No More Learning

'

As the little man put his now empty glass to his lips, when he made this
reflection, I proposed to him to have it refilled, and I would keep him
company with another. 'Well, sir,' he returned, in his slow way, 'it's
more than I am accustomed to; but I can't deny myself the pleasure
of your conversation. It seems but yesterday that I had the honour of
attending you in the measles. You came through them charmingly, sir! '

I acknowledged this compliment, and ordered the negus, which was soon
produced. 'Quite an uncommon dissipation! ' said Mr. Chillip, stirring
it, 'but I can't resist so extraordinary an occasion. You have no
family, sir? '

I shook my head.

'I was aware that you sustained a bereavement, sir, some time ago,' said
Mr. Chillip. 'I heard it from your father-in-law's sister. Very decided
character there, sir? '

'Why, yes,' said I, 'decided enough. Where did you see her, Mr.
Chillip? '

'Are you not aware, sir,' returned Mr. Chillip, with his placidest
smile, 'that your father-in-law is again a neighbour of mine? '

'No,' said I.

'He is indeed, sir! ' said Mr. Chillip. 'Married a young lady of that
part, with a very good little property, poor thing. ---And this action
of the brain now, sir? Don't you find it fatigue you? ' said Mr. Chillip,
looking at me like an admiring Robin.

I waived that question, and returned to the Murdstones. 'I was aware of
his being married again. Do you attend the family? ' I asked.

'Not regularly. I have been called in,' he replied. 'Strong
phrenological developments of the organ of firmness, in Mr. Murdstone
and his sister, sir. '

I replied with such an expressive look, that Mr. Chillip was emboldened
by that, and the negus together, to give his head several short shakes,
and thoughtfully exclaim, 'Ah, dear me! We remember old times, Mr.
Copperfield! '

'And the brother and sister are pursuing their old course, are they? '
said I.

'Well, sir,' replied Mr. Chillip, 'a medical man, being so much in
families, ought to have neither eyes nor ears for anything but his
profession. Still, I must say, they are very severe, sir: both as to
this life and the next. '

'The next will be regulated without much reference to them, I dare say,'
I returned: 'what are they doing as to this? '

Mr. Chillip shook his head, stirred his negus, and sipped it.

'She was a charming woman, sir! ' he observed in a plaintive manner.

'The present Mrs. Murdstone? '

A charming woman indeed, sir,' said Mr. Chillip; 'as amiable, I am sure,
as it was possible to be! Mrs. Chillip's opinion is, that her spirit
has been entirely broken since her marriage, and that she is all but
melancholy mad. And the ladies,' observed Mr. Chillip, timorously, 'are
great observers, sir. '

'I suppose she was to be subdued and broken to their detestable mould,
Heaven help her! ' said I. 'And she has been. '

'Well, sir, there were violent quarrels at first, I assure you,' said
Mr. Chillip; 'but she is quite a shadow now. Would it be considered
forward if I was to say to you, sir, in confidence, that since the
sister came to help, the brother and sister between them have nearly
reduced her to a state of imbecility? '

I told him I could easily believe it.

'I have no hesitation in saying,' said Mr. Chillip, fortifying himself
with another sip of negus, 'between you and me, sir, that her mother
died of it--or that tyranny, gloom, and worry have made Mrs. Murdstone
nearly imbecile. She was a lively young woman, sir, before marriage, and
their gloom and austerity destroyed her. They go about with her, now,
more like her keepers than her husband and sister-in-law. That was
Mrs. Chillip's remark to me, only last week. And I assure you, sir, the
ladies are great observers. Mrs. Chillip herself is a great observer! '

'Does he gloomily profess to be (I am ashamed to use the word in such
association) religious still? ' I inquired.

'You anticipate, sir,' said Mr. Chillip, his eyelids getting quite
red with the unwonted stimulus in which he was indulging. 'One of Mrs.
Chillip's most impressive remarks. Mrs. Chillip,' he proceeded, in the
calmest and slowest manner, 'quite electrified me, by pointing out
that Mr. Murdstone sets up an image of himself, and calls it the Divine
Nature. You might have knocked me down on the flat of my back, sir,
with the feather of a pen, I assure you, when Mrs. Chillip said so. The
ladies are great observers, sir? '

'Intuitively,' said I, to his extreme delight.

