We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to Doctors’ Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and whimsical lights, that made us both merry. When we came to our journey’s end, he went home, engaging to call upon me next day but one; and I drove to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where I found my aunt up, and waiting supper.

If I had been round the world since we parted, we could hardly have been better pleased to meet again. My aunt cried outright as she embraced me; and said, pretending to laugh, that if my poor mother had been alive, that silly little creature would have shed tears, she had no doubt.

“So you have left Mr. Dick behind, aunt?” said I. “I am sorry for that. Ah, Janet, how do you do?”

As Janet curtsied, hoping I was well, I observed my aunt’s visage lengthen very much.

“I am sorry for it, too,” said my aunt, rubbing her nose. “I have had no peace of mind, Trot, since I have been here.” Before I could ask why, she told me.

“I am convinced,” said my aunt, laying her hand with melancholy firmness on the table, “that Dick’s character is not a character to keep the donkeys off. I am confident he wants strength of purpose. I ought to have left Janet at home, instead, and then my mind might perhaps have been at ease. If ever there was a donkey trespassing on my green,” said my aunt, with emphasis, “there was one this afternoon at four o’clock. A cold feeling came over me from head to foot, and I know it was a donkey!”

I tried to comfort her on this point, but she rejected consolation.

“It was a donkey,” said my aunt; “and it was the one with the stumpy tail which that Murdering sister of a woman rode, when she came to my house.” This had been, ever since, the only name my aunt knew for Miss Murdstone. “If there is any Donkey in Dover, whose audacity it is harder to me to bear than another’s, that,” said my aunt, striking the table, “is the animal!”

Janet ventured to suggest that my aunt might be disturbing herself unnecessarily, and that she believed the donkey in question was then engaged in the sand-and-gravel line of business, and was not available for purposes of trespass. But my aunt wouldn’t hear of it.

Supper was comfortably served and hot, though my aunt’s rooms were very high up—whether that she might have more stone stairs for her money, or might be nearer to the door in the roof, I don’t know — and consisted of a roast fowl, a steak, and some vegetables, to all of which I did ample justice, and which were all excellent. But my aunt had her own ideas concerning London provision, and ate but little.

“I suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought up in a cellar,” said my aunt, “and never took the air except on a hackney coach-stand. I hope the steak may be beef, but I don’t believe it. Nothing’s genuine in the place, in my opinion, but the dirt.”

“Don’t you think the fowl may have come out of the country, aunt?” I hinted.

“Certainly not,” returned my aunt. “It would be no pleasure to a London tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was.”

I did not venture to controvert this opinion, but I made a good supper, which it greatly satisfied her to see me do. When the table was cleared, Janet assisted her to arrange her hair, to put on her nightcap, which was of a smarter construction than usual (“in case of fire”, my aunt said), and to fold her gown back over her knees, these being her usual preparations for warming herself before going to bed. I then made her, according to certain established regulations from which no deviation, however slight, could ever be permitted, a glass of hot wine and water, and a slice of toast cut into long thin strips. With these accompaniments we were left alone to finish the evening, my aunt sitting opposite to me drinking her wine and water; soaking her strips of toast in it, one by one, before eating them; and looking benignantly on me, from among the borders of her nightcap.

“Well, Trot,” she began, “what do you think of the proctor plan? Or have you not begun to think about it yet?”

“I have thought a good deal about it, my dear aunt, and I have talked a good deal about it with Steerforth. I like it very much indeed. I like it exceedingly.”

“Come!” said my aunt. “That’s cheering!”

“I have only one difficulty, aunt.”

“Say what it is, Trot,” she returned.

“Why, I want to ask, aunt, as this seems, from what I understand, to be a limited profession, whether my entrance into it would not be very expensive?”

“It will cost,” returned my aunt, “to article you, just a thousand pounds.”

“Now, my dear aunt,” said I, drawing my chair nearer, “I am uneasy in my mind about that. It’s a large sum of money. You have expended a great deal on my education, and have always been as liberal to me in all things as it was possible to be. You have been the soul of generosity. Surely there are some ways in which I might begin life with hardly any outlay, and yet begin with a good hope of getting on by resolution and exertion. Are you sure that it would not be better to try that course? Are you certain that you can afford to part with so much money, and that it is right that it should be so expended? I only ask you, my second mother, to consider. Are you certain?”

