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The Personal History of David Copperfield

“Why, that you two gent’lmen – gent’lmen growed – should come to this here roof to-night, of all nights in my life,” said Mr. Peggotty, “is such a thing as never happened afore, I do rightly believe! Em’ly, my darling, come here! Come here, my little witch! There’s Mas’r Davy’s friend, my dear! There’s the gent’lman as you’ve heerd on, Em’ly. He comes to see you, along with Mas’r Davy, on the brightest night of your uncle’s life as ever was or will be, Gorm the t’other one, and horroar for it!”

After delivering this speech all in a breath, and with extraordinary animation and pleasure, Mr. Peggotty put one of his large hands rapturously on each side of his niece’s face, and kissing it a dozen times, laid it with a gentle pride and love upon his broad chest, and patted it as if his hand had been a lady’s. Then he let her go; and as she ran into the little chamber where I used to sleep, looked round upon us, quite hot and out of breath with his uncommon satisfaction.

“If you two gent’lmen – gent’lmen growed now, and such gent’lmen – ” said Mr. Peggotty.

“So th’are, so th’are!” cried Ham. “Well said! So th’are. Mas’r Davy bor – gent’lmen growed – so th’are!”

“If you two gent’lmen, gent’lmen growed,” said Mr. Peggotty, “don’t ex-cuse me for being in a state of mind, when you understand matters, I’ll arks your pardon. Em’ly, my dear! – She knows I’m a going to tell,” here his delight broke out again, “and has made off. Would you be so good as look arter her, Mawther, for a minute?”

Mrs. Gummidge nodded and disappeared.

“If this ain’t,” said Mr. Peggotty, sitting down among us by the fire, “the brightest night o’ my life, I’m a shellfish – biled too – and more I can’t say. This here little Em’ly, sir,” in a low voice to Steerforth, “ – her as you see a blushing here just now – ”

Steerforth only nodded; but with such a pleased expression of interest, and of participation in Mr. Peggotty’s feelings, that the latter answered him as if he had spoken.

“To be sure,” said Mr. Peggotty. “That’s her, and so she is. Thankee, sir.”

Ham nodded to me several times, as if he would have said so too.

“This here little Em’ly of ours,” said Mr. Peggotty, “has been, in our house, what I suppose (I’m a ignorant man, but that’s my belief) no one but a little bright-eyed creetur can be in a house. She ain’t my child; I never had one; but I couldn’t love her more. You understand! I couldn’t do it!”

“I quite understand,” said Steerforth.

“I know you do, sir,” returned Mr. Peggotty, “and thankee again. Mas’r Davy, he can remember what she was; you may judge for your own self what she is; but neither of you can’t fully know what she has been, is, and will be, to my loving art. I am rough, sir,” said Mr. Peggotty, “I am as rough as a Sea Porkypine; but no one, unless, mayhap, it is a woman, can know, I think, what our little Em’ly is to me. And betwixt ourselves,” sinking his voice lower yet, “that woman’s name ain’t Missis Gummidge neither, though she has a world of merits.”

Mr. Peggotty ruffled his hair again with both hands, as a further preparation for what he was going to say, and went on with a hand upon each of his knees.

“There was a certain person as had know’d our Em’ly, from the time when her father was drownded; as had seen her constant; when a babby, when a young gal, when a woman. Not much of a person to look at, he warn’t,” said Mr. Peggotty, “something o’ my own build – rough – a good deal o’ the sou’-wester in him – wery salt – but, on the whole, a honest sort of a chap, with his art in the right place.”

I thought I had never seen Ham grin to anything like the extent to which he sat grinning at us now.

“What does this here blessed tarpaulin go and do,” said Mr. Peggotty, with his face one high noon of enjoyment, “but he loses that there art of his to our little Em’ly. He follers her about, he makes hisself a sort o’ servant to her, he loses in a great measure his relish for his wittles, and in the long run he makes it clear to me wot’s amiss. Now I could wish myself, you see, that our little Em’ly was in a fair way of being married. I could wish to see her, at all ewents, under articles to a honest man as had a right to defend her. I don’t know how long I may live, or how soon I may die; but I know that if I was capsized, any night, in a gale of wind in Yarmouth Roads here, and was to see the town-lights shining for the last time over the rollers as I couldn’t make no head against, I could go down quieter for thinking ‘There’s a man ashore there, iron-true to my little Em’ly, God bless her, and no wrong can touch my Em’ly while so be as that man lives!’”