'I am very happy to receive such support in my opinion, sir,' he
rejoined. 'It is not often that I venture to give a non-medical opinion,
I assure you. Mr. Murdstone delivers public addresses sometimes, and it
is said,--in short, sir, it is said by Mrs. Chillip,--that the darker
tyrant he has lately been, the more ferocious is his doctrine. '

'I believe Mrs. Chillip to be perfectly right,' said I.

'Mrs. Chillip does go so far as to say,' pursued the meekest of little
men, much encouraged, 'that what such people miscall their religion, is
a vent for their bad humours and arrogance. And do you know I must say,
sir,' he continued, mildly laying his head on one side, 'that I DON'T
find authority for Mr. and Miss Murdstone in the New Testament? '

'I never found it either! ' said I.

'In the meantime, sir,' said Mr. Chillip, 'they are much disliked;
and as they are very free in consigning everybody who dislikes them
to perdition, we really have a good deal of perdition going on in
our neighbourhood! However, as Mrs. Chillip says, sir, they undergo a
continual punishment; for they are turned inward, to feed upon their own
hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding. Now, sir, about that
brain of yours, if you'll excuse my returning to it. Don't you expose it
to a good deal of excitement, sir? '

I found it not difficult, in the excitement of Mr. Chillip's own brain,
under his potations of negus, to divert his attention from this topic
to his own affairs, on which, for the next half-hour, he was quite
loquacious; giving me to understand, among other pieces of information,
that he was then at the Gray's Inn Coffee-house to lay his professional
evidence before a Commission of Lunacy, touching the state of mind of a
patient who had become deranged from excessive drinking. 'And I assure
you, sir,' he said, 'I am extremely nervous on such occasions. I could
not support being what is called Bullied, sir. It would quite unman
me. Do you know it was some time before I recovered the conduct of that
alarming lady, on the night of your birth, Mr. Copperfield? '

I told him that I was going down to my aunt, the Dragon of that night,
early in the morning; and that she was one of the most tender-hearted
and excellent of women, as he would know full well if he knew her
better. The mere notion of the possibility of his ever seeing her again,
appeared to terrify him. He replied with a small pale smile, 'Is she so,
indeed, sir? Really? ' and almost immediately called for a candle, and
went to bed, as if he were not quite safe anywhere else. He did not
actually stagger under the negus; but I should think his placid little
pulse must have made two or three more beats in a minute, than it had
done since the great night of my aunt's disappointment, when she struck
at him with her bonnet.

Thoroughly tired, I went to bed too, at midnight; passed the next day on
the Dover coach; burst safe and sound into my aunt's old parlour while
she was at tea (she wore spectacles now); and was received by her, and
Mr. Dick, and dear old Peggotty, who acted as housekeeper, with open
arms and tears of joy. My aunt was mightily amused, when we began to
talk composedly, by my account of my meeting with Mr. Chillip, and of
his holding her in such dread remembrance; and both she and Peggotty
had a great deal to say about my poor mother's second husband, and 'that
murdering woman of a sister',--on whom I think no pain or penalty would
have induced my aunt to bestow any Christian or Proper Name, or any
other designation.



CHAPTER 60. AGNES


My aunt and I, when we were left alone, talked far into the night. How
the emigrants never wrote home, otherwise than cheerfully and hopefully;
how Mr. Micawber had actually remitted divers small sums of money, on
account of those 'pecuniary liabilities', in reference to which he had
been so business-like as between man and man; how Janet, returning into
my aunt's service when she came back to Dover, had finally carried out
her renunciation of mankind by entering into wedlock with a thriving
tavern-keeper; and how my aunt had finally set her seal on the same
great principle, by aiding and abetting the bride, and crowning the
marriage-ceremony with her presence; were among our topics--already
more or less familiar to me through the letters I had had. Mr. Dick,
as usual, was not forgotten. My aunt informed me how he incessantly
occupied himself in copying everything he could lay his hands on, and
kept King Charles the First at a respectful distance by that semblance
of employment; how it was one of the main joys and rewards of her life
that he was free and happy, instead of pining in monotonous restraint;
and how (as a novel general conclusion) nobody but she could ever fully
know what he was.

