only see him, Bertha, how he's winking at me!" whispered
Caleb. "Such a man to joke! you'd think, if you didn't know him, he was
in earnest, wouldn't you, now?"

The blind girl smiled and nodded.

"I am thanking you for the little tree, the beautiful little tree,"
replied Bertha, bringing forward a tiny rose-tree in blossom, which, by
an innocent story, Caleb had made her believe was her master's gift,
though he himself had gone without a meal or two to buy it.

"The bird that can sing and won't sing must be made to sing, they say,"
grumbled Tackleton. "What about the owl that can't sing, and oughtn't to
sing, and will sing; is there anything that he should be made to do?"

"The extent to which he's winking at this moment!" whispered Caleb to
his daughter. "Oh, my gracious!"

"Always merry and light-hearted with us!" cried the smiling Bertha.

"Oh! you're there, are you?" answered Tackleton. "Poor idiot!"

He really did believe she was an idiot; and he founded the belief, I
can't say whether consciously or not, upon her being fond of him.

"Well! and being there--how are you?" said Tackleton, in his cross way.

"Oh! well; quite well. And as happy as even you can wish me to be. As
happy as you would make the whole world, if you could!"

"Poor idiot!" muttered Tackleton. "No gleam of reason! Not a gleam!"

The blind girl took his hand and kissed it; held it for a moment in her
own two hands; and laid her cheek against it tenderly, before releasing
it. There was such unspeakable affection and such fervent gratitude in
the act, that Tackleton himself was moved to say, in a milder growl than
usual:

"What's the matter now?"

"Bertha!" said Tackleton, assuming, for once, a little cordiality. "Come
here."

"Oh! I can come straight to you. You needn't guide me," she rejoined.

"Shall I tell you a secret, Bertha?"

"If you will!" she answered, eagerly.

How bright the darkened face! How adorned with light the listening head!

"This is the day on which little what's-her-name, the spoilt child,
Peerybingle's wife, pays her regular visit to you--makes her ridiculous
picnic here; ain't it?" said Tackleton, with a strong expression of
distaste for the whole concern.

"Yes," replied Bertha. "This is the day."

"I thought so!" said Tackleton. "I should like to join the party."

"Do you hear that, father!" cried the blind girl in delight.

"Yes, yes, I hear it," murmured Caleb, with the fixed look of a
sleep-walker "but I do not believe it. It's one of my lies, I've no
doubt."

"You see I--I want to bring the Peerybingles a little more into company
with May Fielding," said Tackleton. "I am going to be married to May."

"Married!" cried the blind girl, starting from him.

"She's such a confounded idiot," muttered Tackleton, "that I was afraid
she'd never understand me. Yes, Bertha! Married! Church, parson, clerk,
glass-coach, bells, breakfast, bride-cake, favors, marrow-bones,
cleavers, and all the rest of the tomfoolery. A wedding, you know; a
wedding. Don't you know what a wedding is?"

"I know," replied the blind girl, in a gentle tone. "I understand!"

"Do you?" muttered Tackleton. "It's more than I expected. Well, on that
account I want you to join the party, and to bring May and her mother.
I'll send a little something or other, before the afternoon. A cold leg
of mutton, or some comfortable trifle of that sort. You'll expect me?"

"Yes," she answered.

She had drooped her head, and turned away; and so stood, with her hands
crossed, musing.

"I don't think you will," muttered Tackleton, looking at her; "for you
seem to have forgotten all about it already. Caleb!"

"I may venture to say, I'm here, I suppose," thought Caleb. "Sir!"

"Take care she don't forget what I've been saying to her."

"_She_ never forgets," returned Caleb. "It's one of the few things she
ain't clever in."

"Every man thinks his own geese swans," observed the toy merchant, with
a shrug. "Poor devil!"

Having delivered himself of which remark with infinite contempt, old
Gruff & Tackleton withdrew.

Bertha remained where he had left her, lost in meditation. The gaiety
had vanished from her downcast face, and it was very sad. Three or four
times she shook her head, as if bewailing some remembrance or some loss;
but her sorrowful reflections found no vent in words.

"Father, I am lonely in the dark. I want my eyes; my patient, willing
eyes."

"Here they are," said Caleb. "Always ready. They are more yours than
mine, Bertha, any hour in the four-and-twenty. What shall your eyes do
for you, dear?"

"Look round the room, father."

"All right," said Caleb. "No sooner said than done, Bertha."

"Tell me about it."

"It's much the same as usual," said Caleb. "Homely, but very snug. The
gay colors on the walls; the bright flowers on the plates and dishes;
the shining wood, where there are beams or panels; the general
cheerfulness and neatness of the building, make it very pretty."

Cheerful and neat it was, wherever Bertha's hands could busy themselves.
But nowhere else were cheerfulness and neatness possible, in the crazy
shed which Caleb's fancy so transformed.

"You have your working dress on, and are not so gay as when you wear the
handsome coat?" said Bertha, touching him.

"Not quite so gay," answered Caleb. "Pretty brisk though."

"Father," said the blind girl, drawing close to his side and stealing
one arm round his neck, "tell me something about May. She is very fair."

"She is, indeed," said Caleb. And she was indeed. It was quite a rare
thing to Caleb not to have to draw on his invention.

"Her hair is dark," said Bertha, pensively, "darker than mine. Her voice
is sweet and musical I know. I have often loved to hear it. Her shape--"

"There's not a doll's in all the room to equal it," said Caleb. "And her
eyes--"

He stopped; for Bertha had drawn closer round his neck; and, from the
arm that clung about him, came a warning pressure which he understood
too well.

He coughed a moment, hammered for a moment, and then fell back upon the
song about the sparkling bowl; the song which helped him through all
such difficulties.

"Our friend, father; the one who has helped us so many times, Mr.
Tackleton. I am never tired you know, of hearing about him. Now was I,
ever?" she said, hastily.

"Of course not," answered Caleb. "And with reason."

"Ah! with how much reason?" cried the blind girl, with such fervency
that Caleb, though his motives were pure, could not endure to meet her
face, but dropped his eyes, as if she could have read in them his
innocent deceit.

"Then tell me again about him, dear father," said Bertha. "Many times
again! His face is good, kind, and tender. Honest and true, I am sure it
is. The manly heart that tries to cloak all favors with a show of
roughness and unwillingness beats in its every look and glance."

"And makes it noble," added Caleb in his quiet desperation.

"And makes it noble!" cried the blind girl. "He is older than May,
father?"

"Ye-es," said Caleb, reluctantly. "He's a little older than May, but
that don't signify."

"Bertha," said Caleb softly, "what has happened? How changed you are, my
darling, in a few hours--since this morning. _You_ silent and dull all
day! What is it? Tell me!"

"Oh father, father!" cried the blind girl, bursting into tears. "Oh, my
hard, hard fate!"

Caleb drew his hand across his eyes before he answered her.

"But think how cheerful and how happy you have been, Bertha! How good,
and how much loved, by many people."

"That strikes me to the heart, dear father! Always so mindful of me!
Always so kind to me!"

Caleb was very much perplexed to understand her.

"To be--to be blind, Bertha, my poor dear," he faltered, "is a great
affliction; but----"

"I have never felt it!" cried the blind girl. "I have never felt it in
its fullness. Never! I have sometimes wished that I could see you, or
could see him; only once, dear father; only for one little minute. But,
father! Oh, my good, gentle father, bear with me, if I am wicked!" said
the blind girl. "This is not the sorrow that so weighs me down!"

"Bertha, my dear!" said Caleb, "I have something on my mind I want to
tell you, while we are alone. Hear me kindly! I have a confession to
make to you, my darling."

"A confession, father?"

"I have wandered from the truth and lost myself, my child," said Caleb,
with a pitiable look on his bewildered face. "I have wandered from the
truth, intending to be kind to you; and have been cruel."

She turned her wonder-stricken face towards him, and repeated, "Cruel!
He cruel to me!" cried Bertha, with a smile of incredulity.

"Not meaning it, my child," said Caleb. "But I have been; though I never
suspected it till yesterday. My dear blind daughter, hear me and forgive
me! The world you live in, heart of mine, doesn't exist as I have
represented it. The eyes you have trusted in have been false to you."

She turned her wonder-stricken face towards him still.

"Your road in life was rough, my poor one," said Caleb, "and I meant to
smooth it for you. I have altered objects, invented many things that
never have been, to make you happier. I have had concealments from you,
put deceptions on you, God forgive me! and surrounded you with fancies."

"But living people are not fancies?" she said hurriedly, and turning
very pale, and still retiring from him. "You can't change them."

"I have done so, Bertha," pleaded Caleb. "There is one person that you
know, my Dove--"

"Oh, father! why do you say I know?" she answered in a tone of keen
reproach. "What and whom do I know! I, who have no leader! I, so
miserably blind!"

In the anguish of her heart she stretched out her hands, as if she were
groping her way; then spread them, in a manner most forlorn and sad,
upon her face.

"The marriage that takes place to-day," said Caleb, "is with a stern,
sordid, grinding man. A hard master to you and me, my dear, for many
years. Ugly in his looks and in his nature. Cold and callous always.
Unlike what I have painted him to you in everything, my child. In
everything."

"Oh, why," cried the blind girl, tortured, as it seemed, almost beyond
endurance, "why did you ever do this? Why did you ever fill my heart so
full, and then come in, like death, and tear away the objects of my
love? Oh, heaven, how blind I am! How helpless and alone!"

Her afflicted father hung his head, and offered no reply but in his
grief.

"Tell me what my home is. What it truly is."

"It is a poor place, Bertha; very poor and bare indeed. The house will
scarcely keep out wind and rain another winter. It is as roughly
shielded from the weather, Bertha, as your poor father in his sackcloth
coat."

"Those presents that I took such care of, that came almost at my wish,
and were so dearly welcome to me," she said, trembling; "where did they
come from?"

Caleb did not answer. She knew already, and was silent.

"I see, I understand," said Bertha, "and now I am looking at you, at my
kind, loving compassionate father, tell me what is he like?"

"An old man, my child; thin, bent, gray-haired, worn-out with hard work
and sorrow; a weak, foolish, deceitful old man."

The blind girl threw herself on her knees before him, and took his gray
head in her arms. "It is my sight, it is my sight restored," she cried.
"I have been blind, but now I see; I have never till now truly seen my
father. Does he think that there is a gay, handsome father in this earth
that I could love so dearly, cherish so devotedly, as this worn and
gray-headed old man? Father there is not a gray hair on your head that
shall be forgotten in my prayers and thanks to heaven."

"My Bertha!" sobbed Caleb, "and the brisk smart father in the blue
coat--he's gone, my child."

"Dearest father, no, he's not gone, nothing is gone, everything I loved
and believed in is here in this worn, old father of mine, and more--oh,
so much more, too! I have been happy and contented, but I shall be
happier and more contented still, now that I know what you are. I am
_not_ blind, father, any longer."




VI.

LITTLE NELL.


THE house where little Nell and her grandfather lived was one of those
places where old and curious things were kept, one of those old houses
which seem to crouch in odd corners of the town, and to hide their musty
treasures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust. There were suits
of mail standing like ghosts in armor, here and there; curious carvings
brought from monkish cloisters; rusty weapons of various kinds;
distorted figures in china, and wood, and iron, and ivory; tapestry, and
strange furniture that might have been designed in dreams; and in the
old, dark, dismal rooms there lived alone together the man and a
child--his grandchild, Little Nell. Solitary and dull as was her life,
the innocent and cheerful spirit of the child found happiness in all
things, and through the dim rooms of the old curiosity shop Little Nell
went singing, moving with gay and lightsome step.

[Illustration: Little Nell and Her Grandfather.

                                       Page 86]

But gradually over the old man, whom she so tenderly loved, there stole
a sad change. He became thoughtful, sad and wretched. He had no sleep
or rest but that which he took by day in his easy-chair; for every
night, and all night long, he was away from home. To the child it seemed
that her grandfather's love for her increased, even with the hidden
grief by which she saw him struck down. And to see him sorrowful, and
not to know the cause of his sorrow; to see him growing pale and weak
under his trouble of mind, so weighed upon her gentle spirit that at
times she felt as though her heart must break.

