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feathers displayed over the mantelpiece--I remember wondering when I

first went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had known what

his finery was doomed to come to--fades from before me, and I nod, and

sleep. The flute becomes inaudible, the wheels of the coach are heard

instead, and I am on my journey. The coach jolts, I wake with a start,

and the flute has come back again, and the Master at Salem House is

sitting with his legs crossed, playing it dolefully, while the old woman

of the house looks on delighted. She fades in her turn, and he fades,

and all fades, and there is no flute, no Master, no Salem House, no

David Copperfield, no anything but heavy sleep.

I dreamed, I thought, that once while he was blowing into this dismal

flute, the old woman of the house, who had gone nearer and nearer to him

in her ecstatic admiration, leaned over the back of his chair and gave

him an affectionate squeeze round the neck, which stopped his playing

for a moment. I was in the middle state between sleeping and waking,

either then or immediately afterwards; for, as he resumed--it was a real

fact that he had stopped playing--I saw and heard the same old woman ask

Mrs. Fibbitson if it wasn’t delicious (meaning the flute), to which Mrs.

Fibbitson replied, ‘Ay, ay! yes!’ and nodded at the fire: to which, I am

persuaded, she gave the credit of the whole performance.

When I seemed to have been dozing a long while, the Master at Salem

House unscrewed his flute into the three pieces, put them up as before,

and took me away. We found the coach very near at hand, and got upon the

roof; but I was so dead sleepy, that when we stopped on the road to take

up somebody else, they put me inside where there were no passengers, and

where I slept profoundly, until I found the coach going at a footpace up

a steep hill among green leaves. Presently, it stopped, and had come to

its destination.

A short walk brought us--I mean the Master and me--to Salem House, which

was enclosed with a high brick wall, and looked very dull. Over a door

in this wall was a board with SALEM HOUSE upon it; and through a grating

in this door we were surveyed when we rang the bell by a surly face,

which I found, on the door being opened, belonged to a stout man with a

bull-neck, a wooden leg, overhanging temples, and his hair cut close all

round his head.

‘The new boy,’ said the Master.

The man with the wooden leg eyed me all over--it didn’t take long, for

there was not much of me--and locked the gate behind us, and took out

the key. We were going up to the house, among some dark heavy trees,

when he called after my conductor. ‘Hallo!’

We looked back, and he was standing at the door of a little lodge, where

he lived, with a pair of boots in his hand.

‘Here! The cobbler’s been,’ he said, ‘since you’ve been out, Mr. Mell,

and he says he can’t mend ‘em any more. He says there ain’t a bit of the

original boot left, and he wonders you expect it.’

With these words he threw the boots towards Mr. Mell, who went back a

few paces to pick them up, and looked at them (very disconsolately,

I was afraid), as we went on together. I observed then, for the first

time, that the boots he had on were a good deal the worse for wear, and

that his stocking was just breaking out in one place, like a bud.

Salem House was a square brick building with wings; of a bare and

unfurnished appearance. All about it was so very quiet, that I said to

Mr. Mell I supposed the boys were out; but he seemed surprised at my

not knowing that it was holiday-time. That all the boys were at their

several homes. That Mr. Creakle, the proprietor, was down by the

sea-side with Mrs. and Miss Creakle; and that I was sent in holiday-time

as a punishment for my misdoing, all of which he explained to me as we

went along.

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 forms, and bristling all round with pegs

for hats and slates. Scraps of old copy-books and exercises litter the

dirty floor. Some silkworms’ houses, made of the same materials, are

scattered over the desks. Two miserable little white mice, left behind

by their owner, are running up and down in a fusty castle made of

pasteboard and wire, looking in all the corners with their red eyes

for anything to eat. A bird, in a cage very little bigger than himself,

makes a mournful rattle now and then in hopping on his perch, two inches

high, or dropping from it; but neither sings nor chirps. There is a

strange unwholesome smell upon the room, like mildewed corduroys, sweet

apples wanting air, and rotten books. There could not well be more ink

splashed about it, if it had been roofless from its first construction,

and the skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through the

varying seasons of the year.

Mr. Mell having left me while he took his irreparable boots upstairs, 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, apprehensive 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?’ he says. ‘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. That cruel man with

the wooden leg aggravated my sufferings. He was in authority; and if he

ever saw me leaning against a tree, or a wall, or the house, he roared

out from his lodge door in a stupendous voice, ‘Hallo, you sir! You

Copperfield! Show that badge conspicuous, or I’ll report you!’ The

playground was a bare gravelled yard, open to all the back of the house

and the offices; and I knew that the servants read it, and the butcher

read it, and the baker read it; that everybody, in a word, who came

backwards and forwards to the house, of a morning when I was ordered to

walk there, read that I was to be taken care of, for I bit, I recollect

that I positively began to have a dread of myself, as a kind of wild boy

who did bite.

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 a 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 send me to Coventry by general

acclamation, and to cry out, each in his own way, ‘Take care of him. He

bites!’

It was the same with the places at the desks and forms. It was the same

with the groves of deserted bedsteads I peeped at, on my way to, and

when I was in, my own bed. I remember dreaming night after night, of

being with my mother as she used to be, or of going to a party at Mr.