'And when, Trot,' said my aunt, patting the back of my hand, as we sat
in our old way before the fire, 'when are you going over to Canterbury? '

'I shall get a horse, and ride over tomorrow morning, aunt, unless you
will go with me? '

'No! ' said my aunt, in her short abrupt way. 'I mean to stay where I
am. '

Then, I should ride, I said. I could not have come through Canterbury
today without stopping, if I had been coming to anyone but her.

She was pleased, but answered, 'Tut, Trot; MY old bones would have
kept till tomorrow! ' and softly patted my hand again, as I sat looking
thoughtfully at the fire.

Thoughtfully, for I could not be here once more, and so near Agnes,
without the revival of those regrets with which I had so long been
occupied. Softened regrets they might be, teaching me what I had failed
to learn when my younger life was all before me, but not the less
regrets. 'Oh, Trot,' I seemed to hear my aunt say once more; and I
understood her better now--'Blind, blind, blind! '

We both kept silence for some minutes. When I raised my eyes, I found
that she was steadily observant of me. Perhaps she had followed the
current of my mind; for it seemed to me an easy one to track now, wilful
as it had been once.

'You will find her father a white-haired old man,' said my aunt, 'though
a better man in all other respects--a reclaimed man. Neither will you
find him measuring all human interests, and joys, and sorrows, with his
one poor little inch-rule now. Trust me, child, such things must shrink
very much, before they can be measured off in that way. '

'Indeed they must,' said I.

'You will find her,' pursued my aunt, 'as good, as beautiful, as
earnest, as disinterested, as she has always been. If I knew higher
praise, Trot, I would bestow it on her. '

There was no higher praise for her; no higher reproach for me. Oh, how
had I strayed so far away!

'If she trains the young girls whom she has about her, to be like
herself,' said my aunt, earnest even to the filling of her eyes with
tears, 'Heaven knows, her life will be well employed! Useful and happy,
as she said that day! How could she be otherwise than useful and happy! '

'Has Agnes any--' I was thinking aloud, rather than speaking.

'Well? Hey? Any what? ' said my aunt, sharply.

'Any lover,' said I.

'A score,' cried my aunt, with a kind of indignant pride. 'She might
have married twenty times, my dear, since you have been gone! '

'No doubt,' said I. 'No doubt. But has she any lover who is worthy of
her? Agnes could care for no other. '

My aunt sat musing for a little while, with her chin upon her hand.
Slowly raising her eyes to mine, she said:

'I suspect she has an attachment, Trot. '

'A prosperous one? ' said I.

'Trot,' returned my aunt gravely, 'I can't say. I have no right to tell
you even so much. She has never confided it to me, but I suspect it. '

She looked so attentively and anxiously at me (I even saw her tremble),
that I felt now, more than ever, that she had followed my late thoughts.
I summoned all the resolutions I had made, in all those many days and
nights, and all those many conflicts of my heart.

'If it should be so,' I began, 'and I hope it is-'

'I don't know that it is,' said my aunt curtly. 'You must not be ruled
by my suspicions. You must keep them secret. They are very slight,
perhaps. I have no right to speak. '

'If it should be so,' I repeated, 'Agnes will tell me at her own good
time. A sister to whom I have confided so much, aunt, will not be
reluctant to confide in me. '

My aunt withdrew her eyes from mine, as slowly as she had turned them
upon me; and covered them thoughtfully with her hand. By and by she
put her other hand on my shoulder; and so we both sat, looking into the
past, without saying another word, until we parted for the night.

I rode away, early in the morning, for the scene of my old school-days.
I cannot say that I was yet quite happy, in the hope that I was gaining
a victory over myself; even in the prospect of so soon looking on her
face again.