At last the time came when the old man's feeble frame could bear up no
longer against his hidden care. A raging fever seized him, and, as he
lay delirious or insensible through many weeks, Nell learned that the
house which sheltered them was theirs no longer; that in the future they
would be very poor; that they would scarcely have bread to eat. At
length the old man began to mend, but his mind was weakened.

He would sit for hours together, with Nell's small hand in his, playing
with the fingers, and sometimes stopping to smooth her hair or kiss her
brow; and when he saw that tears were glistening in her eyes he would
look amazed. As the time drew near when they must leave the house, he
made no reference to the necessity of finding other shelter. An
indistinct idea he had that the child was desolate and in need of help;
though he seemed unable to understand their real position more
distinctly. But a change came upon him one evening, as he and Nell sat
silently together.

"Let us speak softly, Nell," he said. "Hush! for if they knew our
purpose they would say that I was mad, and take thee from me. We will
not stop here another day. We will travel afoot through the fields and
woods, and trust ourselves to God in the places where He dwells.
To-morrow morning, dear, we'll turn our faces from this scene of sorrow,
and be as free and happy as the birds."

The child's heart beat high with hope and confidence. She had no thought
of hunger, or cold, or thirst, or suffering. To her it seemed that they
might beg their way from door to door in happiness, so that they were
together.

When the day began to glimmer they stole out of the house, and, passing
into the street, stood still.

"Which way?" asked the child.

The old man looked doubtfully and helplessly at her, and shook his head.
It was plain that she was thenceforth his guide and leader. The child
felt it, but had no doubts or misgivings, and, putting her hand in his,
led him gently away. Forth from the city, while it yet was asleep went
the two poor wanderers, going, they knew not whither.

They passed through the long, deserted streets, in the glad light of
early morning, until these streets dwindled away, and the open country
was about them. They walked all day, and slept that night at a small
cottage where beds were let to travelers. The sun was setting on the
second day of their journey, and they were jaded and worn out with
walking, when, following a path which led through a churchyard to the
town where they were to spend the night, they fell in with two traveling
showmen, the exhibitors or keepers of a Punch and Judy show. These two
men raised their eyes when the old man and his young companion were
close upon them. One of them, the real exhibitor, no doubt, was a
little, merry-faced man with a twinkling eye and a red nose, who seemed
to be something like old Punch himself. The other--that was he who took
the money--had rather a careful and cautious look, which perhaps came
from his business also.

The merry man was the first to greet the strangers with a nod; and
following the old man's eyes, he observed that perhaps that was the
first time he had ever seen a Punch off the stage.

"Why do you come here to do this?" said the old man sitting down beside
them, and looking at the figures with extreme delight.

"Why, you see," rejoined the little man, "we're putting up for to-night
at the public house yonder, and it wouldn't do to let 'em see the
present company undergoing repair."

"No!" cried the old man, making signs to Nell to listen, "why not, eh?
why not?"

"Because it would destroy all the reality of the show and take away all
the interest, wouldn't it?" replied the little man. "Would you care a
ha'penny for the Lord Chancellor if you know'd him in private and
without his wig?--certainly not."[C]

"Good!" said the old man, venturing to touch one of the puppets, and
drawing away his hand with a shrill laugh. "Are you going to show 'em
to-night? are you?"

"That is the purpose, governor," replied the other, "and unless I'm much
mistaken, Tommy Codlin is a-calculating at this minute what we've lost
through your coming upon us. Cheer up, Tommy, it can't be much."

The little man accompanied these latter words with a wink, expressive
of the estimate he had formed of the travelers' pocketbook.

To this Mr. Codlin, who had a surly, grumbling manner, replied, as he
twitched Punch off the tombstone and flung him into the box:

"I don't care if we haven't lost a farden, but you're too free. If you
stood in front of the curtain and see the public's faces as I do, you'd
know human natur' better."

Turning over the figures in the box like one who knew and despised them,
Mr. Codlin drew one forth and held it up for the inspection of his
friend:

"Look here; here's all this Judy's clothes falling to pieces again. You
haven't got a needle and thread, I suppose?"

The little man shook his head and scratched it sadly, as he contemplated
this condition of a principal performer in his show. Seeing that they
were at a loss, the child said, timidly:

"I have a needle, sir, in my basket, and thread too. Will you let me try
to mend it for you? I think I could do it neater than you could."

Even Mr. Codlin had nothing to urge against a proposal so seasonable.
Nell, kneeling down beside the box, was soon busily engaged in her task,
and finished it in a wonderful way.

While she was thus at work, the merry little man looked at her with an
interest which did not appear to be any less when he glanced at her
helpless companion. When she had finished her work he thanked her, and
asked to what place they were traveling.

"N--no farther to-night, I think," said the child, looking toward her
grandfather.

"If you're wanting a place to stop at," the man remarked. "I should
advise you to take up at the same house with us. That's it. The long
low, white house there. It's very cheap."

They went to the little inn, and when they had been refreshed, the whole
house hurried away into an empty stable where the show stood, and where,
by the light of a few flaring candles stuck round a hoop which hung by a
line from the ceiling, it was to be forthwith shown.

And now Mr. Thomas Codlin, after blowing away at the Pan's pipes, took
his station on one side of the curtain which concealed the mover of the
figures, and, putting his hands in his pockets, prepared to reply to all
questions and remarks of Punch, and to make a pretence of being his most
intimate private friend, of believing in him to the fullest and most
unlimited extent, of knowing that Mr. Punch enjoyed day and night a
merry and glorious life in that temple, and that he was at all times
and under every circumstance the same wise and joyful person that all
present then beheld him.

The whole performance was applauded until the old stable rang, and gifts
were showered in with a liberality which testified yet more strongly to
the general delight. Among the laughter none was more loud and frequent
than the old man's. Nell's was unheard, for she, poor child, with her
head drooping on his shoulder, had fallen asleep, and slept too soundly
to be roused by any of his efforts to awaken her to a part in his glee.

The supper was very good, but she was too tired to eat, and yet would
not leave the old man until she had kissed him in his bed. He, happily
insensible to every care and anxiety, sat listening with a vacant smile
and admiring face to all that his new friends said; and it was not until
they retired yawning to their room that he followed the child up-stairs.

She had a little money, but it was very little; and when that was gone
they must begin to beg. There was one piece of gold among it, and a need
might come when its worth to them would be increased a hundred times. It
would be best to hide this coin, and never show it unless their case was
entirely desperate, and nothing else was left them.

Her resolution taken, she sewed the piece of gold into her dress, and
going to bed with a lighter heart sunk into a deep slumber.

"And where are you going to-day?" said the little man the following
morning, addressing himself to Nell.

"Indeed I hardly know--we have not made up our minds yet," replied the
child.

"We're going on to the races," said the little man. "If that's your way
and you like to have us for company, let us travel together. If you
prefer going alone, only say the word and you'll find that we sha'n't
trouble you."

"We'll go with you," said the old man. "Nell--with them, with them."

The child thought for a moment, and knowing that she must shortly beg,
and could scarcely hope to do so at a better place than where crowds of
rich ladies and gentlemen were met together for enjoyment, determined to
go with these men so far. She therefore thanked the little man for his
offer, and said, glancing timidly toward his friend, that they would if
there was no objection to their staying with them as far as the
race-town.

And with these men they traveled forward on the following day.

They made two long days' journey with their new companions, passing
through villages and towns, and meeting upon one occasion with two young
people walking upon stilts, who were also going to the races.

And now they had come to the time when they must beg their bread. Soon
after sunrise the second morning, she stole out, and, rambling into some
fields at a short distance, plucked a few wild roses and such humble
flowers, purposing to make them into little nosegays and offer them to
the ladies in the carriages when the company arrived. Her thoughts were
not idle while she was thus busy; when she returned and was seated
beside the old man, tying her flowers together, while the two men lay
dozing in the corner, she plucked him by the sleeve, and, slightly
glancing toward them, said in a low voice:

"Grandfather, don't look at those I talk of, and don't seem as if I
spoke of anything but what I am about. What was that you told me before
we left the old house? That if they knew what we were going to do, they
would say that you were mad, and part us?"

The old man turned to her with a look of wild terror; but she checked
him by a look, and bidding him hold some flowers while she tied them up,
and so bringing her lips closer to his ear, said:

"I know that was what you told me. You needn't speak, dear. I recollect
it very well. It was not likely that I should forget it. Grandfather, I
have heard these men say they think that we have secretly left our
friends, and mean to carry us before some gentleman and have us taken
care of and sent back. If you let your hand tremble so, we can never get
away from them, but if you're only quiet now, we shall do so easily."

"How?" muttered the old man. "Dear Nell, how? They will shut me up in a
stone-room, dark and cold, and chain me up to the wall, Nell--flog me
with whips, and never let me see thee more!"

"You're trembling again," said the child. "Keep close to me all day.
Never mind them, don't look at them, but me. I shall find a time when we
can steal away. When I do, mind you come with me, and do not stop or
speak a word. Hush! That's all."

"Halloo! what are you up to, my dear?" said Mr. Codlin, raising his
head, and yawning.

"Making some nosegays," the child replied; "I am going to try to sell
some, these three days of the races. Will you have one--as a present, I
mean?"

Mr. Codlin would have risen to receive it, but the child hurried toward
him and placed it in his hand, and he stuck it in his button-hole.

As the morning wore on, the tents at the race-course assumed a gayer and
more brilliant appearance, and long lines of carriages came rolling
softly on the turf. Black-eyed gipsy girls, their heads covered with
showy handkerchiefs, came out to tell fortunes, and pale, slender women
with wasted faces followed the footsteps of conjurers, and counted the
sixpences with anxious eyes long before they were gained. As many of the
children as could be kept within bounds were stowed away, with all the
other signs of dirt and poverty, among the donkeys, carts, and horses;
and as many as could not be thus disposed of ran in and out in all
directions, crept between people's legs and carriage wheels, and came
forth unharmed from under horses' hoofs. The dancing-dogs, the stilts,
the little lady and the tall man, and all the other attractions, with
organs out of number and bands innumerable, came out from the holes and
corners in which they had passed the night, and flourished boldly in the
sun.

Along the uncleared course, Short led his party, sounding the brazen
trumpet and speaking in the voice of Punch; and at his heels went Thomas
Codlin, bearing the show as usual, and keeping his eye on Nell and her
grandfather, as they rather lingered in the rear. The child bore upon
her arm the little basket with her flowers, and sometimes stopped, with
timid and modest looks, to offer them at some gay carriage; but alas!
there were many bolder beggars there, gipsies who promised husbands, and
others skillful in their trade; and although some ladies smiled gently
as they shook their heads, and others cried to the gentlemen beside
them, "See what a pretty face!" they let the pretty face pass on, and
never thought that it looked tired or hungry.

There was but one lady who seemed to understand the child, and she was
one who sat alone in a handsome carriage, while two young men in dashing
clothes, who had just stepped out from it, talked and laughed loudly at
a little distance, appearing to forget her, quite. There were many
ladies all around, but they turned their backs, or looked another way,
or at the two young men (not unfavorably at _them_), and left her to
herself. The lady motioned away a gipsy woman, eager to tell her
fortune, saying that it was told already and had been for some years,
but called the child toward her, and, taking her flowers, put money into
her trembling hand, and bade her go home and keep at home.

Many a time they went up and down those long, long lines, seeing
everything but the horses and the race; when the bell rung to clear the
course, going back to rest among the carts and donkeys, and not coming
out again until the heat was over. Many a time, too, was Punch displayed
in the full glory of his humor; but all this while the eye of Thomas
Codlin was upon them, and to escape without notice was almost
impossible.

At length, late in the day, Mr. Codlin pitched the show in a spot right
in the middle of the crowd, and the Punch and Judy were surrounded by
people who were watching the performance.

Short was moving the images, and knocking them in the fury of the combat
against the sides of the show, the people were looking on with laughing
faces, and Mr. Codlin's face showed a grim smile as his roving eye
detected the hands of thieves in the crowd going into waistcoat pockets.
If Nell and her grandfather were ever to get away unseen, that was the
very moment. They seized it, and fled.