My aunt finished eating the piece of toast on which she was then engaged, looking me full in the face all the while; and then setting her glass on the chimney-piece, and folding her hands upon her folded skirts, replied as follows:

“Trot, my child, if I have any object in life, it is to provide for your being a good, a sensible, and a happy man. I am bent upon it — so is Dick. I should like some people that I know to hear Dick’s conversation on the subject. Its sagacity is wonderful. But no one knows the resources of that man’s intellect, except myself!”

She stopped for a moment to take my hand between hers, and went on:

“It’s in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present. Perhaps I might have been better friends with your poor father. Perhaps I might have been better friends with that poor child your mother, even after your sister Betsey Trotwood disappointed me. When you came to me, a little runaway boy, all dusty and way-worn, perhaps I thought so. From that time until now, Trot, you have ever been a credit to me and a pride and a pleasure. I have no other claim upon my means; at least”—here to my surprise she hesitated, and was confused—“no, I have no other claim upon my means—and you are my adopted child. Only be a loving child to me in my age, and bear with my whims and fancies; and you will do more for an old woman whose prime of life was not so happy or conciliating as it might have been, than ever that old woman did for you.”

It was the first time I had heard my aunt refer to her past history. There was a magnanimity in her quiet way of doing so, and of dismissing it, which would have exalted her in my respect and affection, if anything could.

“All is agreed and understood between us, now, Trot,” said my aunt, “and we need talk of this no more. Give me a kiss, and we’ll go to the Commons after breakfast tomorrow.”

We had a long chat by the fire before we went to bed. I slept in a room on the same floor with my aunt’s, and was a little disturbed in the course of the night by her knocking at my door as often as she was agitated by a distant sound of hackney-coaches or market-carts, and inquiring, “if I heard the engines?” But towards morning she slept better, and suffered me to do so too.

When I awoke in the morning I thought very much of little Em’ly, and her emotion last night, after Martha had left. I felt as if I had come into the knowledge of those domestic weaknesses and tendernesses in a sacred confidence, and that to disclose them, even to Steerforth, would be wrong. I had no gentler feeling towards anyone than towards the pretty creature who had been my playmate, and whom I have always been persuaded, and shall always be persuaded, to my dying day, I then devotedly loved. The repetition to any ears—even to Steerforth’s—of what she had been unable to repress when her heart lay open to me by an accident, I felt would be a rough deed, unworthy of myself, unworthy of the light of our pure childhood, which I always saw encircling her head. I made a resolution, therefore, to keep it in my own breast; and there it gave her image a new grace.

While we were at breakfast, a letter was delivered to me from my aunt. As it contained matter on which I thought Steerforth could advise me as well as anyone, and on which I knew I should be delighted to consult him, I resolved to make it a subject of discussion on our journey home. For the present we had enough to do, in taking leave of all our friends. Mr. Barkis was far from being the last among them, in his regret at our departure; and I believe would even have opened the box again, and sacrificed another guinea, if it would have kept us eight-and-forty hours in Yarmouth. Peggotty and all her family were full of grief at our going. The whole house of Omer and Joram turned out to bid us good-bye; and there were so many seafaring volunteers in attendance on Steerforth, when our portmanteaux went to the coach, that if we had had the baggage of a regiment with us, we should hardly have wanted porters to carry it. In a word, we departed to the regret and admiration of all concerned, and left a great many people very sorry behind us.

“Do you stay long here, Littimer?” said I, as he stood waiting to see the coach start.

“No, sir,” he replied; “probably not very long, sir.”

“He can hardly say, just now,” observed Steerforth, carelessly. “He knows what he has to do, and he’ll do it.”

“That I am sure he will,” said I.

Littimer touched his hat in acknowledgement of my good opinion, and I felt about eight years old. He touched it once more, wishing us a good journey; and we left him standing on the pavement, as respectable a mystery as any pyramid in Egypt.

For some little time we held no conversation, Steerforth being unusually silent, and I being sufficiently engaged in wondering, within myself, when I should see the old places again, and what new changes might happen to me or them in the meanwhile. At length Steerforth, becoming gay and talkative in a moment, as he could become anything he liked at any moment, pulled me by the arm:

“Find a voice, David. What about that letter you were speaking of at breakfast?”

“Oh!” said I, taking it out of my pocket. “It’s from my aunt.”

“And what does she say, requiring consideration?”

“Why, she reminds me, Steerforth,” said I, “that I came out on this expedition to look about me, and to think a little.”

“Which, of course, you have done?”

“Indeed I can’t say I have, particularly. To tell you the truth, I am afraid I have forgotten it.”