The well-remembered ground was soon traversed, and I came into the quiet
streets, where every stone was a boy's book to me. I went on foot to the
old house, and went away with a heart too full to enter. I returned; and
looking, as I passed, through the low window of the turret-room where
first Uriah Heep, and afterwards Mr. Micawber, had been wont to sit,
saw that it was a little parlour now, and that there was no office.
Otherwise the staid old house was, as to its cleanliness and order,
still just as it had been when I first saw it. I requested the new maid
who admitted me, to tell Miss Wickfield that a gentleman who waited on
her from a friend abroad, was there; and I was shown up the grave old
staircase (cautioned of the steps I knew so well), into the unchanged
drawing-room. The books that Agnes and I had read together, were on
their shelves; and the desk where I had laboured at my lessons, many
a night, stood yet at the same old corner of the table. All the little
changes that had crept in when the Heeps were there, were changed again.
Everything was as it used to be, in the happy time.

I stood in a window, and looked across the ancient street at the
opposite houses, recalling how I had watched them on wet afternoons,
when I first came there; and how I had used to speculate about the
people who appeared at any of the windows, and had followed them with my
eyes up and down stairs, while women went clicking along the pavement in
pattens, and the dull rain fell in slanting lines, and poured out of the
water-spout yonder, and flowed into the road. The feeling with which
I used to watch the tramps, as they came into the town on those wet
evenings, at dusk, and limped past, with their bundles drooping over
their shoulders at the ends of sticks, came freshly back to me; fraught,
as then, with the smell of damp earth, and wet leaves and briar, and the
sensation of the very airs that blew upon me in my own toilsome journey.
The opening of the little door in the panelled wall made me start and
turn. Her beautiful serene eyes met mine as she came towards me. She
stopped and laid her hand upon her bosom, and I caught her in my arms.

'Agnes! my dear girl! I have come too suddenly upon you. '

'No, no! I am so rejoiced to see you, Trotwood! '

'Dear Agnes, the happiness it is to me, to see you once again! '

I folded her to my heart, and, for a little while, we were both silent.
Presently we sat down, side by side; and her angel-face was turned upon
me with the welcome I had dreamed of, waking and sleeping, for whole
years.

She was so true, she was so beautiful, she was so good,--I owed her so
much gratitude, she was so dear to me, that I could find no utterance
for what I felt. I tried to bless her, tried to thank her, tried to tell
her (as I had often done in letters) what an influence she had upon me;
but all my efforts were in vain. My love and joy were dumb.

With her own sweet tranquillity, she calmed my agitation; led me back to
the time of our parting; spoke to me of Emily, whom she had visited,
in secret, many times; spoke to me tenderly of Dora's grave. With the
unerring instinct of her noble heart, she touched the chords of my
memory so softly and harmoniously, that not one jarred within me; I
could listen to the sorrowful, distant music, and desire to shrink from
nothing it awoke. How could I, when, blended with it all, was her dear
self, the better angel of my life?

'And you, Agnes,' I said, by and by. 'Tell me of yourself. You have
hardly ever told me of your own life, in all this lapse of time! '

'What should I tell? ' she answered, with her radiant smile. 'Papa is
well. You see us here, quiet in our own home; our anxieties set at rest,
our home restored to us; and knowing that, dear Trotwood, you know all. '

'All, Agnes? ' said I.

She looked at me, with some fluttering wonder in her face.

'Is there nothing else, Sister? ' I said.

Her colour, which had just now faded, returned, and faded again. She
smiled; with a quiet sadness, I thought; and shook her head.

I had sought to lead her to what my aunt had hinted at; for, sharply
painful to me as it must be to receive that confidence, I was to
discipline my heart, and do my duty to her. I saw, however, that she was
uneasy, and I let it pass.

'You have much to do, dear Agnes? '

'With my school? ' said she, looking up again, in all her bright
composure.

'Yes. It is laborious, is it not? '

'The labour is so pleasant,' she returned, 'that it is scarcely grateful
in me to call it by that name. '

'Nothing good is difficult to you,' said I.

Her colour came and went once more; and once more, as she bent her head,
I saw the same sad smile.

'You will wait and see papa,' said Agnes, cheerfully, 'and pass the
day with us? Perhaps you will sleep in your own room? We always call it
yours. '

I could not do that, having promised to ride back to my aunt's at night;
but I would pass the day there, joyfully.

