LITMIR.BIZ

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might have been a dream, originating in the fancy which had occupied my mind so long, but I awoke with the impression that my aunt had come and bent over me, and had put my hair away from my face, and laid my head more comfortably, and had then stood looking at me. The words, “Pretty fellow,” or “Poor fellow,” seemed to be in my ears, too; but certainly there was nothing else, when I awoke, to lead me to believe that they had been uttered by my aunt, who sat in the bow-window gazing at the sea from behind the green fan, which was mounted on a kind of swivel, and turned any way.

      We dined soon after I awoke, off a roast fowl and a pudding; I sitting at table, not unlike a trussed bird myself, and moving my arms with considerable difficulty. But as my aunt had swathed me up, I made no complaint of being inconvenienced. All this time, I was deeply anxious to know what she was going to do with me; but she took her dinner in profound silence, except when she occasionally fixed her eyes on me sitting opposite, and said, “Mercy upon us!” which did not by any means relieve my anxiety.

      The cloth being drawn, and some sherry put upon the table (of which I had a glass), my aunt sent up for Mr. Dick again, who joined us, and looked as wise as he could when she requested him to attend to my story, which she elicited from me, gradually, by a course of questions. During my recital, she kept her eyes on Mr. Dick, who I thought would have gone to sleep but for that, and who, whensoever he lapsed into a smile, was checked by a frown from my aunt.

      “Whatever possessed that poor unfortunate Baby, that she must go and be married again,” said my aunt, when I had finished, “I can’t conceive.”

      “Perhaps she fell in love with her second husband,” Mr. Dick suggested.

      “Fell in love!” repeated my aunt, “What do you mean? What business had she to do it?”

      “Perhaps,” Mr. Dick simpered, after thinking a little, “she did it for pleasure.”

      “Pleasure, indeed!” replied my aunt. “A mighty pleasure for the poor baby to fix her simple faith upon any dog of a fellow, certain to ill-use her in some way or other. What did she propose to herself, I should like to know! She had had one husband. She had seen David Copperfield out of the world, who was always running after wax dolls from his cradle. She had got a baby – oh, there were a pair of babies when she gave birth to this child sitting here, that Friday night! – and what more did she want?”

      Mr. Dick secretly shook his head at me, as if he thought there was no getting over this.

      “She couldn’t even have a baby like anybody else,” said my aunt, “Where was this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood! Not forthcoming. Don’t tell me!”

      Mr. Dick seemed quite frightened.

      “That little man of a doctor, with his head on one side,” said my aunt, “Jellips, or whatever his name was, what was he about? All he could do, was to say to me, like a robin redbreast – as he is– ‘It’s a boy.’ A boy! Yah, the imbecility of the whole set of ’em!”

      The heartiness of the ejaculation startled Mr. Dick exceedingly; and me, too, if I am to tell the truth.

      “And then, as if this was not enough, and she had not stood sufficiently in the light of this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood,” said my aunt, “she marries a second time – goes and marries a Murderer – or a man with a name like it – and stands in this child’s light! And the natural consequence is, as anybody but a baby might have foreseen, that he prowls and wanders. He’s as like Cain before he was grown up, as he can be.”

      Mr. Dick looked hard at me, as if to identify me in this character.

      “And then there’s that woman with the Pagan name,” said my aunt, “that Peggotty, she goes and gets married next. Because she has not seen enough of the evil attending such things, she goes and gets married next, as the child relates. I only hope,” said my aunt, shaking her head, “that her husband is one of those Poker husbands who abound in the newspapers, and will beat her well with one.”

      I could not bear to hear my old nurse so decried, and made the subject of such a wish. I told my aunt that indeed she was mistaken. That Peggotty was the best, the truest, the most faithful, most devoted, and most self-denying friend and servant in the world; who had ever loved me dearly, who had ever loved my mother dearly; who had held my mother’s dying head upon her arm, on whose face my mother had imprinted her last grateful kiss. And my remembrance of them both, choking me, I broke down as I was trying to say that her home was my home, and that all she had was mine, and that I would have gone to her for shelter, but for her humble station, which made me fear that I might bring some trouble on her – I broke down, I say, as I was trying to say so, and laid my face in my hands upon the table.

      “Well, well!” said my aunt, “the child is right to stand by those who have stood by him – Janet! Donkies!”

      I thoroughly believe that but for those unfortunate donkies, we should have come to a good understanding; for my aunt had laid her hand on my shoulder, and the impulse was upon me, thus emboldened, to embrace her and beseech her protection. But the interruption, and the disorder she was thrown into by the struggle outside, put an end to all softer ideas for the present; and kept my aunt indignantly declaiming to Mr. Dick about her determination to appeal for redress to the laws of her country, and to bring actions for trespass against the whole donkey proprietorship of Dover, until tea-time.

      After tea, we sat at the window – on the look-out, as I imagined, from my aunt’s sharp expression of face, for more invaders – until dusk, when Janet set candles, and a backgammon-board, on the table, and pulled down the blinds.

      “Now, Mr. Dick,” said my aunt, with her grave look, and her forefinger up as before, “I am going to ask you another question. Look at this child.”

      “David’s son?” said Mr. Dick, with an attentive, puzzled face.

      “Exactly so,” returned my aunt. “What would you do with him, now?”

      “Do with David’s son?” said Mr. Dick.

      “Ay,” replied my aunt, “with David’s son.”

      “Oh!” said Mr. Dick. “Yes. Do with – I should put him to bed.”

      “Janet!” cried my aunt, with the same complacent triumph that I had remarked before. “Mr. Dick sets us all right. If the bed is ready, we’ll take him up to it.”

      Janet reporting it to be quite ready, I was taken up to it; kindly, but in some sort like a prisoner; my aunt going in front and Janet bringing up the rear. The only circumstance which gave me any new hope, was my aunt’s stopping on the stairs to inquire about a smell of fire that was prevalent there; and Janet’s replying that she had been making tinder down in the kitchen, of my old shirt. But there were no other clothes in my room than the odd heap of things I wore; and when I was left there, with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five minutes, I heard them lock my door on the outside. Turning these things over in my mind, I deemed it possible that my aunt, who could know nothing of me, might suspect I had a habit of running away, and took precautions, on that account, to have me in safe keeping.

      The room was a pleasant one, at the top of the house, overlooking the sea, on which the moon was shining brilliantly. After I had said my prayers, and the candle had burnt out, I remember how I still sat looking at the moonlight on the water, as if I could hope to read my fortune in it, as in a bright book; or to see my mother with her child, coming from Heaven, along that shining path, to look upon me as she had looked when I last saw her sweet face. I remember how the solemn feeling with which at length I turned my eyes away, yielded to the sensation of gratitude and rest which the sight of the white-curtained bed – and how much more the lying softly down upon it, nestling in the snow-white sheets! – inspired. I remember how I thought of all the solitary places under the night sky where I had slept, and how I prayed that I never might be houseless any more, and never might forget the houseless. I remember how I seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams.

      CHAPTER XIV.

      MY AUNT MAKES UP HER

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