‘And was David good to you, child?’ asked Miss Betsey, when
she had been silent for a little while, and these motions of her head
had gradually ceased. ‘Were you comfortable together?’
‘We were very happy,’ said my mother. ‘Mr. Copperfield was
only too good to me.’
‘What, he spoilt you, I suppose?’ returned Miss Betsey.
‘For being quite alone and dependent on myself in this rough
world again, yes, I fear he did indeed,’ sobbed my mother.
‘Well! Don’t cry!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘You were not equally
matched, child—if any two people can be equally matched—and so
I asked the question. You were an orphan, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And a governess?’
‘I was nursery-governess in a family where Mr. Copperfield
came to visit. Mr. Copperfield was very kind to me, and took a
great deal of notice of me, and paid me a good deal of attention,
and at last proposed to me. And I accepted him. And so we were
married,’ said my mother simply.
‘Ha! Poor Baby!’ mused Miss Betsey, with her frown still bent
upon the fire. ‘Do you know anything?’
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ faltered my mother.
‘about keeping house, for instance,’ said Miss Betsey.
‘Not much, I fear,’ returned my mother. ‘Not so much as I could
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
f
David Copperfield
wish. But Mr. Copperfield was teaching me—’
(‘Much he knew about it himself!’) said Miss Betsey in a
parenthesis.
—‘And I hope I should have improved, being very anxious to
learn, and he very patient to teach me, if the great misfortune of
his death’—my mother broke down again here, and could get no
farther.
‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey.
—‘I kept my housekeeping-book regularly, and balanced it with
Mr. Copperfield every night,’ cried my mother in another burst of
distress, and breaking down again.
‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Don’t cry any more.’
—‘And I am sure we never had a word of difference respecting
it, except when Mr. Copperfield objected to my threes and fives
being too much like each other, or to my putting curly tails to my
sevens and nines,’ resumed my mother in another burst, and
breaking down again.
‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and you know that
will not be good either for you or for my god-daughter. Come! You
mustn’t do it!’
This argument had some share in quieting my mother, though
her increasing indisposition had a larger one. There was an
interval of silence, only broken by Miss Betsey’s occasionally
ejaculating ‘Ha!’ as she sat with her feet upon the fender.
‘David had bought an annuity for himself with his money, I
know,’ said she, by and by. ‘What did he do for you?’
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said my mother, answering with some
difficulty, ‘was so considerate and good as to secure the reversion
of a part of it to me.’
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
f
David Copperfield
‘How much?’ asked Miss Betsey.
‘A hundred and five pounds a year,’ said my mother.
‘He might have done worse,’ said my aunt.
The word was appropriate to the moment. My mother was so
much worse that Peggotty, coming in with the teaboard and
candles, and seeing at a glance how ill she was,—as Miss Betsey
might have done sooner if there had been light enough,—
conveyed her upstairs to her own room with all speed; and
immediately dispatched Ham Peggotty, her nephew, who had
been for some days past secreted in the house, unknown to my
mother, as a special messenger in case of emergency, to fetch the
nurse and doctor.
Those allied powers were considerably astonished, when they
arrived within a few minutes of each other, to find an unknown
lady of portentous appearance, sitting before the fire, with her
bonnet tied over her left arm, stopping her ears with jewellers’
cotton. Peggotty knowing nothing about her, and my mother
saying nothing about her, she was quite a mystery in the parlour;
and the fact of her having a magazin"};
