have I to be
thankful for in living with Mr. Wickfield!"

I asked Uriah if he had been with Mr. Wickfield long.

"I have been with him going on four years, Master Copperfield," said
Uriah, "since a year after my father's death. How much I have to be
thankful for in that! How much have I to be thankful for in Mr.
Wickfield's kind intention to give me my articles, which would otherwise
not lay within the 'umble means of mother and self!"

"Perhaps, when you're a regular lawyer, you'll be a partner in Mr.
Wickfield's business, one of these days," I said to make myself
agreeable; "and it will be Wickfield and Heep or Heep late Wickfield."

"Oh, no, Master Copperfield," returned Uriah, shaking his head, "I am
much too 'umble for that!"

It must have been five or six years later, when I was in London, that
Uriah recalled my prophecy to me.

Agnes had noticed as I had noticed, long before this, a gradual
alteration in Mr. Wickfield. He sat longer and longer over his wine, and
it was at such times, when his hands trembled, and his speech was not
plain, that Uriah was most certain to want him on some business.

So it came about that Agnes had to tell me that Uriah had made himself
indispensable to her father.

"He is subtle and watchful," she said. "He has mastered papa's
weaknesses, fostered them, and taken advantage of them, until papa is
afraid of him."

If I was indignant to hear that Uriah had wormed himself into such
promotion, I restrained my feelings when we met, for Agnes had bidden me
not to repel him, for her father's sake, and for her own.

"What a prophet you have shown yourself, Master Copperfield!" said
Uriah, reminding me of my early words. "You may not recollect it; but
when a person is 'umble, a person treasures such things up. But the
'umblest persons, Master Copperfield, may be instruments of good. I am
glad to think I have been the instrument of good to Mr. Wickfield, and
that I may be more so. Oh, what a worthy man he is; but how imprudent he
has been!"

When the rascal went on to tell me confidentially that he "loved the
ground his Agnes walked on," and that he thought she might come to be
kind to him, knowing his usefulness to her father, I had a delirious
idea of seizing the red-hot poker out of the fire and running him
through with it. However, I thought of Agnes, and could say nothing. In
the end all the evil machinations of Uriah Heep were frustrated by my
old friend Mr. Micawber, who, v