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his hair, made light of his linen, stopped his ears as if she confounded

them with her own, and otherwise tousled and maltreated him. This was

in part confirmed by his aunt, who saw him at half past twelve o’clock,

soon after his release, and affirmed that he was then as red as I was.

The mild Mr. Chillip could not possibly bear malice at such a time, if

at any time. He sidled into the parlour as soon as he was at liberty,

and said to my aunt in his meekest manner:

‘Well, ma’am, I am happy to congratulate you.’

‘What upon?’ said my aunt, sharply.

Mr. Chillip was fluttered again, by the extreme severity of my aunt’s

manner; so he made her a little bow and gave her a little smile, to

mollify her.

‘Mercy on the man, what’s he doing!’ cried my aunt, impatiently. ‘Can’t

he speak?’

‘Be calm, my dear ma’am,’ said Mr. Chillip, in his softest accents.

‘There is no longer any occasion for uneasiness, ma’am. Be calm.’

It has since been considered almost a miracle that my aunt didn’t shake

him, and shake what he had to say, out of him. She only shook her own

head at him, but in a way that made him quail.

‘Well, ma’am,’ resumed Mr. Chillip, as soon as he had courage, ‘I am

happy to congratulate you. All is now over, ma’am, and well over.’

During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to the delivery

of this oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly.

‘How is she?’ said my aunt, folding her arms with her bonnet still tied

on one of them.

‘Well, ma’am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I hope,’ returned Mr.

Chillip. ‘Quite as comfortable as we can expect a young mother to be,

under these melancholy domestic circumstances. There cannot be any

objection to your seeing her presently, ma’am. It may do her good.’

‘And SHE. How is SHE?’ said my aunt, sharply.

Mr. Chillip laid his head a little more on one side, and looked at my

aunt like an amiable bird.

‘The baby,’ said my aunt. ‘How is she?’

‘Ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘I apprehended you had known. It’s a

boy.’

My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the strings, in the

manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chillip’s head with it, put it on

bent, walked out, and never came back. She vanished like a discontented

fairy; or like one of those supernatural beings, whom it was popularly

supposed I was entitled to see; and never came back any more.

No. I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; but Betsey

Trotwood Copperfield was for ever in the land of dreams and shadows, the

tremendous region whence I had so lately travelled; and the light upon

the window of our room shone out upon the earthly bourne of all such

travellers, and the mound above the ashes and the dust that once was he,

without whom I had never been.

CHAPTER 2. I OBSERVE

The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look

far back, into the blank of my infancy, are my mother with her pretty

hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty with no shape at all, and eyes so

dark that they seemed to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face,

and cheeks and arms so hard and red that I wondered the birds didn’t

peck her in preference to apples.

I believe I can remember these two at a little distance apart, dwarfed

to my sight by stooping down or kneeling on the floor, and I going

unsteadily from the one to the other. I have an impression on my mind

which I cannot distinguish from actual remembrance, of the touch of

Peggotty’s forefinger as she used to hold it out to me, and of its being

roughened by needlework, like a pocket nutmeg-grater.

This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go

farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe

the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite

wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most

grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety

be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the

rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness,

and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an

inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.

I might have a misgiving that I am ‘meandering’ in stopping to say this,

but that it brings me to remark that I build these conclusions, in part

upon my own experience of myself; and if it should appear from

anything I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close

observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I

undoubtedly lay claim to both of these characteristics.

Looking back, as I was saying, into the blank of my infancy, the first

objects I can remember as standing out by themselves from a confusion of

things, are my mother and Peggotty. What else do I remember? Let me see.