Mr. Peggotty, in simple earnestness, waved his right arm, as if he were waving it at the town-lights for the last time, and then, exchanging a nod with Ham, whose eye he caught, proceeded as before.

“Well! I counsels him to speak to Em’ly. He’s big enough, but he’s bashfuller than a little un, and he don’t like. So I speak. ‘What! Him!’ says Em’ly. ‘Him that I’ve know’d so intimate so many years, and like so much! Oh, Uncle! I never can have him. He’s such a good fellow!’ I gives her a kiss, and I says no more to her than ‘My dear, you’re right to speak out, you’re to choose for yourself, you’re as free as a little bird.’ Then I aways to him, and I says, ‘I wish it could have been so, but it can’t. But you can both be as you was, and wot I say to you is, Be as you was with her, like a man.’ He says to me, a shaking of my hand, ‘I will!’ he says. And he was – honorable and manful – for two year going on, and we was just the same at home here as afore.”

Mr. Peggotty’s face, which had varied in its expression with the various stages of his narrative, now resumed all its former triumphant delight, as he laid a hand upon my knee and a hand upon Steerforth’s (previously wetting them both, for the greater emphasis of the action), and divided the following speech between us:

“All of a sudden, one evening – as it might be to-night – comes little Em’ly from her work, and him with her! There ain’t so much in that, you’ll say. No, because he takes care on her, like a brother, arter dark, and indeed afore dark, and at all times. But this tarpaulin chap, he takes hold of her hand, and he cries out to me, joyful, ‘Look here! This is to be my little wife!’ And she says, half bold and half shy, and half a laughing and half a crying, ‘Yes, uncle! If you please.’ – If I please!” cried Mr. Peggotty, rolling his head in an ecstacy at the idea; “Lord, as if I should do anythink else! – ‘If you please, I am steadier now, and I have thought better of it, and I’ll be as good a little wife as I can to him, for he’s a dear, good fellow!’ Then Missis Gummidge, she claps her hands like a play, and you come in. There! the murder’s out!” said Mr. Peggotty – “You come in! It took place this here present hour; and here’s the man that’ll marry her, the minute she’s out of her time.”

Ham staggered, as well he might, under the blow Mr. Peggotty dealt him in his unbounded joy, as a mark of confidence and friendship; but feeling called upon to say something to us, he said, with much faltering and great difficulty:

“She warn’t no higher than you was, Mas’r Davy – when you first come – when I thought what she’d grow up to be. I see her grow up – gent’lmen – like a flower. I’d lay down my life for her – Mas’r Davy – Oh! most content and cheerful! She’s more to me – gent’lmen – than – she’s all to me that ever I can want, and more than ever I – than ever I could say. I – I love her true. There ain’t a gent’lman in all the land – nor yet sailing upon all the sea – that can love his lady more than I love her, though there’s many a common man – would say better – what he meant.”

I thought it affecting to see such a sturdy fellow as Ham was now, trembling in the strength of what he felt for the pretty little creature who had won his heart. I thought the simple confidence reposed in us by Mr. Peggotty and by himself, was, in itself, affecting. I was affected by the story altogether. How far my emotions were influenced by the recollections of my childhood, I don’t know. Whether I had come there with any lingering fancy that I was still to love little Em’ly, I don’t know. I know that I was filled with pleasure by all this; but, at first, with an indescribably sensitive pleasure, that a very little would have changed to pain.

Therefore, if it had depended upon me to touch the prevailing chord among them with any skill, I should have made a poor hand of it. But it depended upon Steerforth; and he did it with such address, that in a few minutes we were all as easy and as happy as it was possible to be.

“Mr. Peggotty,” he said, “you are a thoroughly good fellow, and deserve to be as happy as you are to-night. My hand upon it! Ham, I give you joy, my boy. My hand upon that, too! Daisy, stir the fire, and make it a brisk one! and Mr. Peggotty, unless you can induce your gentle niece to come back (for whom I vacate this seat in the corner), I shall go. Any gap at your fireside on such a night – such a gap least of all – I wouldn’t make, for the wealth of the Indies!”