They made a path through booths and carriages and throngs of people, and
never once stopped to look behind. The bell was ringing, and the course
was cleared by the time they reached the ropes, but they dashed across
it, paying no attention to the shouts and screeching that assailed them
for breaking in it, and, creeping under the brow of the hill at a quick
pace, made for the open fields. At last they were free from Codlin and
Short.

That night they reached a little village in a woody hollow. The village
schoolmaster, a good and gentle man, pitying their weariness, and
attracted by the child's sweetness and modesty, gave them a lodging for
the night; nor would he let them leave him until two days more had
passed.

They journeyed on, when the time came that they must wander forth again,
by pleasant country lanes; and as they passed, watching the birds that
perched and twittered in the branches overhead, or listening to the
songs that broke the happy silence, their hearts were peaceful and free
from care. But by-and-by they came to a long winding road which
lengthened out far into the distance, and though they still kept on, it
was at a much slower pace, for they were now very weary.

The afternoon had worn away into a beautiful evening, when they arrived
at a point where the road made a sharp turn and struck across a common.
On the border of this common, and close to the hedge which divided it
from the cultivated fields, a caravan was drawn up to rest; upon which
they came so suddenly that they could not have avoided it if they would.
Do you know what a "caravan" is? It is a sort of gipsy house on wheels
in which people live, while the house moves from place to place.

It was not a shabby, dingy, dusty cart, but a smart little house with
white dimity curtains hung over the windows, and window-shutters of
green picked out with panels of a staring red, in which
happily-contrasted colors the whole house shone brilliant. Neither was
it a poor caravan drawn by a single donkey or feeble old horse, for a
pair of horses in pretty good condition were released from the shafts
and grazing on the frouzy grass. Neither was it a gipsy caravan, for at
the open door (graced with a bright brass knocker) sat a Christian lady,
stout and comfortable to look upon, who wore a large bonnet trembling
with bows. And that it was not a caravan of poor people was clear from
what this lady was doing; for she was taking her tea. The tea-things,
including a bottle of rather suspicious looks and a cold knuckle of ham,
were set forth upon a drum, covered with a white napkin; and there, as
if at the most convenient round-table in all the world, sat this roving
lady, taking her tea and enjoying the prospect.

It happened at that moment that the lady of the caravan had her cup
(which, that everything about her might be of a stout and comfortable
kind, was a breakfast cup) to her lips, and that having her eyes lifted
to the sky in her enjoyment of the full flavor of her tea, it happened
that, being thus agreeably engaged, she did not see the travelers when
they first came up. It was not until she was in the act of setting down
the cup, and drawing a long breath after the exertion of swallowing its
contents, that the lady of the caravan beheld an old man and a young
child walking slowly by, and glancing at her proceedings with eyes of
modest, but hungry admiration.

"Hey!" cried the lady of the caravan, scooping the crumbs out of her lap
and swallowing the same before wiping her lips. "Yes, to be
sure------Who won the Helter-Skelter Plate, child?"

"Won what, ma'am?" asked Nell.

"The Helter-Skelter Plate at the races, child--the plate that was run
for on the second day."

"On the second day, ma'am?"

"Second day! Yes, second day," repeated the lady, with an air of
impatience. "Can't you say who won the Helter-Skelter Plate when you're
asked the question civilly?"

"I don't know, ma'am."

"Don't know!" repeated the lady of the caravan; "why, you were there. I
saw you with my own eyes."

Nell was not a little alarmed to hear this, supposing that the lady
might be intimately acquainted with the firm of Short and Codlin; but
what followed tended to put her at her ease.

"And very sorry I was," said the lady of the caravan, "to see you in
company with a Punch--a low, common, vulgar wretch, that people should
scorn to look at."

"I was not there by choice," returned the child; "we didn't know our
way, and the two men were very kind to us, and let us travel with them.
Do you--do you know them, ma'am?"

"Know 'em, child?" cried the lady of the caravan, in a sort of shriek.
"Know _them_! But you're young and ignorant, and that's your excuse for
asking sich a question. Do I look as if I know'd 'em? does the caravan
look as if _it_ know'd 'em?"

"No, ma'am, no," said the child, fearing she had committed some grievous
fault. "I beg your pardon."

The lady of the caravan was in the act of gathering her tea things
together preparing to clear the table, but noting the child's anxious
manner, she hesitated and stopped. The child courtesied, and, giving her
hand to the old man, had already got some fifty yards or so away, when
the lady of the caravan called to her to return.

"Come nearer, nearer still," said she, beckoning to her to ascend the
steps. "Are you hungry, child?"

"Not very, but we are tired, and it's--it _is_ a long way------"

"Well, hungry or not, you had better have some tea," rejoined her new
acquaintance. "I suppose you are agreeable to that old gentleman?"

The grandfather humbly pulled off his hat and thanked her. The lady of
the caravan then bade him come up the steps likewise, but the drum
proving an inconvenient table for two, they went down again, and sat
upon the grass, where she handed down to them the tea-tray, the bread
and butter, and the knuckle of ham.

"Set 'em out near the hind wheels child, that's the best place," said
their friend, superintending the arrangement from above. "Now hand up
the tea-pot for a little more hot water and a pinch of fresh tea, and
then both of you eat and drink as much as you can, and don't spare
anything; that's all I ask of you."

The mistress of the caravan, saying the girl and her grandfather could
not be very heavy, invited them to go along with them for a while, for
which Nell thanked her with all her heart.

When they had traveled slowly forward for some short distance, Nell
ventured to steal a look round the caravan and observe it more closely.
One-half of it--that part in which the comfortable proprietress was then
seated--was carpeted, and so divided the farther end as to form a
sleeping-place, made after the fashion of a berth on board ship, which
was shaded, like the little windows, with fair white curtains, and
looked comfortable enough, though by what kind of gymnastic exercise the
lady of the caravan ever contrived to get into it was a mystery. The
other half served for a kitchen, and was fitted up with a stove whose
small chimney passed through the roof.

The mistress sat looking at the child for a long time in silence, and
then, getting up, brought out from a corner a large roll of canvas about
a yard in width, which she laid upon the floor and spread open with her
foot until it nearly reached from one end of the caravan to the other.

"There, child," she said, "read that."

Nell walked down it, and read aloud, in enormous black letters, the
inscription, "JARLEY'S WAX-WORK."

"Read it again," said the lady, complacently.

"Jarley's Wax-work," repeated Nell.

"That's me," said the lady. "I am Mrs. Jarley."

Giving the child an encouraging look, the lady of the caravan unfolded
another scroll, whereon was the inscription, "One hundred figures the
full size of life;" and then another scroll, on which was written, "The
only stupendous collection of real wax-work in the world;" and then
several smaller scrolls, with such inscriptions as "Now exhibiting
within"--"The genuine and only Jarley"--"Jarley's unrivaled
collection"--"Jarley is the delight of the Nobility and Gentry"--"The
Royal Family are the patrons of Jarley." When she had exhibited these
large painted signs to the astonished child, she brought forth specimens
of the lesser notices in the shape of hand-bills, some of which were
printed in the form of verses on popular times, as "Believe me if all
Jarley's wax-work so rare"--"I saw thy show in youthful prime"--"Over
the water to Jarley;" while, to satisfy all tastes, others were composed
with a view to the lighter and merrier spirits, as a verse on the
favorite air of "If I had a donkey," beginning

          If I know'd a donkey wot wouldn't go
          To see Mrs. Jarley's wax-work show,
          Do you think I'd own him?
          Oh no, no!
                  Then run to Jarley's------

besides several compositions in prose, pretending to be dialogues
between the Emperor of China and an oyster.

"I never saw any wax-work, ma'am," said Nell. "Is it funnier than
Punch?"

"Funnier!" said Mrs. Jarley in a shrill voice. "It is not funny at all."

"Oh!" said Nell, with all possible humility.

"It isn't funny at all," repeated Mrs. Jarley. "It's calm and--what's
that word again--critical?--no--classical, that's it--it's calm and
classical. No low beatings and knockings about, no jokings and
squeakings like your precious Punches, but always the same, with a
constantly unchanging air of coldness and dignity; and so like life
that, if wax-work only spoke and walked about you'd hardly know the
difference. I won't go so far as to say that, as it is, I've seen
wax-work quite like life, but I've certainly seen some life that was
exactly like wax-work."

This conference at length concluded, she beckoned Nell to sit down.

"And the old gentleman, too," said Mrs. Jarley; "for I want to have a
word with him. Do you want a good place for your granddaughter, master?
If you do, I can put her in the way of getting one. What do you say?"

"I can't leave her," answered the old man. "We can't separate. What
would become of me without her?"

"If you're really ready to employ yourself," said Mrs. Jarley, "there
would be plenty for you to do in the way of helping to dust the figures,
and take the checks, and so forth. What I want your granddaughter for is
to point 'em out to the company; they would be soon learned and she has
a way with her that people wouldn't think unpleasant, though she _does_
come after me; for I've been always accustomed to go round with visitors
myself, which I should keep on doing now, only that my spirits make a
little rest absolutely necessary. It's not a common offer, bear in
mind," said the lady, rising into the tone and manner in which she was
accustomed to address her audiences; "it's Jarley's wax-work, remember.
The duty's very light and genteel, the company particularly select, the
exhibition takes place in assembly-rooms, town-halls, large rooms at
inns, or auction galleries. There is none of your open-air wondering at
Jarley's, recollect; there is no tarpaulin and sawdust at Jarley's,
remember. Every promise made in the hand-bills is kept to the utmost,
and the whole forms an effect of splendor hitherto unknown in this
kingdom. Remember that the price of admission is only sixpence, and that
this is an opportunity which may never occur again!"

"We are very much obliged to you, ma'am," said Nell, "and thankfully
accept your offer."

"And you'll never be sorry for it," returned Mrs. Jarley. "I'm pretty
sure of that. So as that's all settled, let us have a bit of supper."

Rumbling along with most unwonted noise, the caravan stopped at last at
the place of exhibition, where Nell came down from the wagon among an
admiring group of children, who evidently supposed her to be an
important part of the curiosities, and were almost ready to believe that
her grandfather was a cunning device in wax. The chests were taken out
of the van for the figures with all haste, and taken in to be unlocked
by Mrs. Jarley, who, attended by George and the driver, arranged their
contents (consisting of red festoons and other ornamental work) to make
the best show in the decoration of the room.

When the festoons were all put up as tastily as they might be, the
wonderful collection was uncovered; and there were shown, on a raised
platform some two feet from the floor, running round the room and parted
from the rude public by a crimson rope, breast high, a large number of
sprightly waxen images of famous people, singly and in groups, clad in
glittering dresses of various climes and times, and standing more or
less unsteadily upon their legs, with their eyes very wide open, and
their nostrils very much inflated, and the muscles of their legs, and
arms very strongly developed, and all their faces expressing great
surprise. All the gentlemen were very narrow in the breast, and very
blue about the beards; and all the ladies were wonderful figures; and
all the ladies and all the gentlemen were looking intensely nowhere, and
staring with tremendous earnestness at nothing.

When Nell had shown her first wonder at this glorious sight, Mrs. Jarley
ordered the room to be cleared of all but herself and the child, and,
sitting herself down in an arm-chair in the center, presented Nell with
a willow wand, long used by herself for pointing out the characters,
and was at great pains to instruct her in her duty.

"That," said Mrs. Jarley, in her exhibition tone, as Nell touched a
figure at the beginning of the platform, "is an unfortunate maid of
honor in the time of Queen Elizabeth, who died from pricking her finger
in consequence of working upon a Sunday. Observe the blood which is
trickling from her finger; also the gold-eyed needle of the period, with
which she is at work."

All this Nell repeated twice or thrice--pointing to the finger and the
needle at the right times; and then passed on to the next.

"That, ladies and gentlemen," said Mrs. Jarley, "is Jasper Packlemerton,
of terrible memory, who courted and married fourteen wives, and
destroyed them all, by tickling the soles of their feet when they were
sleeping in the consciousness of innocence and virtue. On being brought
to the scaffold and asked if he was sorry for what he had done, he
replied yes, he was sorry for having let 'em off so easy, and hoped all
Christian husbands would pardon him the offense. Let this be a warning
to all young ladies to be particular in the character of the gentlemen
of their choice. Observe that his fingers are curled as if in the act of
tickling, and that his face is represented with a wink, as he appeared
when committing his barbarous murders."

