't it? Him! Such an old friend! Bless your soul, when I was nothing
but a clerk in his office, Copperfield, I've seen him twenty times, if
I've seen him once, quite in a taking about it--quite put out, you know
(and very proper in him as a father; I'm sure I can't blame him), to
think that Miss Agnes was mixing herself up with what oughtn't to be.'

'My dear Strong,' said Mr. Wickfield in a tremulous voice, 'my good
friend, I needn't tell you that it has been my vice to look for some one
master motive in everybody, and to try all actions by one narrow test. I
may have fallen into such doubts as I have had, through this mistake.'

'You have had doubts, Wickfield,' said the Doctor, without lifting up
his head. 'You have had doubts.'

'Speak up, fellow-partner,' urged Uriah.

'I had, at one time, certainly,' said Mr. Wickfield. 'I--God forgive
me--I thought YOU had.'

'No, no, no!' returned the Doctor, in a tone of most pathetic grief.
'I thought, at one time,' said Mr. Wickfield, 'that you wished to send
Maldon abroad to effect a desirable separation.'

'No, no, no!' returned the Doctor. 'To give Annie pleasure, by making
some provision for the companion of her childhood. Nothing else.'

'So I found,' said Mr. Wickfield. 'I couldn't doubt it, when you told
me so. But I thought--I implore you to remember the narrow construction
which has been my besetting sin--that, in a case where there was so much
disparity in point of years--'

'That's the way to put it, you see, Master Copperfield!' observed Uriah,
with fawning and offensive pity.

'--a lady of such youth, and such attractions, however real her
respect for you, might have been influenced in marrying, by worldly
considerations only. I make no allowance for innumerable feelings
and circumstances that may have all tended to good. For Heaven's sake
remember that!'

'How kind he puts it!' said Uriah, shaking his head.

'Always observing her from one point of view,' said Mr. Wickfield; 'but
by all that is dear to you, my old friend, I entreat you to consider
what it was; I am forced to confess now, having no escape-'

'No! There's no way out of it, Mr. Wickfield, sir,' observed Uriah,
'when it's got to this.'

'--that I did,' said Mr. Wickfield, glancing helplessly and distractedly
at his partner, 'that I did doubt her, and think her wanting in her
duty to you; and that I did sometimes, if I must say all, feel averse
to Agnes being in such a familiar relation