'I must be a prisoner for a little while,' said Agnes, 'but here are the
old books, Trotwood, and the old music. '

'Even the old flowers are here,' said I, looking round; 'or the old
kinds. '

'I have found a pleasure,' returned Agnes, smiling, 'while you have been
absent, in keeping everything as it used to be when we were children.
For we were very happy then, I think. '

'Heaven knows we were! ' said I.

'And every little thing that has reminded me of my brother,' said Agnes,
with her cordial eyes turned cheerfully upon me, 'has been a welcome
companion. Even this,' showing me the basket-trifle, full of keys, still
hanging at her side, 'seems to jingle a kind of old tune! '

She smiled again, and went out at the door by which she had come.

It was for me to guard this sisterly affection with religious care. It
was all that I had left myself, and it was a treasure. If I once shook
the foundations of the sacred confidence and usage, in virtue of which
it was given to me, it was lost, and could never be recovered. I set
this steadily before myself. The better I loved her, the more it behoved
me never to forget it.

I walked through the streets; and, once more seeing my old adversary the
butcher--now a constable, with his staff hanging up in the shop--went
down to look at the place where I had fought him; and there meditated
on Miss Shepherd and the eldest Miss Larkins, and all the idle loves and
likings, and dislikings, of that time. Nothing seemed to have survived
that time but Agnes; and she, ever a star above me, was brighter and
higher.

When I returned, Mr. Wickfield had come home, from a garden he had, a
couple of miles or so out of town, where he now employed himself almost
every day. I found him as my aunt had described him. We sat down to
dinner, with some half-dozen little girls; and he seemed but the shadow
of his handsome picture on the wall.

The tranquillity and peace belonging, of old, to that quiet ground in my
memory, pervaded it again. When dinner was done, Mr. Wickfield taking no
wine, and I desiring none, we went up-stairs; where Agnes and her little
charges sang and played, and worked. After tea the children left us; and
we three sat together, talking of the bygone days.

'My part in them,' said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his white head, 'has much
matter for regret--for deep regret, and deep contrition, Trotwood, you
well know. But I would not cancel it, if it were in my power. '

I could readily believe that, looking at the face beside him.

'I should cancel with it,' he pursued, 'such patience and devotion, such
fidelity, such a child's love, as I must not forget, no! even to forget
myself. '

'I understand you, sir,' I softly said. 'I hold it--I have always held
it--in veneration. '

'But no one knows, not even you,' he returned, 'how much she has done,
how much she has undergone, how hard she has striven. Dear Agnes! '

She had put her hand entreatingly on his arm, to stop him; and was very,
very pale.

'Well, well! ' he said with a sigh, dismissing, as I then saw, some trial
she had borne, or was yet to bear, in connexion with what my aunt had
told me. 'Well! I have never told you, Trotwood, of her mother. Has
anyone? '

'Never, sir. '

'It's not much--though it was much to suffer. She married me in
opposition to her father's wish, and he renounced her. She prayed him
to forgive her, before my Agnes came into this world. He was a very hard
man, and her mother had long been dead. He repulsed her. He broke her
heart. '

Agnes leaned upon his shoulder, and stole her arm about his neck.

'She had an affectionate and gentle heart,' he said; 'and it was broken.
I knew its tender nature very well. No one could, if I did not. She
loved me dearly, but was never happy. She was always labouring, in
secret, under this distress; and being delicate and downcast at the time
of his last repulse--for it was not the first, by many--pined away
and died. She left me Agnes, two weeks old; and the grey hair that you
recollect me with, when you first came. ' He kissed Agnes on her cheek.

'My love for my dear child was a diseased love, but my mind was all
unhealthy then. I say no more of that. I am not speaking of myself,
Trotwood, but of her mother, and of her. If I give you any clue to what
I am, or to what I have been, you will unravel it, I know. What Agnes
is, I need not say. I have always read something of her poor mother's
story, in her character; and so I tell it you tonight, when we three are
again together, after such great changes. I have told it all. '

His bowed head, and her angel-face and filial duty, derived a more
pathetic meaning from it than they had had before. If I had wanted
anything by which to mark this night of our re-union, I should have
found it in this.