When Nell knew all about Mr. Packlemerton, and could say it without
faltering, Mrs. Jarley passed on to the fat man, and then to the thin
man, the tall man, the short man, the old lady who died of dancing at a
hundred and thirty-two, the wild boy of the woods, the woman who
poisoned fourteen families with pickled walnuts, and other historical
characters and interesting but misguided individuals. And so well did
Nell profit by her instructions, and so apt was she to remember them,
that by the time they had been shut up together for a couple of hours,
she was in full possession of the history of the whole establishment,
and perfectly able to tell the stories of the wax-work to visitors.

For some time her life and the life of the poor vacant old man passed
quietly and happily. They traveled from place to place with Mrs. Jarley;
Nell spoke her piece, with the wand in her hand, before the waxen
images; and her grandfather in a dull way dusted the images when he was
told to do so.

But heavier sorrow was yet to come. One night, a holiday night for them,
Neil and her grandfather went out to walk. A terrible thunderstorm
coming on, they were forced to take refuge in a small public house; and
here they saw some shabbily dressed and wicked looking men were playing
cards. The old man watched them with increasing interest and excitement,
until his whole appearance underwent a complete change. His face was
flushed and eager, his teeth set. With a hand that trembled violently he
seized Nell's little purse, and in spite of her pleadings joined in the
game, gambling with such a savage thirst for gain that the distressed
and frightened child could almost better have borne to see him dead. It
was long after midnight when the play came to an end; and they were
forced to remain where they were until the morning. And in the night the
child was wakened from her troubled sleep to find a figure in the
room--a figure busying its hands about her garments, while its face was
turned to her, listening and looking lest she should awake. It was her
grandfather himself, his white face pinched and sharpened by the
greediness which made his eyes unnaturally bright, counting the money of
which his hands were robbing her.

Evening after evening, after that night, the old man would steal away,
not to return until the night was far spent, demanding, wildly, money.
And at last there came an hour when the child overheard him, tempted
beyond his feeble powers of resistance, undertake to find more money to
feed the desperate passion which had laid its hold upon his weakness by
robbing the kind Mrs. Jarley, who had done so much for them. The poor
old man had become so weak in his mind, that he did not understand how
wicked was his act.

That night the child took her grandfather by the hand and led him forth.
Through the strait streets and narrow outskirts of the town their
trembling feet passed quickly; the child sustained by one idea--that
they were flying from wickedness and disgrace, and that she could save
her grandfather only by her firmness unaided by one word of advice or
any helping hand; the old man following her as though she had been an
angel messenger sent to lead him where she would.

The hardest part of all their wanderings was now before them. They slept
in the open air that night, and on the following morning some men
offered to take them a long distance on their barge on the river. These
men, though they were not unkindly, were very rugged, noisy fellows, and
they drank and quarreled fearfully among themselves, to Nell's
inexpressible terror. It rained, too, heavily, and she was wet and
cold. At last they reached the great city whither the barge was bound,
and here they wandered up and down, being now penniless, and watched the
faces of those who passed, to find among them a ray of encouragement or
hope. Ill in body, and sick to death at heart, the child needed her
utmost courage and will even to creep along.

They lay down that night, and the next night too, with nothing between
them and the sky; a penny loaf was all they had had that day, and when
the third morning came, it found the child much weaker, yet she made no
complaint. The great city with its many factories hemmed them in on
every side, and seemed to shut out hope.

Faint and spiritless as they were, its streets were terrible to them.
After humbly asking for relief at some few doors, and being driven away,
they agreed to make their way out of it as speedily as they could, and
try if the people living in some lone house beyond would have more pity
on their worn out state.

They were dragging themselves along through the last street, and the
child felt that the time was close at hand when her enfeebled powers
would bear no more. There appeared before them, at this moment, going in
the same direction as themselves, a traveler on foot, who, with a
bundle of clothing strapped to his back, leaned upon a stout stick as he
walked, and read from a book which he held in his other hand.

It was not an easy matter to come up with him and ask his aid, for he
walked fast, and was a little distance in advance. At length he stopped,
to look more attentively at some passage in his book. Encouraged by a
ray of hope, the child shot on before her grandfather, and, going close
to the stranger without rousing him by the sound of her footsteps,
began, in a few faint words, to beg his help.

He turned his head. The child clapped her hands together, uttered a wild
shriek, and fell senseless at his feet.

It was the poor schoolmaster. No other than the poor schoolmaster.
Scarcely less moved and surprised by the sight of the child than she had
been on recognizing him, he stood, for a moment, silent, without even
the presence of mind to raise her from the ground.

But, quickly recovering himself, he threw down his stick and book, and,
dropping on one knee beside her, tried simple means as came to his mind,
to restore her to herself; while her grandfather, standing idly by,
wrung his hands, and begged her, with many words of love, to speak to
him, were it only a whisper.

"She appears to be quite worn out," said the schoolmaster, glancing
upward into his face. "You have used up all her strength, friend."

"She is dying of want," answered the old man. "I never thought how weak
and ill she was till now."

Casting a look upon him, half-angry and half-pitiful, the schoolmaster
took the child in his arms, and, bidding the old man gather up her
little basket and follow him directly, bore her away at his utmost
speed.

There was a small inn within sight, to which, it would seem, he had been
walking when so unexpectedly overtaken. Toward this place he hurried
with his unconscious burden, and rushing into the kitchen, and calling
upon the company there assembled to make way for God's sake, laid it
down on a chair before the fire.

The company, who rose in confusion on the schoolmaster's entrance, did
as people usually do under such circumstances. Everybody called for his
or her favorite remedy, which nobody brought; each cried for more air,
at the same time carefully shutting out what air there was, by closing
round the object of sympathy; and all wondered why somebody else didn't
do what it never appeared to occur to them might be done by themselves.

The landlady, however, who had more readiness and activity than any of
them, and who seemed to understand the case more quickly, soon came
running in, with a little hot medicine, followed by her servant-girl,
carrying vinegar, hartshorn, smelling-salts, and such other
restoratives; which, being duly given, helped the child so far as to
enable her to thank them in a faint voice, and to hold out her hand to
the poor schoolmaster, who stood, with an anxious face, near her side.
Without suffering her to speak another word, or so much as to stir a
finger any more, the women straightway carried her off to bed; and,
having covered her up warm, bathed her cold feet, and wrapped them in
flannel, they sent a messenger for the doctor.

The doctor, who was a red-nosed gentleman with a great bunch of seals
dangling below a waistcoat of ribbed black satin, arrived with all
speed, and taking his seat by the bedside of poor Nell, drew out his
watch, and felt her pulse. Then he looked at her tongue, then he felt
her pulse again, and while he did so, he eyed the half-emptied
wine-glass as if in profound abstraction.

"I should give her," said the doctor at length, "a teaspoonful, every
now and then, of hot medicine."

"Why, that's exactly what we've done, sir!" said the delighted landlady.

"I should also," observed the doctor, who had passed the foot-bath on
the stairs, "I should also," said the doctor, in a very wise tone of
voice, "put her feet in hot water and wrap them up in flannel. I should
likewise," said the doctor, with increased solemnity, "give her
something light for supper--the wing of a roasted chicken now------"

"Why, goodness gracious me, sir, it's cooking at the kitchen fire this
instant!" cried the landlady. And so indeed it was, for the schoolmaster
had ordered it to be put down, and it was getting on so well that the
doctor might have smelled it if he had tried; perhaps he did.

"You may then," said the doctor, rising gravely, "give her a glass of
hot mulled port-wine, if she likes wine------"

"And a piece of toast, sir?" suggested the landlady.

"Ay," said the doctor, in a very dignified tone, "And a toast--of bread.
But be very particular to make it of bread, if you please, ma'am."

With which parting advice, slowly and solemnly given, the doctor
departed, leaving the whole house in admiration of that wisdom which
agreed so closely with their own. Everybody said he was a very shrewd
doctor indeed, and knew perfectly what people's bodies needed; which
there appears some reason to suppose he did.

While her supper was preparing, the child fell into a refreshing sleep,
from which they were obliged to rouse her when it was ready. As she
showed extraordinary uneasiness on learning that her grandfather was
below stairs, and as she was greatly troubled at the thought of their
being apart, he took his supper with her. Finding her still very anxious
for the old man, they made him up a bed in an inner room, to which he
soon went. The key of this room happened by good-fortune to be on that
side of the door which was in Nell's room; she turned it on him when the
landlady had withdrawn, and crept to bed again with a thankful heart.

The schoolmaster sat for a long time smoking his pipe by the kitchen
fire, which was now deserted, thinking, with a very happy face, on the
fortunate chance which had brought him at just the right moment to the
child's assistance.

The schoolmaster, as it appeared, was on his way to a new home. And
when the child had recovered somewhat from her hunger and weariness, it
was arranged that she and her grandfather should go with him to the
village whither he was bound, and that he should endeavor to find them
some work by which they could get their living.

It was a lonely little village, lying among the quiet country scenes
Nell loved. And here, her grandfather being peaceful and at rest, a
great calm fell upon the spirit of the child. Often she would steal into
the church, and, sitting down among the quiet figures carved upon the
tombs, would think of the summer days and the bright spring-time that
would come; of the rays of sun that would fall in, aslant those sleeping
forms; of the songs of birds, and the sweet air that would steal in.
What if the spot awakened thoughts of death! It would be no pain to
sleep amid such sights and sounds as these. For the time was drawing
nearer every day when Nell was to rest indeed. She never murmured or
complained, but faded like a light upon a summer's evening and died. Day
after day and all day long, the old man, broken-hearted and with no love
or care for anything in life, would sit beside her grave with her straw
hat and the little basket she had been used to carry, waiting till she
should come to him again. At last they found him lying dead upon the
stone. And in the church where they had often prayed and mused and
lingered, hand in hand, the child and the old man slept together.

FOOTNOTE:

[C] The Lord Chancellor, it may be explained, is the highest judge in
the courts of England; and when in court always wears a great wig and a
robe.




VII.

LITTLE DAVID COPPERFIELD.


I, little David Copperfield, lived with my mother in a pretty house in
the village of Blunderstone in Suffolk. I had never known my father, who
died before I could remember anything, and I had neither brothers nor
sisters. I was fondly loved by my pretty young mother, and our kind,
good servant, Peggotty, and was a very happy little fellow. We had very
few friends, and the only relation my mother talked about was an aunt of
my father's, a tall and rather terrible old lady, from all accounts, who
had once been to see us when I was quite a tiny baby, and had been so
angry to find I was not a little girl that she had left the house quite
offended, and had never been heard of since. One visitor, a tall dark
gentleman, I did not like at all, and was rather inclined to be jealous
that my mother should be so friendly with the stranger.

Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlor fire, alone. I had
been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. 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 neighbor'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 house with
a thatched roof, where she kept her yard-measure; 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, ain't you?"

"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 waiting a
little, 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 ain'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 flew off. And I recollect two bursting to the
opposite side of the parlor while she was hugging me.

One day Peggotty asked me if I would like to go with her on a visit to
her brother at Yarmouth.

"Is your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty?" I inquired.

"Oh, what an agreeable man he is!" cried Peggotty. "Then there's the
sea, and the boats and ships, and the fishermen, and the beach. And 'Am
to play with."

Ham was her nephew. I was quite anxious to go when I heard of all these
delights; but my mother, what would she do all alone? Peggotty told me
my mother was going to pay a visit to some friends, and would be sure to
let me go. So all was arranged, and we were to start the next day in the
carrier's cart. I was so eager that I wanted to put my hat and coat on
the night before! But when the time came to say good-by to my dear
mamma, I cried a little, for I had never left her before. It was rather
a slow way of traveling, and I was very tired and sleepy when I arrived
at Yarmouth, and found Ham waiting to meet me. He was a great strong
fellow, six feet high, and took me on his back and the box under his
arm to carry both to the house. I was delighted to find that this house
was made of a real big black boat, with a door and windows cut in the
side, and an iron funnel sticking out of the roof for a chimney. Inside,
it was very cozy and clean, and I had a tiny bedroom in the stern. I was
very much pleased to find a dear little girl, about my own age, to play
with, and after tea I said:

"Mr. Peggotty."

