lonely room, and languished through it in my usual solitary way,
or whether anybody would have helped me out.
When Mr. and Miss Murdstone were at home, I took my meals
with them; in their absence, I ate and drank by myself. At all times
I lounged about the house and neighbourhood quite disregarded,
except that they were jealous of my making any friends: thinking,
perhaps, that if I did, I might complain to someone. For this
reason, though Mr. Chillip often asked me to go and see him (he
was a widower, having, some years before that, lost a little small
light-haired wife, whom I can just remember connecting in my
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David Copperfield
own thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat), it was but seldom that
I enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his closet of a
surgery; reading some book that was new to me, with the smell of
the whole Pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding
something in a mortar under his mild directions.
For the same reason, added no doubt to the old dislike of her, I
was seldom allowed to visit Peggotty. Faithful to her promise, she
either came to see me, or met me somewhere near, once every
week, and never empty-handed; but many and bitter were the
disappointments I had, in being refused permission to pay a visit
to her at her house. Some few times, however, at long intervals, I
was allowed to go there; and then I found out that Mr. Barkis was
something of a miser, or as Peggotty dutifully expressed it, was ‘a
little near’, and kept a heap of money in a box under his bed,
which he pretended was only full of coats and trousers. In this
coffer, his riches hid themselves with such a tenacious modesty,
that the smallest instalments could only be tempted out by artifice;
so that Peggotty had to prepare a long and elaborate scheme, a
very Gunpowder Plot, for every Saturday’s expenses.
All this time I was so conscious of the waste of any promise I
had given, and of my being utterly neglected, that I should have
been perfectly miserable, I have no doubt, but for the old books.
They were my only comfort; and I was as true to them as they
were to me, and read them over and over I don’t know how many
times more.
I now approach a period of my life, which I can never lose the
remembrance of, while I remember anything: and the recollection
of which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a
ghost, and haunted happier times.
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David Copperfield
I had been out, one day, loitering somewhere, in the listless,
meditative manner that my way of life engendered, when, turning
the corner of a lane near our house, I came upon Mr. Murdstone
walking with a gentleman. I was confused, and was going by them,
when the gentleman cried:
‘What! Brooks!’
‘No, sir, David Copperfield,’ I said.
‘Don’t tell me. You are Brooks,’ said the gentleman. ‘You are
Brooks of Sheffield. That’s your name.’
At these words, I observed the gentleman more attentively. His
laugh coming to my remembrance too, I knew him to be Mr.
Quinion, whom I had gone over to Lowestoft with Mr. Murdstone
to see, before—it is no matter—I need not recall when.
‘And how do you get on, and where are you being educated,
Brooks?’ said Mr. Quinion.
He had put his hand upon my shoulder, and turned me about,
to walk with them. I did not know what to reply, and glanced
dubiously at Mr. Murdstone.
‘He is at home at present,’ said the latter. ‘He is not being
educated anywhere. I don’t know what to do with him. He is a
difficult subject.’
That old, double look was on me for a moment; and then his
eyes darkened with a frown, as it turned, in its aversion,
elsewhere.
‘Humph!’ said Mr. Quinion, looking at us both, I thought. ‘Fine
weather!’
Silence ensued, and I was considering how I could best
disengage my shoulder from his hand, and go away, when he said:
‘I suppose you are a pretty sharp fellow still? Eh, Brooks?’
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