Agnes rose up from her father's side, before long; and going softly to
her piano, played some of the old airs to which we had often listened in
that place.

'Have you any intention of going away again? ' Agnes asked me, as I was
standing by.

'What does my sister say to that? '

'I hope not. '

'Then I have no such intention, Agnes. '

'I think you ought not, Trotwood, since you ask me,' she said, mildly.
'Your growing reputation and success enlarge your power of doing good;
and if I could spare my brother,' with her eyes upon me, 'perhaps the
time could not. '

'What I am, you have made me, Agnes. You should know best. '

'I made you, Trotwood? '

'Yes! Agnes, my dear girl! ' I said, bending over her. 'I tried to tell
you, when we met today, something that has been in my thoughts since
Dora died. You remember, when you came down to me in our little
room--pointing upward, Agnes? '

'Oh, Trotwood! ' she returned, her eyes filled with tears. 'So loving, so
confiding, and so young! Can I ever forget? '

'As you were then, my sister, I have often thought since, you have ever
been to me. Ever pointing upward, Agnes; ever leading me to something
better; ever directing me to higher things! '

She only shook her head; through her tears I saw the same sad quiet
smile.

'And I am so grateful to you for it, Agnes, so bound to you, that there
is no name for the affection of my heart. I want you to know, yet don't
know how to tell you, that all my life long I shall look up to you,
and be guided by you, as I have been through the darkness that is past.
Whatever betides, whatever new ties you may form, whatever changes may
come between us, I shall always look to you, and love you, as I do now,
and have always done. You will always be my solace and resource, as you
have always been. Until I die, my dearest sister, I shall see you always
before me, pointing upward! '

She put her hand in mine, and told me she was proud of me, and of what I
said; although I praised her very far beyond her worth. Then she went
on softly playing, but without removing her eyes from me. 'Do you know,
what I have heard tonight, Agnes,' said I, strangely seems to be a part
of the feeling with which I regarded you when I saw you first--with
which I sat beside you in my rough school-days? '

'You knew I had no mother,' she replied with a smile, 'and felt kindly
towards me. '

'More than that, Agnes, I knew, almost as if I had known this story,
that there was something inexplicably gentle and softened, surrounding
you; something that might have been sorrowful in someone else (as I can
now understand it was), but was not so in you. '

She softly played on, looking at me still.

'Will you laugh at my cherishing such fancies, Agnes? '

'No! '

'Or at my saying that I really believe I felt, even then, that you could
be faithfully affectionate against all discouragement, and never cease
to be so, until you ceased to live? ---Will you laugh at such a dream? '

'Oh, no! Oh, no! '

For an instant, a distressful shadow crossed her face; but, even in the
start it gave me, it was gone; and she was playing on, and looking at me
with her own calm smile.

As I rode back in the lonely night, the wind going by me like a restless
memory, I thought of this, and feared she was not happy. I was not
happy; but, thus far, I had faithfully set the seal upon the Past, and,
thinking of her, pointing upward, thought of her as pointing to that
sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I might yet love her with
a love unknown on earth, and tell her what the strife had been within me
when I loved her here.



CHAPTER 61. I AM SHOWN TWO INTERESTING PENITENTS


For a time--at all events until my book should be completed, which would
be the work of several months--I took up my abode in my aunt's house at
Dover; and there, sitting in the window from which I had looked out at
the moon upon the sea, when that roof first gave me shelter, I quietly
pursued my task.

In pursuance of my intention of referring to my own fictions only when
their course should incidentally connect itself with the progress of my
story, I do not enter on the aspirations, the delights, anxieties, and
triumphs of my art. That I truly devoted myself to it with my strongest
earnestness, and bestowed upon it every energy of my soul, I have
already said. If the books I have written be of any worth, they will
supply the rest. I shall otherwise have written to poor purpose, and the
rest will be of interest to no one.

Occasionally, I went to London; to lose myself in the swarm of life
there, or to consult with Traddles on some business point. He had
managed for me, in my absence, with the soundest judgement; and my
worldly affairs were prospering. As my notoriety began to bring upon
me an enormous quantity of letters from people of whom I had no
knowledge--chiefly about nothing, and extremely difficult to answer--I
agreed with Traddles to have my name painted up on his door. There, the
devoted postman on that beat delivered bushels of letters for me; and
there, at intervals, I laboured through them, like a Home Secretary of
State without the salary.