There comes out of the cloud, our house--not new to me, but quite

familiar, in its earliest remembrance. On the ground-floor is Peggotty’s

kitchen, opening into a back yard; with a pigeon-house on a pole, in

the centre, without any pigeons in it; a great dog-kennel in a corner,

without any dog; and a quantity of fowls that look terribly tall to me,

walking about, in a menacing and ferocious manner. There is one cock who

gets upon a post to crow, and seems to take particular notice of me as

I look at him through the kitchen window, who makes me shiver, he is so

fierce. Of the geese outside the side-gate who come waddling after

me with their long necks stretched out when I go that way, I dream at

night: as a man environed by wild beasts might dream of lions.

Here is a long passage--what an enormous perspective I make of

it!--leading from Peggotty’s kitchen to the front door. A dark

store-room opens out of it, and that is a place to be run past at

night; for I don’t know what may be among those tubs and jars and old

tea-chests, when there is nobody in there with a dimly-burning light,

letting a mouldy air come out of the door, in which there is the smell

of soap, pickles, pepper, candles, and coffee, all at one whiff. Then

there are the two parlours: the parlour in which we sit of an evening,

my mother and I and Peggotty--for Peggotty is quite our companion, when

her work is done and we are alone--and the best parlour where we sit

on a Sunday; grandly, but not so comfortably. There is something of a

doleful air about that room to me, for Peggotty has told me--I don’t

know when, but apparently ages ago--about my father’s funeral, and the

company having their black cloaks put on. One Sunday night my mother

reads to Peggotty and me in there, how Lazarus was raised up from the

dead. And I am so frightened that they are afterwards obliged to take me

out of bed, and show me the quiet churchyard out of the bedroom window,

with the dead all lying in their graves at rest, below the solemn moon.

There is nothing half so green that I know anywhere, as the grass of

that churchyard; nothing half so shady as its trees; nothing half so

quiet as its tombstones. The sheep are feeding there, when I kneel up,

early in the morning, in my little bed in a closet within my mother’s

room, to look out at it; and I see the red light shining on the

sun-dial, and think within myself, ‘Is the sun-dial glad, I wonder, that

it can tell the time again?’

Here is our pew in the church. What a high-backed pew! With a window

near it, out of which our house can be seen, and IS seen many times

during the morning’s service, by Peggotty, who likes to make herself

as sure as she can that it’s not being robbed, or is not in flames. But

though Peggotty’s eye wanders, she is much offended if mine does,

and frowns to me, as I stand upon the seat, that I am to look at the

clergyman. But I can’t always look at him--I know him without that white

thing on, and I am afraid of his wondering why I stare so, and perhaps

stopping the service to inquire--and what am I to do? It’s a dreadful

thing to gape, but I must do something. I look at my mother, but she

pretends not to see me. I look at a boy in the aisle, and he makes faces

at me. I look at the sunlight coming in at the open door through

the porch, and there I see a stray sheep--I don’t mean a sinner, but

mutton--half making up his mind to come into the church. I feel that

if I looked at him any longer, I might be tempted to say something out

loud; and what would become of me then! I look up at the monumental

tablets on the wall, and try to think of Mr. Bodgers late of this

parish, and what the feelings of Mrs. Bodgers must have been, when

affliction sore, long time Mr. Bodgers bore, and physicians were in

vain. I wonder whether they called in Mr. Chillip, and he was in vain;

and if so, how he likes to be reminded of it once a week. I look from

Mr. Chillip, in his Sunday neckcloth, to the pulpit; and think what a

good place it would be to play in, and what a castle it would make, with

another boy coming up the stairs to attack it, and having the velvet

cushion with the tassels thrown down on his head. In time my eyes

gradually shut up; and, from seeming to hear the clergyman singing a

drowsy song in the heat, I hear nothing, until I fall off the seat with

a crash, and am taken out, more dead than alive, by Peggotty.