So Mr. Peggotty went into my old room to fetch little Em’ly. At first little Em’ly didn’t like to come, and then Ham went. Presently they brought her to the fireside, very much confused, and very shy, – but she soon became more assured when she found how gently and respectfully Steerforth spoke to her; how skilfully he avoided anything that would embarrass her; how he talked to Mr. Peggotty of boats, and ships, and tides, and fish; how he referred to me about the time when he had seen Mr. Peggotty at Salem House; how delighted he was with the boat and all belonging to it; how lightly and easily he carried on, until he brought us, by degrees, into a charmed circle, and we were all talking away without any reserve.

Em’ly, indeed, said little all the evening; but she looked, and listened, and her face got animated, and she was charming. Steerforth told a story of a dismal shipwreck (which arose out of his talk with Mr. Peggotty), as if he saw it all before him – and little Em’ly’s eyes were fastened on him all the time, as if she saw it too. He told us a merry adventure of his own, as a relief to that, with as much gaiety as if the narrative were as fresh to him as it was to us – and little Em’ly laughed until the boat rang with the musical sounds, and we all laughed (Steerforth too), in irresistible sympathy with what was so pleasant and light-hearted. He got Mr. Peggotty to sing, or rather to roar, “When the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow;” and he sang a sailor’s song himself, so pathetically and beautifully, that I could have almost fancied that the real wind creeping sorrowfully round the house, and murmuring low through our unbroken silence, was there to listen.

As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despondency with a success never attained by any one else (so Mr. Peggotty informed me) since the decease of the old one. He left her so little leisure for being miserable that she said next day she thought she must have been bewitched.

But he set up no monopoly of the general attention, or the conversation. When little Em’ly grew more courageous, and talked (but still bashfully) across the fire to me, of our old wanderings upon the beach, to pick up shells and pebbles; and when I asked her if she recollected how I used to be devoted to her; and when we both laughed and reddened, casting these looks back on the pleasant old times, so unreal to look at now; he was silent and attentive, and observed us thoughtfully. She sat, at this time, and all the evening, on the old locker in her old little corner by the fire – Ham beside her, where I used to sit. I could not satisfy myself whether it was in her own little tormenting way, or in a maidenly reserve before us, that she kept quite close to the wall, and away from him; but I observed that she did so, all the evening.

As I remember, it was almost midnight when we took our leave. We had had some biscuit and dried fish for supper, and Steerforth had produced from his pocket a full flask of Hollands, which we men (I may say we men, now, without a blush) had emptied. We parted merrily; and as they all stood crowded round the door to light us as far as they could upon our road, I saw the sweet blue eyes of little Em’ly peeping after us, from behind Ham, and heard her soft voice calling to us to be careful how we went.

“A most engaging little Beauty!” said Steerforth, taking my arm. “Well! It’s a quaint place, and they are quaint company, and it’s quite a new sensation to mix with them.”

“How fortunate we are, too,” I returned, “to have arrived to witness their happiness in that intended marriage! I never saw people so happy. How delightful to see it, and to be made the sharers in their honest joy, as we have been!”

“That’s rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl; isn’t he?” said Steerforth.

He had been so hearty with him, and with them all, that I felt a shock in this unexpected and cold reply. But turning quickly upon him, and seeing a laugh in his eyes, I answered, much relieved:

“Ah, Steerforth! It’s well for you to joke about the poor! You may skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman’s, or humour a love like my old nurse’s, I know that there is not a joy or sorrow, not an emotion, of such people, that can be indifferent to you. And I admire and love you for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more!”

He stopped, and, looking in my face, said, “Daisy, I believe you are in earnest, and are good. I wish we all were!” Next moment he was gaily singing Mr. Peggotty’s song, as we walked at a round pace back to Yarmouth.

CHAPTER XXII.
SOME OLD SCENES, AND SOME NEW PEOPLE

Steerforth and I stayed for more than a fortnight in that part of the country. We were very much together, I need not say; but occasionally we were asunder for some hours at a time. He was a good sailor, and I was but an indifferent one; and when he went out boating with Mr. Peggotty, which was a favorite amusement of his, I generally remained ashore. My occupation of Peggotty’s spare-room put a constraint upon me, from which he was free: for, knowing how assiduously she attended on Mr. Barkis all day, I did not like to remain out late at night; whereas Steerforth, lying at the Inn, had nothing to consult but his own humour. Thus it came about, that I heard of his making little treats for the fishermen at Mr. Peggotty’s house of call, “The Willing Mind,” after I was in bed, and of his being afloat, wrapped in fisherman’s clothes, whole moonlight nights, and coming back when the morning tide was at flood. By this time, however, I knew that his restless nature and bold spirits delighted to find a vent in rough toil and hard weather, as in any other means of excitement that presented itself freshly to him; so none of his proceedings surprised me.