Peggotty’s, or of travelling outside the stage-coach, or of dining again

with my unfortunate friend the waiter, and in all these circumstances

making people scream and stare, by the unhappy disclosure that I had

nothing on but my little night-shirt, and that placard.

In the monotony of my life, and in my constant apprehension of the

re-opening of the school, it was such an insupportable affliction! I had

long tasks every day to do with Mr. Mell; but I did them, there being

no Mr. and Miss Murdstone here, and got through them without disgrace.

Before, and after them, I walked about--supervised, as I have mentioned,

by the man with the wooden leg. How vividly I call to mind the damp

about the house, the green cracked flagstones in the court, an old leaky

water-butt, and the discoloured trunks of some of the grim trees, which

seemed to have dripped more in the rain than other trees, and to have

blown less in the sun! At one we dined, Mr. Mell and I, at the upper end

of a long bare dining-room, full of deal tables, and smelling of fat.

Then, we had more tasks until tea, which Mr. Mell drank out of a blue

teacup, and I out of a tin pot. All day long, and until seven or eight

in the evening, Mr. Mell, at his own detached desk in the schoolroom,

worked hard with pen, ink, ruler, books, and writing-paper, making out

the bills (as I found) for last half-year. When he had put up his things

for the night he took out his flute, and blew at it, until I almost

thought he would gradually blow his whole being into the large hole at

the top, and ooze away at the keys.

I picture my small self in the dimly-lighted rooms, sitting with my

head upon my hand, listening to the doleful performance of Mr. Mell,

and conning tomorrow’s lessons. I picture myself with my books shut up,

still listening to the doleful performance of Mr. Mell, and listening

through it to what used to be at home, and to the blowing of the wind

on Yarmouth flats, and feeling very sad and solitary. I picture myself

going up to bed, among the unused rooms, and sitting on my bed-side

crying for a comfortable word from Peggotty. I picture myself coming

downstairs in the morning, and looking through a long ghastly gash of a

staircase window at the school-bell hanging on the top of an out-house

with a weathercock above it; and dreading the time when it shall ring J.

Steerforth and the rest to work: which is only second, in my foreboding

apprehensions, to the time when the man with the wooden leg shall unlock

the rusty gate to give admission to the awful Mr. Creakle. I cannot

think I was a very dangerous character in any of these aspects, but in

all of them I carried the same warning on my back.

Mr. Mell never said much to me, but he was never harsh to me. I suppose

we were company to each other, without talking. I forgot to mention that

he would talk to himself sometimes, and grin, and clench his fist, and

grind his teeth, and pull his hair in an unaccountable manner. But he

had these peculiarities: and at first they frightened me, though I soon

got used to them.

CHAPTER 6. I ENLARGE MY CIRCLE OF ACQUAINTANCE

I HAD led this life about a month, when the man with the wooden leg

began to stump about with a mop and a bucket of water, from which I

inferred that preparations were making to receive Mr. Creakle and the

boys. I was not mistaken; for the mop came into the schoolroom before

long, and turned out Mr. Mell and me, who lived where we could, and got

on how we could, for some days, during which we were always in the way

of two or three young women, who had rarely shown themselves before, and

were so continually in the midst of dust that I sneezed almost as much

as if Salem House had been a great snuff-box.

One day I was informed by Mr. Mell that Mr. Creakle would be home that

evening. In the evening, after tea, I heard that he was come. Before

bedtime, I was fetched by the man with the wooden leg to appear before

him.

Mr. Creakle’s part of the house was a good deal more comfortable than

ours, and he had a snug bit of garden that looked pleasant after the

dusty playground, which was such a desert in miniature, that I thought

no one but a camel, or a dromedary, could have felt at home in it. It

seemed to me a bold thing even to take notice that the passage looked

comfortable, as I went on my way, trembling, to Mr. Creakle’s presence:

which so abashed me, when I was ushered into it, that I hardly saw

Mrs. Creakle or Miss Creakle (who were both there, in the parlour), or

anything but Mr. Creakle, a stout gentleman with a bunch of watch-chain

and seals, in an arm-chair, with a tumbler and bottle beside him.

‘So!’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘This is the young gentleman whose teeth are to

be filed! Turn him round.’

The wooden-legged man turned me about so as to exhibit the placard; and

having afforded time for a full survey of it, turned me about again,

with my face to Mr. Creakle, and posted himself at Mr. Creakle’s side.

Mr. Creakle’s face was fiery, and his eyes were small, and deep in his

head; he had thick veins in his forehead, a little nose, and a large

chin. He was bald on the top of his head; and had some thin wet-looking

hair that was just turning grey, brushed across each temple, so that

the two sides interlaced on his forehead. But the circumstance about

him which impressed me most, was, that he had no voice, but spoke in a

whisper. The exertion this cost him, or the consciousness of talking in

that feeble way, made his angry face so much more angry, and his thick

veins so much thicker, when he spoke, that I am not surprised, on

looking back, at this peculiarity striking me as his chief one. ‘Now,’

said Mr. Creakle. ‘What’s the report of this boy?’

‘There’s nothing against him yet,’ returned the man with the wooden leg.