“Well! look about you now, and make up for your negligence,” said Steerforth. “Look to the right, and you’ll see a flat country, with a good deal of marsh in it; look to the left, and you’ll see the same. Look to the front, and you’ll find no difference; look to the rear, and there it is still.” I laughed, and replied that I saw no suitable profession in the whole prospect; which was perhaps to be attributed to its flatness.

“What says our aunt on the subject?” inquired Steerforth, glancing at the letter in my hand. “Does she suggest anything?”

“Why, yes,” said I. “She asks me, here, if I think I should like to be a proctor? What do you think of it?”

“Well, I don’t know,” replied Steerforth, coolly. “You may as well do that as anything else, I suppose?”

I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all callings and professions so equally; and I told him so.

“What is a proctor, Steerforth?” said I.

“Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney,” replied Steerforth. “He is, to some faded courts held in Doctors’ Commons,—a lazy old nook near St. Paul’s Churchyard—what solicitors are to the courts of law and equity. He is a functionary whose existence, in the natural course of things, would have terminated about two hundred years ago. I can tell you best what he is, by telling you what Doctors’ Commons is. It’s a little out-of-the-way place, where they administer what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old monsters of acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the world know nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards. It’s a place that has an ancient monopoly in suits about people’s wills and people’s marriages, and disputes among ships and boats.”

“Nonsense, Steerforth!” I exclaimed. “You don’t mean to say that there is any affinity between nautical matters and ecclesiastical matters?”

“I don’t, indeed, my dear boy,” he returned; “but I mean to say that they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that same Doctors’ Commons. You shall go there one day, and find them blundering through half the nautical terms in Young’s Dictionary, apropos of the ‘Nancy’ having run down the ‘Sarah Jane’, or Mr. Peggotty and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in a gale of wind with an anchor and cable to the ‘Nelson’ Indiaman in distress; and you shall go there another day, and find them deep in the evidence, pro and con, respecting a clergyman who has misbehaved himself; and you shall find the judge in the nautical case, the advocate in the clergyman’s case, or contrariwise. They are like actors: now a man’s a judge, and now he is not a judge; now he’s one thing, now he’s another; now he’s something else, change and change about; but it’s always a very pleasant, profitable little affair of private theatricals, presented to an uncommonly select audience.”

“But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?” said I, a little puzzled. “Are they?”

“No,” returned Steerforth, “the advocates are civilians—men who have taken a doctor’s degree at college—which is the first reason of my knowing anything about it. The proctors employ the advocates. Both get very comfortable fees, and altogether they make a mighty snug little party. On the whole, I would recommend you to take to Doctors’ Commons kindly, David. They plume themselves on their gentility there, I can tell you, if that’s any satisfaction.”

I made allowance for Steerforth’s light way of treating the subject, and, considering it with reference to the staid air of gravity and antiquity which I associated with that “lazy old nook near St. Paul’s Churchyard”, did not feel indisposed towards my aunt’s suggestion; which she left to my free decision, making no scruple of telling me that it had occurred to her, on her lately visiting her own proctor in Doctors’ Commons for the purpose of settling her will in my favour.

“That’s a laudable proceeding on the part of our aunt, at all events,” said Steerforth, when I mentioned it; “and one deserving of all encouragement. Daisy, my advice is that you take kindly to Doctors’ Commons.”

I quite made up my mind to do so. I then told Steerforth that my aunt was in town awaiting me (as I found from her letter), and that she had taken lodgings for a week at a kind of private hotel at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where there was a stone staircase, and a convenient door in the roof; my aunt being firmly persuaded that every house in London was going to be burnt down every night.

We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to Doctors’ Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and whimsical lights, that made us both merry. When we came to our journey’s end, he went home, engaging to call upon me next day but one; and I drove to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where I found my aunt up, and waiting supper.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, yes, you have, I’m sure,” said Ham.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They were indeed, Ham. What did Em’ly do?”

“Says Em’ly, ‘Martha, is it you? Oh, Martha, can it be you?’—for they had sat at work together, many a day, at Mr. Omer’s.”

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

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

“I never heard her name,” said I. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Martha wants,” she said to Ham, “to go to London.”

“Why to London?” returned Ham.

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

“Better there than here,” said a third voice aloud—Martha’s, though she did not move. “No one knows me there. Everybody knows me here.”

“What will she do there?” inquired Ham.

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

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

Peggotty shook her head compassionately.

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

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

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

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

“No, Miss Mowcher,” I replied. “Her name is Emily.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you, Miss Mowcher, not this evening.”

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

“Thank you,” I returned, “some other time.”

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

“No, I thank you. Not at present.”

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

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

“The fee,” said Steerforth, “is—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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