"Sir," says he.

"Did you give your son the name of Ham because you lived in a sort of
ark?"

Mr. Peggotty seemed to think it a deep idea, but answered:

"No, sir. I never giv' him no name."

"Who gave him that name, then?" said I, putting question number two of
the catechism to Mr. Peggotty.

"Why, sir, his father giv' it him," said Mr. Peggotty.

"I thought you were his father!"

"My brother Joe was _his_ father," said Mr. Peggotty.

"Dead, Mr. Peggotty?" I hinted, after a respectful pause.

"Drowndead," said Mr. Peggotty.

I was very much surprised that Mr. Peggotty was not Ham's father, and
began to wonder whether I was mistaken about his relationship to anybody
else there. I was so curious to know that I made up my mind to have it
out with Mr. Peggotty.

"Little Em'ly," I said, glancing at her. "She is your daughter, isn't
she, Mr. Peggotty?"

"No, sir. My brother-in-law, Tom, was _her_ father."

I couldn't help it. "----Dead, Mr. Peggotty?" I hinted, after another
respectful silence.

"Drowndead," said Mr. Peggotty.

I felt the difficulty of resuming the subject, but had not got to the
bottom of it yet, and must get to the bottom somehow. So I said:

"Haven't you _any_ children, Mr. Peggotty?"

"No, master," he answered, with a short laugh. "I'm a bacheldore."

"A bachelor!" I said, astonished. "Why, who's that, Mr. Peggotty?"
Pointing to the person in the apron who was knitting.

"That's Missis Gummidge," said Mr. Peggotty.

"Gummidge, Mr. Peggotty?"

But at this point Peggotty--I mean my own Peggotty--made such impressive
motions to me not to ask any more questions, that I could only sit and
look at all the company, until it was time to go to bed.

Mrs. Gummidge lived with them too, and did the cooking and cleaning, for
she was a poor widow and had no home of her own. I thought Mr. Peggotty
was very good to take all these people to live with him, and I was quite
right, for Mr. Peggotty was only a poor man himself and had to work hard
to get a living.

Almost as soon as morning shone upon the oyster-shell frame of my mirror
I was out of bed, and out with tittle Em'ly, picking up stones upon the
beach.

"You're quite a sailor I suppose?" I said to Em'ly. I don't know that I
supposed anything of the kind, but I felt it proper to say something;
and a shining sail close to us made such a pretty little image of
itself, at the moment, in her bright eye, that it came into my head to
say this.

"No," replied Em'ly, shaking her head, "I'm afraid of the sea."

"Afraid!" I said, with a becoming air of boldness, and looking very big
at the mighty ocean. "I ain't."

"Ah! but it's cruel," said Em'ly. "I have seen it very cruel to some of
our men. I have seen it tear a boat as big as our house all to pieces."

"I hope it wasn't the boat that--"

"That father was drowned in?" said Em'ly. "No. Not that one, I never see
that boat."

"Nor him?" I asked her.

Little Em'ly shook her head. "Not to remember!"

Here was something remarkable. I immediately went into an explanation
how I had never seen my own father; and how my mother and I had always
lived by ourselves in the happiest state imaginable, and lived so then,
and always meant to live so; and how my father's grave was in the
churchyard near our house, and shaded by a tree, beneath the boughs of
which I had walked and heard the birds sing many a pleasant morning. But
there were some differences between Em'ly's orphanhood and mine, it
appeared. She had lost her mother before her father, and where her
father's grave was no one knew, except that it was somewhere in the
depths of the sea.

"Besides," said Em'ly, as she looked about for shells and pebbles, "your
father was a gentleman and your mother is a lady; and my father was a
fisherman and my mother was a fisherman's daughter, and my Uncle Dan is
a fisherman."

"Dan is Mr. Peggotty, is he?" said I.

[Illustration: David Copperfield and Little Em'ly.

                                       Page 131]

"Uncle--yonder," answered Em'ly, nodding at the boat-house.

"Yes. I mean him. He must be very good, I should think."

"Good?" said Em'ly. "If I was ever to be a lady, I'd give him a sky-blue
coat with diamond buttons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a
cocked hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money."

I said I had no doubt that Mr. Peggotty well deserved these treasures.

Little Em'ly had stopped and looked up at the sky while she named these
articles, as if they were a glorious vision. We went on again picking up
shells and pebbles.

"You would like to be a lady?" I said.

Em'ly looked at me, and laughed and nodded "yes."

"I should like it very much. We would all be gentlefolks together, then.
Me, and uncle, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge. We wouldn't mind then, when
there come stormy weather. Not for our own sakes, I mean. We would for
the poor fishermen's, to be sure, and we'd help 'em with money when they
come to any hurt."

I was quite sorry to leave these kind people and my dear little
companion, but I was glad to think I should get back to my own dear
mamma. When I reached home, however, I found a great change. My mother
was married to the dark man I did not like, whose name was Mr.
Murdstone, and he was a stern, hard man, who had no love for me, and did
not allow my mother to pet and indulge me as she had done before. Mr.
Murdstone's sister came to live with us, and as she was even more
difficult to please than her brother, and disliked boys, my life was no
longer a happy one. I tried to be good and obedient, for I knew it made
my mother very unhappy to see me punished and found fault with. I had
always had lessons with my mother, and as she was patient and gentle, I
had enjoyed learning to read, but now I had a great many very hard
lessons to do, and was so frightened and shy when Mr. and Miss Murdstone
were in the room, that I did not get on at all well, and was continually
in disgrace.

Let me remember how it used to be, and bring one morning back again.

I come into the second-best parlor after breakfast, with my books, and
an exercise-book and a slate. My mother is ready for me at her
writing-desk, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone in his easy-chair
by the window (though he pretends to be reading a book), or as Miss
Murdstone, sitting near my mother stringing steel beads. The very sight
of these two has such an influence over me that I begin to feel the
words I have been at infinite pains to get into my head all sliding
away, and going I don't know where. I wonder where they _do_ go,
by-the-by?

I hand the first book to my mother. Perhaps it is a grammar, perhaps a
history, or geography. I take a last drowning look at the page as I give
it into her hand, and start off aloud at a racing pace while I have got
it fresh. I trip over a word. Mr. Murdstone looks up. I trip over
another word. Miss Murdstone looks up. I redden, tumble over half a
dozen words and stop. I think my mother would show me the book if she
dared, but she does not dare, and she says softly:

"Oh, Davy, Davy!"

"Now, Clara," says Mr. Murdstone, "be firm with the boy. Don't say, 'Oh,
Davy, Davy!' That's childish. He knows his lesson, or he does not know
it."

"He does _not_ know it," Miss Murdstone interposes awfully.

"I am really afraid he does not," says my mother.

"Then you see, Clara," returns Miss Murdstone, "you should just give
him the book back, and make him know it."

"Yes, certainly," says my mother; "that is what I intend to do, my dear
Jane. Now, Davy, try once more, and don't be stupid."

I obey the first clause of my mother's words by trying once more, but am
not so successful with the second, for I am very stupid. I tumble down
before I get to the old place, at a point where I was all right before,
and stop to think. But I can't think about the lesson. I think of the
number of yards of net in Miss Murdstone's cap, or of the price of Mr.
Murdstone's dressing-gown, or any such ridiculous matter that I have no
business with, and don't want to have anything at all to do with. Mr.
Murdstone makes a movement of impatience which I have been expecting for
a long time. Miss Murdstone does the same. My mother glances
submissively at them, shuts the book, and lays it by, to be worked out
when my other tasks are done.

There is a pile of these tasks very soon, and it swells like a rolling
snowball. The bigger it gets, the more stupid _I_ get. The case is so
hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog of nonsense, that
I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon myself to my fate. The
despairing way in which my mother and I look at each other, as I
blunder on, is truly melancholy. But the greatest effect in these
miserable lessons is when my mother (thinking nobody is observing her)
tries to give me the cue by the motion of her lips. At that instant,
Miss Murdstone, who has been lying in wait for nothing else all along
says in a deep warning voice:

"Clara!"

My mother starts, colors, and smiles faintly. Mr. Murdstone comes out of
his chair, takes the book, throws it at me, or boxes my ears with it,
and turns me out of the room by the shoulders.

My only pleasure was to go up into a little room at the top of the house
where I had found a number of books that had belonged to my own father,
and I would sit and read Robinson Crusoe, and many tales of travels and
adventures, and I imagined myself to be sometimes one and sometimes
another hero, and went about for days with the centre-piece out of an
old set of boot-trees, pretending to be a captain in the British Royal
Navy.

One morning when I went into the parlor with my books, I found my mother
looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking firm, and Mr. Murdstone binding
something round the bottom of a cane--a lithe and limber cane, which he
left off binding when I came in, and poised and switched in the air.

"I tell you, Clara," said Mr. Murdstone, "I have often been flogged
myself."

"To be sure; of course," said Miss Murdstone.

"Certainly, my dear Jane," faltered my mother, meekly. "But--but do you
think it did Edward good?"

"Do you think it did Edward harm, Clara?" asked Mr. Murdstone, gravely.

"That's the point!" said his sister.

To this my mother returned, "Certainly, my dear Jane," and said no more.

I felt afraid that all this had something to do with myself, and sought
Mr. Murdstone's eye as it lighted on mine.

"Now, David," he said--and I saw that cast again, as he said it--"you
must be far more careful to-day than usual." He gave the cane another
poise and another switch; and having finished his preparation of it,
laid it down beside him, with an expressive look, and took up his book.

This was a good freshener to my memory, as a beginning. I felt the words
of my lessons slipping off, not one by one, or line by line, but by the
entire page. I tried to lay hold of them; but they seemed, if I may so
express it, to have put skates on, and to skim away from me with a
smoothness there was no checking.

We began badly, and went on worse. I had come in with an idea of doing
better than usual, thinking that I was very well prepared; but it turned
out to be quite a mistake. Book after book was added to the heap of
failures, Miss Murdstone being firmly watchful of us all the time. And
when we came at last to a question about five thousand cheeses (canes he
made it that day, I remember), my mother burst out crying.

"Clara!" said Miss Murdstone, in her warning voice.

"I am not quite well, my dear Jane, I think," said my mother.

I saw him wink, solemnly, at his sister, as he rose and said, taking up
the cane:

"Why, Jane, we can hardly expect Clara to bear, with perfect firmness,
the worry and torment that David has caused her to-day. Clara is greatly
strengthened and improved; but we can hardly expect so much from her.
David, you and I will go up-stairs, boy."

As he took me out at the door, my mother ran towards us. Miss Murdstone
said, "Clara! are you a perfect fool?" and interfered. I saw my mother
stop her ears then, and I heard her crying.

He walked me up to my room slowly and gravely--I am certain he had a
delight in that formal show of doing justice--and when we got there,
suddenly twisted my head under his arm.

"Mr. Murdstone! Sir!" I cried to him. "Don't! Pray don't beat me! I have
tried to learn, sir, but I can't learn while you and Miss Murdstone are
by. I can't indeed!"

"Can't you, indeed, David?" he said. "We'll try that."

He had my head as in a vise, but I twined round him somehow, and stopped
him for a moment, entreating him not to beat me. It was only for a
moment that I stopped him, for he cut me heavily an instant afterwards,
and in the same instant I caught the hand with which he held me in my
mouth, between my teeth, and bit it through. It sets my teeth on edge to
think of it.

He beat me then, as if he would have beaten me to death. Above all the
noise we made, I heard them running up the stairs, and crying out--I
heard my mother crying out--and Peggotty. Then he was gone; and the door
was locked outside; and I was lying, fevered, and hot, and torn, and
raging in my puny way, upon the floor.

How well I recollect, when I became quiet, what an unnatural stillness
seemed to reign through the whole house! How well I remember, when my
smart and passion began to cool, how wicked I began to feel!

I sat listening for a long while, but there was not a sound. I crawled
up from the floor, and saw my face in the glass, so swollen, red, and
ugly that it almost frightened me. My stripes were sore and stiff, and
made me cry afresh, when I moved; but they were nothing to the guilt I
felt. It lay heavier on my breast than if I had been a most terrible
criminal, I dare say, and the longer I thought of it the greater the
offense seemed.