Among this correspondence, there dropped in, every now and then, an
obliging proposal from one of the numerous outsiders always lurking
about the Commons, to practise under cover of my name (if I would take
the necessary steps remaining to make a proctor of myself), and pay me
a percentage on the profits. But I declined these offers; being already
aware that there were plenty of such covert practitioners in existence,
and considering the Commons quite bad enough, without my doing anything
to make it worse.

The girls had gone home, when my name burst into bloom on Traddles's
door; and the sharp boy looked, all day, as if he had never heard of
Sophy, shut up in a back room, glancing down from her work into a sooty
little strip of garden with a pump in it. But there I always found her,
the same bright housewife; often humming her Devonshire ballads when no
strange foot was coming up the stairs, and blunting the sharp boy in his
official closet with melody.

I wondered, at first, why I so often found Sophy writing in a copy-book;
and why she always shut it up when I appeared, and hurried it into the
table-drawer. But the secret soon came out. One day, Traddles (who had
just come home through the drizzling sleet from Court) took a paper out
of his desk, and asked me what I thought of that handwriting?

'Oh, DON'T, Tom! ' cried Sophy, who was warming his slippers before the
fire.

'My dear,' returned Tom, in a delighted state, 'why not? What do you say
to that writing, Copperfield? '

'It's extraordinarily legal and formal,' said I. 'I don't think I ever
saw such a stiff hand. '

'Not like a lady's hand, is it? ' said Traddles.

'A lady's! ' I repeated. 'Bricks and mortar are more like a lady's hand! '

Traddles broke into a rapturous laugh, and informed me that it was
Sophy's writing; that Sophy had vowed and declared he would need a
copying-clerk soon, and she would be that clerk; that she had acquired
this hand from a pattern; and that she could throw off--I forget how
many folios an hour. Sophy was very much confused by my being told all
this, and said that when 'Tom' was made a judge he wouldn't be so ready
to proclaim it. Which 'Tom' denied; averring that he should always be
equally proud of it, under all circumstances.

'What a thoroughly good and charming wife she is, my dear Traddles! '
said I, when she had gone away, laughing.

'My dear Copperfield,' returned Traddles, 'she is, without any
exception, the dearest girl! The way she manages this place; her
punctuality, domestic knowledge, economy, and order; her cheerfulness,
Copperfield! '

'Indeed, you have reason to commend her! ' I returned. 'You are a happy
fellow. I believe you make yourselves, and each other, two of the
happiest people in the world. '

'I am sure we ARE two of the happiest people,' returned Traddles. 'I
admit that, at all events. Bless my soul, when I see her getting up
by candle-light on these dark mornings, busying herself in the day's
arrangements, going out to market before the clerks come into the Inn,
caring for no weather, devising the most capital little dinners out of
the plainest materials, making puddings and pies, keeping everything in
its right place, always so neat and ornamental herself, sitting up
at night with me if it's ever so late, sweet-tempered and encouraging
always, and all for me, I positively sometimes can't believe it,
Copperfield! '

He was tender of the very slippers she had been warming, as he put them
on, and stretched his feet enjoyingly upon the fender.

'I positively sometimes can't believe it,' said Traddles. 'Then our
pleasures! Dear me, they are inexpensive, but they are quite wonderful!
When we are at home here, of an evening, and shut the outer door, and
draw those curtains--which she made--where could we be more snug? When
it's fine, and we go out for a walk in the evening, the streets
abound in enjoyment for us. We look into the glittering windows of the
jewellers' shops; and I show Sophy which of the diamond-eyed serpents,
coiled up on white satin rising grounds, I would give her if I could
afford it; and Sophy shows me which of the gold watches that are
capped and jewelled and engine-turned, and possessed of the horizontal
lever-escape-movement, and all sorts of things, she would buy for me if
she could afford it; and we pick out the spoons and forks, fish-slices,
butter-knives, and sugar-tongs, we should both prefer if we could both
afford it; and really we go away as if we had got them!