Another cause of our being sometimes apart, was, that I had naturally an interest in going over to Blunderstone, and revisiting the old familiar scenes of my childhood; while Steerforth, after being there once, had naturally no great interest in going there again. Hence, on three or four days that I can at once recal, we went our several ways after an early breakfast, and met again at a late dinner. I had no idea how he employed his time in the interval, beyond a general knowledge that he was very popular in the place, and had twenty means of actively diverting himself where another man might not have found one.

For my own part, my occupation in my solitary pilgrimages was to recal every yard of the old road as I went along it, and to haunt the old spots, of which I never tired. I haunted them, as my memory had often done, and lingered among them as my younger thoughts had lingered when I was far away. The grave beneath the tree, where both my parents lay – on which I had looked out, when it was my father’s only, with such curious feelings of compassion, and by which I had stood, so desolate, when it was opened to receive my pretty mother and her baby – the grave which Peggotty’s own faithful care had ever since kept neat, and made a garden of, I walked near, by the hour. It lay a little off the church-yard path, in a quiet corner, not so far removed but I could read the names upon the stone as I walked to and fro, startled by the sound of the church-bell when it struck the hour, for it was like a departed voice to me. My reflections at these times were always associated with the figure I was to make in life, and the distinguished things I was to do. My echoing footsteps went to no other tune, but were as constant to that as if I had come home to build my castles in the air at a living mother’s side.

There were great changes in my old home. The ragged nests, so long deserted by the rooks, were gone; and the trees were lopped and topped out of their remembered shapes. The garden had run wild, and half the windows of the house were shut up. It was occupied, but only by a poor lunatic gentleman, and the people who took care of him. He was always sitting at my little window, looking out into the church-yard; and I wondered whether his rambling thoughts ever went upon any of the fancies that used to occupy mine, on the rosy mornings when I peeped out of that same little window in my night-clothes, and saw the sheep quietly feeding in the light of the rising sun.

Our old neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Grayper, were gone to South America, and the rain had made its way through the roof of their empty house, and stained the outer walls. Mr. Chillip was married again to a tall, raw-boned, high-nosed wife; and they had a weazen little baby, with a heavy head that it couldn’t hold up, and two weak staring eyes, with which it seemed to be always wondering why it had ever been born.

It was with a singular jumble of sadness and pleasure that I used to linger about my native place, until the reddening winter sun admonished me that it was time to start on my returning walk. But, when the place was left behind, and especially when Steerforth and I were happily seated over our dinner by a blazing fire, it was delicious to think of having been there. So it was, though in a softened degree, when I went to my neat room at night; and, turning over the leaves of the crocodile-book (which was always there, upon a little table), remembered with a grateful heart how blest I was in having such a friend as Steerforth, such a friend as Peggotty, and such a substitute for what I had lost as my excellent and generous aunt.

My nearest way to Yarmouth, in coming back from these long walks, was by a ferry. It landed me on the flat between the town and the sea, which I could make straight across, and so save myself a considerable circuit by the high road. Mr. Peggotty’s house being on that waste-place, and not a hundred yards out of my track, I always looked in as I went by. Steerforth was pretty sure to be there expecting me, and we went on together through the frosty air and gathering fog towards the twinkling lights of the town.

One dark evening, when I was later than usual – for I had, that day, been making my parting visit to Blunderstone, as we were now about to return home – I found him alone in Mr. Peggotty’s house, sitting thoughtfully before the fire. He was so intent upon his own reflections that he was quite unconscious of my approach. This, indeed, he might easily have been if he had been less absorbed, for footsteps fell noiselessly on the sandy ground outside; but even my entrance failed to rouse him. I was standing close to him, looking at him; and still, with a heavy brow, he was lost in his meditations.