It had begun to grow dark, and I had shut the window (I had been lying,
for the most part, with my head upon the sill, by turns crying, dozing,
and looking listlessly out), when the key was turned, and Miss Murdstone
came in with some bread and meat and milk. These she put down upon the
table without a word, glaring at me the while and then retired, locking
the door after her.

I never shall forget the waking next morning; the being cheerful and
fresh for the first moment, and then the being weighed down by the stale
and dismal oppression of remembrance. Miss Murdstone came again before
I was out of bed; told me, in so many words, that I was free to walk in
the garden for half an hour and no longer; retired, leaving the door
open, that I might avail myself of that permission.

I did so, and did so every morning of my imprisonment, which lasted five
days. If I could have seen my mother alone, I should have gone down on
my knees to her and besought her forgiveness; but I saw no one, Miss
Murdstone excepted, during the whole time.

The length of those five days I can convey no idea of to anyone. They
occupy the place of years in my remembrance.

On the last night of my restraint, I was awakened by hearing my own name
spoken in a whisper. I started up in bed, and, putting out my arms in
the dark, said:

"Is that you, Peggotty?"

There was no immediate answer, but presently I heard my name again, in a
tone so very mysterious and awful, that I think I should have gone into
a fit, if it had not occurred to me that it must have come through the
keyhole.

I groped my way to the door, and, putting my own lips to the keyhole,
whispered:

"Is that you, Peggotty, dear?"

"Yes, my own precious Davy," she replied. "Be as soft as a mouse, or the
cat'll hear us."

I understood this to mean Miss Murdstone, and knew that we must be
careful and quiet; her room being close by.

"How's mamma, dear Peggotty? Is she very angry with me?"

I could hear Peggotty crying softly on her side of the keyhole, as I was
doing on mine, before she answered. "No. Not very."

"What is going to be done with me, Peggotty, dear? Do you know?"

"School. Near London," was Peggotty's answer. I was obliged to get her
to repeat it, for she spoke it the first time quite down my throat in
consequence of my having forgotten to take my mouth away from the
keyhole and put my ear there; and, though her words tickled me a good
deal, I didn't hear them.

"When, Peggotty?"

"To-morrow."

"Is that the reason why Miss Murdstone took the clothes out of my
drawers?" which she had done, though I have forgotten to mention it.

"Yes," said Peggotty. "Box."

"Shan't I see mamma?"

"Yes," said Peggotty. "Morning."

Then Peggotty fitted her mouth close to the keyhole, and spoke these
words through it with as much feeling and earnestness as a keyhole has
ever been the means of communicating, I will venture to say, shooting in
each broken little sentence in a convulsive little burst of its own.

"Davy, dear. If I ain't been azackly as intimate with you. Lately, as I
used to be. It ain't because I don't love you. Just as well and more, my
pretty poppet. It's because I thought it better for you. And for someone
else besides. Davy, my darling, are you listening? Can you hear?"

"Ye--ye--ye--yes, Peggotty!" I sobbed.

"My own!" said Peggotty, with infinite compassion. "What I want to say,
is. That you must never forget me. For I'll never forget you. And I'll
take as much care of your mamma, Davy. As I ever took of you. And I
won't leave her. The day may come when she'll be glad to lay her poor
head. On her stupid, cross old Peggotty's arm again. And I'll write to
you, my dear. Though I ain't no scholar. And I'll--I'll--" Peggotty fell
to kissing the keyhole, as she couldn't kiss me.

"Thank you, dear Peggotty!" said I. "Oh, thank you! Thank you! Will you
promise me one thing, Peggotty? Will you write and tell Mr. Peggotty
and little Em'ly and Mrs. Gummidge and Ham that I am not so bad as they
might suppose, and that I sent 'em all my love--especially to little
Em'ly? Will you, if you please, Peggotty?"

The kind soul promised, and we both of us kissed the keyhole with the
greatest affection--I patted it with my hand, I recollect, as if it had
been her honest face--and parted.

In the morning Miss Murdstone appeared as usual, and told me I was going
to school; which was not altogether such news to me as she supposed. She
also informed me that when I was dressed, I was to come down-stairs into
the parlor and have my breakfast. There I found my mother, very pale and
with red eyes; into whose arms I ran, and begged her pardon from my
suffering soul.

"Oh, Davy!" she said. "That you could hurt anyone I love! Try to be
better, pray to be better! I forgive you; but I am so grieved, Davy,
that you should have such bad passions in your heart."

Miss Murdstone was good enough to take me out to the cart, and to say on
the way that she hoped I would repent, before I came to a bad end; and
then I got into the cart, and the lazy horse walked off with it.

We might have gone about half a mile, and my pocket handkerchief was
quite wet through, when the carrier stopped short.

Looking out to ascertain for what, I saw, to my amazement, Peggotty
burst from a hedge and climb into the cart. She took me in both her arms
and squeezed me until the pressure on my nose was extremely painful,
though I never thought of that till afterwards, when I found it very
tender. Not a single word did Peggotty speak, releasing one of her arms,
she put it down in her pocket to the elbow, and brought out some
paper-bags of cakes, which she crammed into my pockets, and a purse
which she put into my hand, but not one word did she say. After another
and a final squeeze with both arms, she got down from the cart and ran
away; and my belief is, and has always been, without a solitary button
on her gown. I picked up one, of several that was rolling about, and
treasured it as a keepsake for a long time.

The carrier looked at me, as if to inquire if she were coming back. I
shook my head, and said I thought not. "Then come up!" said the carrier
to the lazy horse, who came up accordingly.

Having by this time cried as much as I possibly could, I began to think
it was of no use crying any more. The carrier seeing me in this
resolution, proposed that my pocket handkerchief should be spread upon
the horse's back to dry. I thanked him and agreed; and particularly
small it looked under those circumstances.

I had now time to examine the purse. It was a stiff leather purse, with
a snap, and had three bright shillings in it, which Peggotty had
evidently polished up with whitening, for my greater delight. But its
precious contents were two half-crowns folded together in a bit of
paper, on which was written, in my mother's hand, "For Davy. With my
love." I was so overcome by this, that I asked the carrier to be so good
as reach me my pocket handkerchief again, but he said he thought I had
better do without it; and I thought I really had; so I wiped my eyes on
my sleeve and stopped myself.

For good, too; though, in consequence of my previous feelings, I was
still occasionally seized with a stormy sob. After we had jogged on for
some little time, I asked the carrier if he was going all the way.

"All the way where?" inquired the carrier.

"There," I said.

"Where's there?" inquired the carrier.

"Near London," I said.

"Why, that horse," said the carrier, jerking the rein to point him out,
"would be deader than pork afore he got over half the ground."

"Are you only going to Yarmouth then?" I asked.

"That's about it," said the carrier. "And there I shall take you to the
stage-cutch, and the stage-cutch that'll take you to--wherever it is."

I shared my cakes with the carrier, who asked if Peggotty made them, and
told him yes, she did all our cooking. The carrier looked thoughtful,
and then asked if I would send a message to Peggotty from him. I agreed,
and the message was "Barkis is willing." While I was waiting for the
coach at Yarmouth, I wrote to Peggotty:

"MY DEAR PEGGOTTY:--I have come here safe. Barkis is willing. My love to
mamma. Yours affectionately.

"_P.S._--He says he particularly wanted you to know _Barkis is
willing_."

At Yarmouth I found dinner was ordered for me, and felt very shy at
having a table all to myself, and very much alarmed when the waiter told
me he had seen a gentleman fall down dead after drinking some of their
beer. I said I would have some water, and was quite grateful to the
waiter for drinking the ale that had been ordered for me, for fear the
people of the hotel should be offended. He also helped me to eat my
dinner, and accepted one of my bright shillings.

After a long, tiring journey by the coach, for there were no trains in
those days, I arrived in London and was taken to the school at
Blackheath, by one of the masters, Mr. Mell.

I gazed upon the schoolroom into which he took me, as the most forlorn
and desolate place I had ever seen. I see it now. A long room, with
three long rows of desks, and six of long seats, bristling all round
with pegs for hats and slates. Scraps of old copy-books and exercises
litter the dirty floor.

Mr. Mell having left me for a few moments, I went softly to the upper
end of the room, observing all this as I crept along. Suddenly I came
upon a pasteboard placard, beautifully written which was lying on the
desk, and bore these words--"_Take care of him._ _He bites._"

I got upon the desk immediately, afraid of at least a great dog
underneath. But, though I looked all round with anxious eyes, I could
see nothing of him. I was still engaged in peering about when Mr. Mell
came back, and asked me what I did up there.

"I beg your pardon, sir," says I, "if you please, I'm looking for the
dog."

"Dog?" says he. "What dog?"

"Isn't it a dog, sir?"

"Isn't what a dog?"

"That's to be taken care of, sir; that bites."

"No, Copperfield," says he, gravely, "that's not a dog. That's a boy. My
instructions are, Copperfield, to put this placard on your back. I am
sorry to make such a beginning with you, but I must do it."

With that, he took me down, and tied the placard, which was neatly
constructed for the purpose, on my shoulders like a knapsack; and
wherever I went, afterwards, I had the consolation of carrying it.

What I suffered from that placard, nobody can imagine. Whether it was
possible for people to see me or not, I always fancied that somebody was
reading it. It was no relief to turn round and find nobody; for wherever
my back was, there I imagined somebody always to be.

There was an old door in this playground, on which the boys had a custom
of carving their names. It was completely covered with such
inscriptions. In my dread of the end of the vacation and their coming
back, I could not read one boy's name, without inquiring in what tone
and with what emphasis _he_ would read, "Take care of him. He bites."
There was one boy--a certain J. Steerforth--who cut his name very deep
and very often, who, I conceived, would read it in a rather strong
voice, and afterwards pull my hair. There was another boy, one Tommy
Traddles, who I dreaded would make game of it, and pretend to be
dreadfully frightened of me. There was a third, George Demple, who I
fancied would sing it. I have looked, a little shrinking creature, at
that door, until the owners of all the names--there were five-and-forty
of them in the school then, Mr. Mell said--seemed to cry out, each in
his own way, "Take care of him. He bites!"

Tommy Traddles was the first boy who returned. He introduced himself by
informing me that I should find his name on the right-hand corner of the
gate, over the top bolt; upon that I said, "Traddles?" to which he
replied, "The same," and then he asked me for a full account of myself
and family.

It was fortunate for me that Traddles came back first. He enjoyed my
placard so much that he saved me from the embarrassment of either
telling about it or trying to hide it by presenting me to every other
boy who came back, great or small, immediately on his arrival, in this
form of introduction, "Look here! Here's a game!" Happily, too, the
greater part of the boys came back low-spirited, and were not so
boisterous at my expense as I had expected. Some of them certainly could
not resist the temptation of pretending that I was a dog, and patting
and smoothing me lest I should bite, and saying, "Lie down, sir!" and
calling me Towzer. This was naturally confusing, among so many
strangers, and cost some tears, but on the whole it was much better than
I had anticipated.

I was not considered as being formally received into the school,
however, until J. Steerforth arrived. Before this boy, who was reputed
to be a great scholar, and was very good-looking, and at least
half-a-dozen years older than I, I was carried as before a judge. He
inquired, under a shed in the playground, into the particulars of my
punishment, and was pleased to express his opinion that it was a "jolly
shame;" for which I became bound to him ever afterwards.

"What money have you got, Copperfield?" he said, walking aside with me
when he had disposed of my affair in these terms.

I told him seven shillings.

"You had better give it to me to take care of," he said. "At least, you
can, if you like. You needn't if you don't like."

I hastened to comply with his friendly suggestion, and, opening
Peggotty's purse, turned it upside down into his hand.

"Do you want to spend anything now?" he asked me.

"No, thank you," I replied.

"You can, if you like, you know," said Steerforth. "Say the word."

"No, thank you, sir," I repeated.

"Perhaps you'd like to spend a couple of shillings or so in a bottle of
currant wine by-and-by, up in the bedroom?" said Steerforth. "You belong
to my bedroom, I find."

