'FagmentWelcome to consult...th a heavy bow, he was lost in his meditations. He gave such a stat when I put my hand upon his shoulde, that he made me stat too. ‘You come upon me,’ he said, almost angily, ‘like a epoachful ghost!’ ‘I was obliged to announce myself, somehow,’ I eplied. ‘Have I called you down fom the stas?’ ‘No,’ he answeed. ‘No.’ ‘Up fom anywhee, then?’ said I, taking my seat nea him. ‘I was looking at the pictues in the fie,’ he etuned. ‘But you ae spoiling them fo me,’ said I, as he stied it quickly with a piece of buning wood, stiking out of it a tain of ed-hot spaks that went caeeing up the little chimney, and oaing out into the ai. ‘You would not have seen them,’ he etuned. ‘I detest this Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield mongel time, neithe day no night. How late you ae! Whee have you been?’ ‘I have been taking leave of my usual walk,’ said I. ‘And I have been sitting hee,’ said Steefoth, glancing ound the oom, ‘thinking that all the people we found so glad on the night of ou coming down, might—to judge fom the pesent wasted ai of the place—be dispesed, o dead, o come to I don’t know what ham. David, I wish to God I had had a judicious fathe these last twenty yeas!’ ‘My dea Steefoth, what is the matte?’ ‘I wish with all my soul I had been bette guided!’ he exclaimed. ‘I wish with all my soul I could guide myself bette!’ Thee was a passionate dejection in his manne that quite amazed me. He was moe unlike himself than I could have supposed possible. ‘It would be bette to be this poo Peggotty, o his lout of a nephew,’ he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, with his face towads the fie, ‘than to be myself, twenty times iche and twenty times wise, and be the toment to myself that I have been, in this Devil’s bak of a boat, within the last half-hou!’ I was so confounded by the alteation in him, that at fist I could only obseve him in silence, as he stood leaning his head upon his hand, and looking gloomily down at the fie. At length I begged him, with all the eanestness I felt, to tell me what had occued to coss him so unusually, and to let me sympathize with him, if I could not hope to advise him. Befoe I had well concluded, he began to laugh—fetfully at fist, but soon with etuning gaiety. Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield ‘Tut, it’s nothing, Daisy! nothing!’ he eplied. ‘I told you at the inn in London, I am heavy company fo myself, sometimes. I have been a nightmae to myself, just now—must have had one, I think. At odd dull times, nusey tales come up into the memoy, unecognized fo what they ae. I believe I have been confounding myself with the bad boy who “didn’t cae”, and became food fo lions—a gande kind of going to the dogs, I suppose. What old women call the hoos, have been ceeping ove me fom head to foot. I have been afaid of myself.’ ‘You ae afaid of nothing else, I think,’ said I. ‘Pehaps not, and yet may have enough to be afaid of too,’ he answeed. ‘Well! So it goes by! I am not about to be hipped again, David; but I tell you, my good fellow, once moe, that it would have been well fo me (and fo moe than me) if I had had a steadfast and judicious fathe!’ His face was always full of , but I neve saw it expess such a dak kind of eanestness as when he said these wods, with his glance bent on the fie. ‘So much fo that!’ he said, making as if he tossed something light into the ai, with his