He gave such a start when I put my hand upon his shoulder, that he made me start too.

“You come upon me,” he said, almost angrily, “like a reproachful ghost!”

“I was obliged to announce myself somehow,” I replied. “Have I called you down from the stars?”

“No,” he answered. “No.”

“Up from anywhere, then?” said I, taking my seat near him.

“I was looking at the pictures in the fire,” he returned.

“But you are spoiling them for me,” said I, as he stirred it quickly with a piece of burning wood, striking out of it a train of red-hot sparks that went careering up the little chimney, and roaring out into the air.

“You would not have seen them,” he returned. “I detest this mongrel time, neither day nor night. How late you are! Where have you been?”

“I have been taking leave of my usual walk,” said I.

“And I have been sitting here,” said Steerforth, glancing round the room, “thinking that all the people we found so glad on the night of our coming down, might – to judge from the present wasted air of the place – be dispersed, or dead, or come to I don’t know what harm. David, I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years!”

“My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?”

“I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!” he exclaimed. “I wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!”

There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed me. He was more unlike himself than I could have supposed possible.

“It would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of a nephew,” he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, with his face towards the fire, “than to be myself, twenty times richer and twenty times wiser, and be the torment to myself that I have been, in this Devil’s bark of a boat, within the last half-hour!”

I was so confounded by the alteration in him, that at first I could only observe him in silence, as he stood leaning his head upon his hand, and looking gloomily down at the fire. At length I begged him, with all the earnestness I felt, to tell me what had occurred to cross him so unusually, and to let me sympathise with him, if I could not hope to advise him. Before I had well concluded, he began to laugh – fretfully at first, but soon with returning gaiety.

“Tut, it’s nothing, Daisy! nothing!” he replied. “I told you, at the inn in London, I am heavy company for myself, sometimes. I have been a nightmare to myself, just now – must have had one, I think. At odd dull times, nursery tales come up into the memory, unrecognised for what they are. I believe I have been confounding myself with the bad boy who ‘didn’t care,’ and became food for lions – a grander kind of going to the dogs, I suppose. What old women call the horrors, have been creeping over me from head to foot. I have been afraid of myself.”

“You are afraid of nothing else, I think,” said I.

“Perhaps not, and yet may have enough to be afraid of too,” he answered. “Well! So it goes by! I am not about to be hipped again, David; but I tell you, my good fellow, once more, that it would have been well for me (and for more than me) if I had had a steadfast and judicious father!”

His face was always full of expression, but I never saw it express such a dark kind of earnestness as when he said these words, with his glance bent on the fire.

“So much for that!” he said, making as if he tossed something light into the air, with his hand.

“‘Why, being gone, I am a man again,’

like Macbeth. And now for dinner! If I have not (Macbeth-like) broken up the feast with most admired disorder, Daisy.”

“But where are they all, I wonder!” said I.

“God knows,” said Steerforth. “After strolling to the ferry looking for you, I strolled in here and found the place deserted. That set me thinking, and you found me thinking.”

The advent of Mrs. Gummidge with a basket, explained how the house had happened to be empty. She had hurried out to buy something that was needed, against Mr. Peggotty’s return with the tide; and had left the door open in the meanwhile, lest Ham and little Em’ly, with whom it was an early night, should come home while she was gone. Steerforth, after very much improving Mrs. Gummidge’s spirits by a cheerful salutation, and a jocose embrace, took my arm, and hurried me away.

He had improved his own spirits, no less than Mrs. Gummidge’s, for they were again at their usual flow, and he was full of vivacious conversation as we went along.

“And so,” he said, gaily, “we abandon this buccaneer life to-morrow, do we?”

“So we agreed,” I returned. “And our places by the coach are taken, you know.”

“Ay! there’s no help for it, I suppose,” said Steerforth. “I have almost forgotten that there is anything to do in the world but to go out tossing on the sea here. I wish there was not.”

“As long as the novelty should last,” said I, laughing.

“Like enough,” he returned; “though there’s a sarcastic meaning in that observation for an amiable piece of innocence like my young friend. Well! I dare say I am a capricious fellow, David. I know I am; but while the iron is hot, I can strike it vigorously too. I could pass a reasonably good examination already, as a pilot in these waters, I think.”

“Mr. Peggotty says you are a wonder,” I returned.