It certainly had not occurred to me before, but I said, Yes, I should
like that.

"Very good," said Steerforth. "You'll be glad to spend another shilling
or so in almond cakes, I dare say?"

I said, "Yes, I should like that, too."

"And another shilling or so in biscuits, and another in fruit, eh?" said
Steerforth. "I say, young Copperfield, you're going it!"

I smiled because he smiled, but I was a little troubled in my mind, too.

"Well!" said Steerforth. "We must make it stretch as far as we can;
that's all. I'll do the best in my power for you. I can go out when I
like, and I'll smuggle the prog in." With these words he put the money
in his pocket, and kindly told me not to make myself uneasy; he would
take care it should be all right.

He was as good as his word, if that were all right which I had a secret
misgiving was nearly all wrong--for I feared it was a waste of my
mother's two half-crowns--though I had preserved the piece of paper they
were wrapped in; which was a precious saving. When we went up-stairs to
bed, he produced the whole seven shillings worth, and laid it out on my
bed in the moonlight, saying:

"There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you've got!"

I couldn't think of doing the honors of the feast at my time of life,
while he was by; my hand shook at the very thought of it. I begged him
to do me the favor of taking charge of the treat; and my request being
seconded by the other boys who were in that room, he agreed to it, and
sat upon my pillow, handing round the food--with perfect fairness, I
must say--and giving out the currant wine in a little glass without a
foot, which was his own property. As to me, I sat on his left hand, and
the rest were grouped about us, on the nearest beds and on the floor.

How well I recollect our sitting there, talking in whispers; or their
talking, and my respectfully listening, I ought rather to say; the
moonlight falling a little way into the room, through the window,
painting a pale window on the floor, and the greater part of us in
shadow, except when Steerforth scratched a match, when he wanted to look
for anything on the board, and shed a blue glare over us that was gone
directly! A certain mysterious feeling, consequent on the darkness, the
secrecy of the revel, and the whisper in which everything was said,
steals over me again, and I listen to all they tell me, with a vague
feeling of solemnity and awe, which makes me glad they are all so near,
and frightens me (though I feign to laugh) when Traddles pretends to see
a ghost in the corner.

I heard all kinds of things about the school and all belonging to it. I
heard that Mr. Creakle was the sternest and most severe of masters; that
he laid about him, right and left, every day of his life, charging in
among the boys like a trooper, and slashing away, unmercifully.

I heard that the man with the wooden leg, whose name was Tungay, was an
obstinate fellow who had formerly been in the hop business, but had
come into the line with Mr. Creakle, in consequence, as was supposed
among the boys, of his having broken his leg in Mr. Creakle's service,
and having done a deal of dishonest work for him, and knowing his
secrets.

But the greatest wonder that I heard of Mr. Creakle was, there being one
boy in the school on whom he never ventured to lay a hand, and that that
boy being J. Steerforth. Steerforth himself confirmed this when it was
stated, and said that he should like to begin to see him do it. On being
asked by a mild boy (not me) how he would proceed if he did begin to see
him do it, he scratched a match on purpose to shed a glare over his
reply, and said he would commence with knocking him down with a blow on
the forehead from the seven-and-six-penny ink-bottle that was always on
the mantelpiece. We sat in the dark for some time, breathless.

I heard that Miss Creakle was regarded by the school in general as being
in love with Steerforth; and I am sure, as I sat in the dark, thinking
of his nice voice, and his fine face, and his easy manner, and his
curling hair, I thought it very likely. I heard that Mr. Mell was not a
bad sort of fellow, but hadn't a sixpence to bless himself with; and
that there was no doubt that old Mrs. Mell, his mother, was as poor as
Job.

One day, Traddles (the most unfortunate boy in the world) breaks a
window accidentally with a ball. I shudder at this moment with the
tremendous sensation of seeing it done, and feeling that the ball has
bounded on to Mr. Creakle's sacred head.

Poor Traddles! In a tight sky-blue suit that made his arms and legs like
German sausages, or roly-poly puddings, he was the merriest and most
miserable of all the boys. He was always being caned--I think he was
caned every day that half-year, except one holiday Monday, when he was
only rulered on both hands--and was always going to write to his uncle
about it, and never did. After laying his head on the desk for a little
while, he would cheer up somehow, begin to laugh again, and draw
skeletons all over his slate before his eyes were dry. I used at first
to wonder what comfort Traddles found in drawing skeletons. But I
believe he only did it because they were easy, and didn't want any
features.

He was very honorable, Traddles was; and held it as a solemn duty in the
boys to stand by one another. He suffered for this on several occasions;
and particularly once, when Steerforth laughed in church, and the
beadle thought it was Traddles, and took him out. I see him now, going
away under guard, despised by the congregation. He never said who was
the real offender, though he smarted for it next day, and was imprisoned
so many hours that he came forth with a whole churchyard full of
skeletons swarming all over his Latin Dictionary. But he had his reward.
Steerforth said there was nothing of the sneak in Traddles, and we all
felt that to be the highest praise. For my part, I could have gone
through a great deal (though I was much less brave than Traddles, and
nothing like so old) to have won such a reward, as praise from J.
Steerforth.

To see Steerforth walk to church before us, arm-in-arm with Miss
Creakle, was one of the great sights of my life. I didn't think Miss
Creakle equal to little Em'ly in point of beauty, and I didn't love her
(I didn't dare); but I thought her a young lady of extraordinary
attractions, and in point of gentility not to be surpassed. When
Steerforth, in white trousers, carried her parasol for her, I felt proud
to know him; and believed that she could not choose but adore him with
all her heart. Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both great personages in my
eyes; but Steerforth was to them what the sun was to two stars. An
accidental matter strengthened the friendship between Steerforth and me,
in a manner that inspired me with great pride and satisfaction, though
it sometimes led to inconvenience. It happened on one occasion, when he
was doing me the honor of talking to me in the playground that I
remarked that something or somebody--I forget what now--was like
something or somebody in the story of Peregrine Pickle. He said nothing
at the time; but when I was going to bed at night, asked me if I had got
that book.

I told him no, and explained how it was that I had read it, and all
those other books of which I had made mention.

"And do you recollect them?" Steerforth said.

"Oh yes," I replied; I had a good memory, and I believed I recollected
them very well.

"Then I tell you what, young Copperfield," said Steerforth, "you shall
tell 'em to me. I can't get to sleep very early at night, and I
generally wake rather early in the morning. We'll go over 'em one after
another. We'll make some regular Arabian Nights of it."

I felt extremely flattered by this arrangement, and we commenced
carrying out the plan that very evening.

Steerforth showed his thought for me in one particular instance, in an
unflinching manner that was a little troublesome, to poor Traddles and
the rest. Peggotty's promised letter--what a comfortable letter it
was!--arrived before "the half" of the school-term was many weeks old;
and with it a cake in a perfect nest of oranges, and two bottles of
cowslip wine. This treasure, as in duty bound, I laid at the feet of
Steerforth, and begged him to divide it among the boys.

"Now, I'll tell you what, young Copperfield," said he, "the wine shall
be kept to wet your whistle when you are story-telling."

I blushed at the idea, and begged him, in my modesty, not to think of
it. But he said he had observed I was sometimes hoarse--a little roopy
was his exact expression--and it should be, every drop, set apart to the
purpose he had mentioned. Accordingly, it was locked up in his box, and
drawn off by himself in a phial, and administered to me through a piece
of quill in the cork, when I was supposed to be in want of something to
restore my voice. Sometimes, to make it more powerful, he was so kind as
to squeeze orange juice into it, or to stir it up with ginger, or
dissolve a peppermint drop in it.

We seem to me to have been months over Peregrine, and months more over
the other stories. The school never flagged for want of a story, I am
certain; and the wine lasted out almost as well as the matter. Poor
Traddles--I never think of that boy but with a strange disposition to
laugh, and with tears in my eyes--was a sort of echo to the story; and
pretended to be overcome with laughing at the funny parts, and to be
overcome with fear when there was any passage of an alarming character
in the story. This rather put me out very often. It was a great jest of
his, I recollect, to pretend that he couldn't keep his teeth from
chattering, whenever mention was made of an Alguazil in connection with
the adventures of Gil Blas; and I remember when Gil Blas met the captain
of the robbers in Madrid, this unlucky joker acted such a shudder of
terror that he was overheard by Mr. Creakle, who was prowling about the
passage, and handsomely flogged for disorderly conduct in the bedroom.

One day I had a visit from Mr. Peggotty and Ham, who had brought two
enormous lobsters, a huge crab, and a large canvas bag of shrimps, as
they "remembered I was partial to a relish with my meals."

I was proud to introduce my friend Steerforth to these kind, simple
friends, and told them how good Steerforth was to me, and how he helped
me with my work and took care of me, and Steerforth delighted the
fishermen with his friendly, pleasant manners.

The "relish" was greatly enjoyed by the boys at supper that night. Only
poor Traddles became very ill from eating crab so late.

At last the holidays came, and I went home. The carrier, Barkis, met me
at Yarmouth, and was rather gruff, which I soon found out was because he
had not had any answer to his message. I promised to ask Peggotty for
one.

Ah, what a strange feeling it was to be going home when it was not home,
and to find that every object I looked at reminded me of the happy old
home, which was like a dream I could never dream again!

God knows how like a child the memory may have been that was awakened
within me by the sound of my mother's voice in the old parlor, when I
set foot in the hall.

I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother
murmured her song, that she was alone. And I went softly into the room.
She was sitting by the fire, nursing an infant, whose tiny hand she held
against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she sat
singing to it. I was so far right, that she had no other companion.

I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out. But seeing me, she
called me her dear Davy, her own boy; and, coming half across the room
to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head
down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and
put its hand up to my lips.

I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my
heart! I should have been more fit for heaven than I ever have been
since.

"He is your brother," said my mother, fondling me. "Davy, my pretty boy:
my poor child!" Then she kissed me more and more, and clasped me round
the neck. This she was doing when Peggotty came running in, and bounced
down on the ground beside us and went mad about us both for a quarter of
an hour.

We had a very happy afternoon the day I came. Mr. and Miss Murdstone
were out, and I sat with my mother and Peggotty, and told them all about
my school and Steerforth, and took the little baby in my arms and nursed
it lovingly. But when the Murdstones came back I was more unhappy than
ever.

I felt uncomfortable about going down to breakfast in The morning, as I
had never set eyes on Mr. Murdstone since the day when I committed my
memorable offense. However, as it must be done, I went down, after two
or three false starts halfway, and as many runs back on tiptoe to my own
room, and presented myself in the parlor.

He was standing before the fire with his back to it, while Miss
Murdstone made the tea. He looked at me steadily as I entered, but made
no sign of recognition whatever.

I went up to him, after a moment of confusion, and said, "I beg your
pardon, sir. I am very sorry for what I did, and I hope you will forgive
me."

"I am glad to hear you are sorry, David," he replied.

"How do you do, ma'am?" I said to Miss Murdstone.

"Ah, dear me!" sighed Miss Murdstone, giving me the tea-caddy scoop
instead of her finger. "How long are the holidays?"

"A month, ma'am."

"Counting from when?"

"From to-day, ma'am."

"Oh!" said Miss Murdstone. "Then here's _one_ day off."

She kept a calendar of the holidays in this way, and every morning
checked a day off in exactly the same manner. She did it gloomily until
she came to ten, but when she got into two figures she became more
hopeful, and, as the time advanced, even jocular.

Thus the holidays lagged away, until the morning came when Miss
Murdstone said: "Here's the last day off!" and gave me the closing cup
of tea of the vacation.

I was not sorry to go. Again Mr. Barkis appeared at the gate, and again
Miss Murdstone in her warning voice said: "Clara!" when my mother bent
over me, to bid me farewell.

I kissed her and my baby brother; it is not so much the embrace she gave
me that lives in my mind, though it was as fervent as could be, as what
followed the embrace.

I was in the carrier's cart when I heard her calling to me. I looked
out, and she stood at the garden gate alone, holding her baby up in her
arms for me to see. It was cold, still weather; and not a hair of her
head, or fold of her dress, was stirred, as she looked intently at me,
holding up her child.