And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed

bedroom-windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and the

ragged old rooks’-nests still dangling in the elm-trees at the bottom

of the front garden. Now I am in the garden at the back, beyond the

yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are--a very preserve

of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate and

padlock; where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than

fruit has ever been since, in any other garden, and where my

mother gathers some in a basket, while I stand by, bolting furtive

gooseberries, and trying to look unmoved. A great wind rises, and the

summer is gone in a moment. We are playing in the winter twilight,

dancing about the parlour. When my mother is out of breath and rests

herself in an elbow-chair, I watch her winding her bright curls round

her fingers, and straitening her waist, and nobody knows better than I

do that she likes to look so well, and is proud of being so pretty.

That is among my very earliest impressions. That, and a sense that we

were both a little afraid of Peggotty, and submitted ourselves in most

things to her direction, were among the first opinions--if they may be

so called--that I ever derived from what I saw.

Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlour fire, alone. I

had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I must have read very

perspicuously, or the poor soul must have been deeply interested, for I

remember she had a cloudy impression, after I had done, that they were

a sort of vegetable. I was tired of reading, and dead sleepy; but

having leave, as a high treat, to sit up until my mother came home from

spending the evening at a neighbour’s, I would rather have died upon

my post (of course) than have gone to bed. I had reached that stage of

sleepiness when Peggotty seemed to swell and grow immensely large.

I propped my eyelids open with my two forefingers, and looked

perseveringly at her as she sat at work; at the little bit of wax-candle

she kept for her thread--how old it looked, being so wrinkled in

all directions!--at the little house with a thatched roof, where the

yard-measure lived; at her work-box with a sliding lid, with a view of

St. Paul’s Cathedral (with a pink dome) painted on the top; at the brass

thimble on her finger; at herself, whom I thought lovely. I felt so

sleepy, that I knew if I lost sight of anything for a moment, I was

gone.

‘Peggotty,’ says I, suddenly, ‘were you ever married?’

‘Lord, Master Davy,’ replied Peggotty. ‘What’s put marriage in your

head?’

She answered with such a start, that it quite awoke me. And then she

stopped in her work, and looked at me, with her needle drawn out to its

thread’s length.

‘But WERE you ever married, Peggotty?’ says I. ‘You are a very handsome

woman, an’t you?’

I thought her in a different style from my mother, certainly; but of

another school of beauty, I considered her a perfect example. There

was a red velvet footstool in the best parlour, on which my mother

had painted a nosegay. The ground-work of that stool, and Peggotty’s

complexion appeared to me to be one and the same thing. The stool was

smooth, and Peggotty was rough, but that made no difference.

‘Me handsome, Davy!’ said Peggotty. ‘Lawk, no, my dear! But what put

marriage in your head?’

‘I don’t know!--You mustn’t marry more than one person at a time, may

you, Peggotty?’

‘Certainly not,’ says Peggotty, with the promptest decision.

‘But if you marry a person, and the person dies, why then you may marry

another person, mayn’t you, Peggotty?’

‘YOU MAY,’ says Peggotty, ‘if you choose, my dear. That’s a matter of

opinion.’

‘But what is your opinion, Peggotty?’ said I.

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

curiously at me.

‘My opinion is,’ said Peggotty, taking her eyes from me, after a little

indecision and going on with her work, ‘that I never was married myself,

Master Davy, and that I don’t expect to be. That’s all I know about the

subject.’

‘You an’t cross, I suppose, Peggotty, are you?’ said I, after sitting

quiet for a minute.

I really thought she was, she had been so short with me; but I was quite

mistaken: for she laid aside her work (which was a stocking of her own),

and opening her arms wide, took my curly head within them, and gave it

a good squeeze. I know it was a good squeeze, because, being very plump,

whenever she made any little exertion after she was dressed, some of the

buttons on the back of her gown flew off. And I recollect two bursting

to the opposite side of the parlour, while she was hugging me.

‘Now let me hear some more about the Crorkindills,’ said Peggotty, who

was not quite right in the name yet, ‘for I an’t heard half enough.’

I couldn’t quite understand why Peggotty looked so queer, or why she

was so ready to go back to the crocodiles. However, we returned to those