“A nautical phenomenon, eh?” laughed Steerforth.

“Indeed he does, and you know how truly; knowing how ardent you are in any pursuit you follow, and how easily you can master it. And that amazes me most in you, Steerforth – that you should be contented with such fitful uses of your powers.”

“Contented?” he answered, merrily. “I am never contented, except with your freshness, my gentle Daisy. As to fitfulness, I have never learnt the art of binding myself to any of the wheels on which the Ixions of these days are turning round and round. I missed it somehow in a bad apprenticeship, and now don’t care about it. – You know I have bought a boat down here?”

“What an extraordinary fellow you are, Steerforth!” I exclaimed, stopping – for this was the first I had heard of it. “When you may never care to come near the place again!”

“I don’t know that,” he returned. “I have taken a fancy to the place. At all events,” walking me briskly on, “I have bought a boat that was for sale – a clipper, Mr. Peggotty says; and so she is – and Mr. Peggotty will be master of her in my absence.”

“Now I understand you, Steerforth!” said I, exultingly. “You pretend to have bought it for yourself, but you have really done so to confer a benefit on him. I might have known as much at first, knowing you. My dear kind Steerforth, how can I tell you what I think of your generosity?”

“Tush!” he answered, turning red. “The less said, the better.”

“Didn’t I know?” cried I, “didn’t I say that there was not a joy, or sorrow, or any emotion of such honest hearts that was indifferent to you?”

“Aye, aye,” he answered, “you told me all that. There let it rest. We have said enough!”

Afraid of offending him by pursuing the subject when he made so light of it, I only pursued it in my thoughts as we went on at even a quicker pace than before.

“She must be newly rigged,” said Steerforth, “and I shall leave Littimer behind to see it done, that I may know she is quite complete. Did I tell you Littimer had come down?”

“No.”

“Oh, yes! came down this morning, with a letter from my mother.”

As our looks met, I observed that he was pale even to his lips, though he looked very steadily at me. I feared that some difference between him and his mother might have led to his being in the frame of mind in which I had found him at the solitary fireside. I hinted so.

“Oh no!” he said, shaking his head, and giving a slight laugh. “Nothing of the sort! Yes. He is come down, that man of mine.”

“The same as ever?” said I.

“The same as ever,” said Steerforth. “Distant and quiet as the North Pole. He shall see to the boat being fresh named. She’s the Stormy Petrel now. What does Mr. Peggotty care for Stormy Petrels! I’ll have her christened again.”

“By what name?” I asked.

“The Little Em’ly.”

As he had continued to look steadily at me, I took it as a reminder that he objected to being extolled for his consideration. I could not help showing in my face how much it pleased me, but I said little, and he resumed his usual smile, and seemed relieved.

“But see here,” he said, looking before us, “where the original little Em’ly comes! And that fellow with her, eh? Upon my soul, he’s a true knight. He never leaves her!”

Ham was a boat-builder in these days, having improved a natural ingenuity in that handicraft, until he had become a skilled workman. He was in his working-dress, and looked rugged enough, but manly withal, and a very fit protector for the blooming little creature at his side. Indeed, there was a frankness in his face, an honesty, and an undisguised show of his pride in her, and his love for her, which were, to me, the best of good looks. I thought, as they came towards us, that they were well matched even in that particular.

She withdrew her hand timidly from his arm as we stopped to speak to them, and blushed as she gave it to Steerforth and to me. When they passed on, after we had exchanged a few words, she did not like to replace that hand, but, still appearing timid and constrained, walked by herself. I thought all this very pretty and engaging, and Steerforth seemed to think so too, as we looked after them fading away in the light of a young moon.

Suddenly there passed us – evidently following them – a young woman whose approach we had not observed, but whose face I saw as she went by, and thought I had a faint remembrance of. She was lightly dressed; looked bold, and haggard, and flaunting, and poor; but seemed, for the time, to have given all that to the wind which was blowing, and to have nothing in her mind but going after them. As the dark distant level, absorbing their figures into itself, left but itself visible between us and the sea and clouds, her figure disappeared in like manner, still no nearer to them than before.

“That is a black shadow to be following the girl,” said Steerforth, standing still; “what does it mean?”

He spoke in a low voice that sounded almost strange to me.

“She must have it in her mind to beg of them, I think,” said I.