So I lost her. So I saw her afterwards in my sleep at school--a silent
presence near my bed--looking at me with the same intent face--holding
up her baby in her arms.

About two months after I had been back at school I was sent for one day
to go into the parlor. I hurried in joyfully, for it was my birthday,
and I thought it might be a box from Peggotty--but, alas! no; it was
very sad news Mrs. Creakle had to give me--my dear mamma had died! Mrs.
Creakle was very kind and gentle to me, and the boys, especially
Traddles, were very sorry for me.

I went home the next day, and heard that the dear baby had died too.
Peggotty received me with great tenderness, and told me about my
mother's illness and how she had sent a loving message to me.

"Tell my dearest boy that his mother, as she lay here, blessed him not
once, but a thousand times," and she had prayed to God to protect and
keep her fatherless boy.

Mr. Murdstone did not take any notice of me, nor had Miss Murdstone a
word of kindness for me. Peggotty was to leave in a month, and, to my
great joy, I was allowed to go with her on a visit to Mr. Peggotty. On
our way I found out that the mysterious message I had given to Peggotty
meant that Barkis wanted to marry her, and Peggotty had consented.
Everyone in Mr. Peggotty's cottage was pleased to see me, and did their
best to comfort me. Little Em'ly was at school when I arrived, and I
went out to meet her. 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 own 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 would do nothing but laugh.

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

"Ah," said Peggotty, running his fingers through her bright curls,
"here's another orphan, you see, sir, and here," 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 a guardian, Mr. Peggotty," said I, "I don't think I
should _feel_ much like it."

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.

During this visit Peggotty was married to Mr. Barkis, and had a nice
little house of her own, and I spent the night before I was to return
home in a little room in the roof.

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

I felt how good and true a friend she was, and thanked her as well as I
could, for they had brought me to the gate of my home, and Peggotty had
me clasped in her arms.

I was poor and lonely at home, with no one near to speak a loving word,
or a face to look on with love or liking, only the two persons who had
broken my mother's heart. How utterly wretched and forlorn I felt! I
found I was not to go back to school any more, and wandered about sad
and solitary, neglected and uncared for. Peggotty's weekly visits were
my only comfort. I longed to go to school, however hard an one, to be
taught something anyhow, anywhere--but no one took any pains with me,
and I had no friends near who could help me.

At last one day, after some weary months had passed, Mr. Murdstone told
me I was to go to London and earn my own living. There was a place for
me at Murdstone & Grinby's, a firm in the wine trade. My lodging and
clothes would be provided for me by my step-father, and I would earn
enough for my food and pocket money. The next day, I was sent up to
London with the manager, dressed in a shabby little white hat with black
crape round it for my mother, a black jacket, and hard, stiff corduroy
trousers, a little fellow of ten years old, to fight my own battles with
the world!

My place, I found, was one of the lowest in the firm of Murdstone &
Grinby, with boys of no education and in quite an inferior station to
myself--my duties were to wash the bottles, stick on labels, and so on.
I was utterly miserable at being degraded in this way, when I thought of
my former companions, Steerforth and Traddles, and my hopes of becoming
a learned and famous man, and shed bitter tears, as I feared I would
forget all I had learnt at school. My lodging, one bare little room, was
in the house of some people named Micawber, shiftless, careless,
good-natured people, who were always in debt and difficulties. I felt
great pity for their misfortunes and did what I could to help poor Mrs.
Micawber to sell her books and other little things she could spare, to
buy food for herself, her husband, and their four children. I was too
young and childish to know how to provide properly for myself, and often
found I was obliged to live on bread and slices of cold pudding at the
end of the week. If I had not been a very innocent-minded, good little
boy, I might easily have fallen into bad ways at this time. But God took
care of me and kept me from harm. I would not even tell Peggotty how
miserable I was, for fear of distressing her.

The troubles of the Micawbers increased more and more, until at last
they were obliged to leave London. I was very sad at this, for I had
been with them so long that I felt they were my friends, and the
prospect of being once more utterly alone and having to find a lodging
with strangers, made me so unhappy that I determined to endure this sort
of life no longer. The last Sunday the Micawbers were in town I dined
with them. I had bought a spotted horse for their little boy and a doll
for the little girl, and had saved up a shilling for the poor
servant-girl. After I had seen them off the next morning by the coach, I
wrote to Peggotty to ask her if she knew where my aunt, Miss Betsy
Trotwood, lived, and to borrow half-a-guinea; for I had resolved to run
away from Murdstone & Grinby's, and go to this aunt and tell her my
story. I remembered my mother telling me of her visit when I was a baby,
and that she fancied Miss Betsy had stroked her hair gently, and this
gave me courage to appeal to her. Peggotty wrote, enclosing the
half-guinea, and saying she only knew Miss Trotwood lived near Dover,
but whether in that place itself, or at Folkestone, Sandgate, or Hythe,
she could not tell. Hearing that all these places were close together, I
made up my mind to start. As I had received my week's wages in advance,
I waited till the following Saturday, thinking it would not be honest to
go before. I went out to look for someone to carry my box to the coach
office, and unfortunately hired a wicked young man who not only ran off
with the box, but robbed me of my half-guinea, leaving me in dire
distress. In despair, I started off to walk to Dover, and was forced to
sell my waistcoat to buy some bread. The first night I found my way to
my old school at Blackheath, and slept on a haystack close by, feeling
some comfort in the thought of the boys being near. I knew Steerforth
had left, or I would have tried to see him.

On I trudged the next day and sold my jacket at Chatham to a dreadful
old man, who kept me waiting all day for the money, which was only one
shilling and fourpence. I was afraid to buy anything but bread or to
spend any money on a bed or a shelter for the night, and was terribly
frightened by some rough tramps, who threw stones at me when I did not
answer to their calls. After six days, I arrived at Dover, ragged,
dusty, and half-dead with hunger and fatigue. But here, at first, I
could get no tidings of my aunt, and, in despair, was going to try some
of the other places Peggotty had mentioned, when the driver of a fly
dropped his horsecloth, and as I was handing it up to him, I saw
something kind in the man's face that encouraged me to ask once more if
he knew where Miss Trotwood lived.

The man directed me towards some houses on the heights, and thither I
toiled. Going into a little shop, I by chance met with Miss Trotwood's
maid, who showed me the house, and went in leaving me standing at the
gate, a forlorn little creature, without a jacket or waistcoat, my white
hat crushed out of shape, my shoes worn out, my shirt and trousers torn
and stained, my pretty curly hair tangled, my face and hands sunburnt
and covered with dust. Lifting my eyes to one of the windows above, I
saw a pleasant-faced gentleman with gray hair, who nodded at me several
times, then shook his head and went away. I was just turning away to
think what I should do, when a tall, erect elderly lady, with a
gardening apron on and a knife in her hand, came out of the house, and
began to dig up a root in the garden.

"Go away," she said. "Go away. No boys here."

But I felt desperate. Going in softly, I stood beside her, and touched
her with my finger, and said timidly, "If you please, ma'am--" and when
she looked up, I went on--

"Please, aunt, I am your nephew."

"Oh, Lord!" she exclaimed in astonishment, and sat flat down on the
path, staring at me, while I went on--

"I am David Copperfield of Blunderstone, in Suffolk, where you came the
night I was born, and saw my dear mamma. I have been very unhappy since
she died. I have been neglected and taught nothing, and thrown upon
myself, and put to work not fit for me. It made me run away to you. I
was robbed at first starting out and have walked all the way, and have
never slept in a bed since I began the journey." Here I broke into a
passion of crying, and my aunt jumped up and took me into the house,
where she opened a cupboard and took out some bottles, pouring some of
the contents of each into my mouth, not noticing in her agitation what
they were, for I fancied I tasted anise-seed water, anchovy sauce, and
salad dressing! Then she put me on the sofa and sent the servant to ask
"Mr. Dick" to come down. The gentleman whom I had seen at the window
came in and was told by Miss Trotwood who the ragged little object on
the sofa was, and she finished by saying--

"Now here you see young David Copperfield, and the question is what
shall I do with him?"

"Do with him?" answered Mr. Dick. Then, after some consideration, and
looking at me, he said, "Well, if I was you, I should wash him!"

Miss Trotwood was quite pleased at this, and a warm bath was got ready
at once, after which I was dressed in a shirt and trousers belonging to
Mr. Dick (for Janet had burnt my rags), rolled up in several shawls, and
put on the sofa till dinner-time, where I slept, and woke with the
impression that my aunt had come and put my hair off my face, and
murmured, "Pretty fellow, poor fellow."

After dinner I had to tell my story all over again to my aunt and Mr.
Dick. Miss Trotwood again asked Mr. Dick's advice, and was delighted
when that gentleman suggested I should be put to bed. I knelt down to
say my prayers that night in a pleasant room facing the sea, and as I
lay in the clean, snow-white bed, I felt so grateful and comforted that
I prayed earnestly I might never be homeless again, and might never
forget the homeless.

The next morning my aunt told me she had written to Mr. Murdstone. I was
alarmed to think that my step-father knew where I was, and exclaimed--

"Oh, I don't know what I shall do if I have to go back to Mr.
Murdstone!"

But my aunt said nothing of her intentions, and I was uncertain what was
to become of me. I hoped she might befriend me.

At last Mr. and Miss Murdstone arrived. To Miss Betsy's great
indignation, Miss Murdstone rode a donkey across the green in front of
the house, and stopped at the gate. Nothing made Miss Trotwood so angry
as to see donkeys on that green, and I had already seen several battles
between my aunt or Janet and the donkey boys.

After driving away the donkey and the boy who had dared to bring it
there, Miss Trotwood received her visitors. She kept me near her, fenced
in with a chair.

Mr. Murdstone told Miss Betsy that I was a very bad, stubborn,
violent-tempered boy, whom he had tried to improve, but could not
succeed; that he had put me in a respectable business from which I had
run away. If Miss Trotwood chose to protect and encourage me now, she
must do it always, for he had come to fetch me away from there and then,
and if I was ready to come, and Miss Trotwood did not wish to give me up
to be dealt with exactly as Mr. Murdstone liked, he would cast me off
for always, and have no more to do with me.

"Are you ready to go, David?" asked my aunt.

But I answered no, and begged and prayed her for my father's sake to
befriend and protect me, for neither Mr. nor Miss Murdstone had ever
liked me or been kind to me and had made my mamma, who always loved me
dearly, very unhappy about me, and I had been very miserable.

"Mr. Dick," said Miss Trotwood, "what shall I do with this child?"

Mr. Dick considered. "Have him measured for a suit of clothes directly."

"Mr. Dick," said Miss Trotwood, "your common sense is invaluable."

Then she pulled me towards her, and said to Mr. Murdstone, "You can go
when you like. I'll take my chance with the boy. If he's all you say he
is I can at least do as much for him as you have done. But I don't
believe a word of it."

Then she told Mr. Murdstone what she thought of the way he had treated
me and my mother, which did not make that gentleman feel very
comfortable, and finished by turning to Miss Murdstone and saying--

"Good-day to you, too, ma'am, and if I ever see you ride a donkey across
my green again, as sure as you have a head upon your shoulders, I'll
knock your bonnet off and tread upon it!"

This startled Miss Murdstone so much that she went off quite quietly
with her brother, while I, overjoyed, threw my arms round my aunt's
neck, and kissed and thanked her with great heartiness.

Some clothes were bought for me that same day and marked "Trotwood
Copperfield," for my aunt wished to call me by her name.

Now I felt my troubles were over, and I began quite a new life, well
cared for and kindly treated. I was sent to a very nice school in
Canterbury, where my aunt left me with these words, which I never
forgot:

"Trot, be a credit to yourself, to me, and Mr. Dick, and heaven be with
you. Never be mean in anything, never be false, never be cruel. Avoid
these three vices, Trot, and I shall always be hopeful of you?"

I did my best to show my gratitude to my dear aunt by studying hard, and
trying to be all she could wish.

When you are older you can read how Little David Copperfield grew up to
be a good, clever man, and met again all his old friends, and made many
new ones.

Also, what became of Steerforth, Traddles, the Peggottys, little Em'ly,
and the Micawbers.




VIII.

JENNY WREN.


WALKING into the city one holiday, a great many years ago, a gentleman
ra

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