y, I am sorry too. If I believed it was his sorrow,
I should not think of it at all. But it's not that; oh, no, it's not
that.'
'How do you know it's not that?' said Peggotty, after a silence.
'Oh, his sorrow is another and quite a different thing. He is sorry at
this moment, sitting by the fireside with Miss Murdstone; but if I was
to go in, Peggotty, he would be something besides.'
'What would he be?' said Peggotty.
'Angry,' I answered, with an involuntary imitation of his dark frown.
'If he was only sorry, he wouldn't look at me as he does. I am only
sorry, and it makes me feel kinder.'
Peggotty said nothing for a little while; and I warmed my hands, as
silent as she.
'Davy,' she said at length.
'Yes, Peggotty?' 'I have tried, my dear, all ways I could think of--all
the ways there are, and all the ways there ain't, in short--to get a
suitable service here, in Blunderstone; but there's no such a thing, my
love.'
'And what do you mean to do, Peggotty,' says I, wistfully. 'Do you mean
to go and seek your fortune?'
'I expect I shall be forced to go to Yarmouth,' replied Peggotty, 'and
live there.'
'You might have gone farther off,' I said, brightening a little, 'and
been as bad as lost. I shall see you sometimes, my dear old Peggotty,
there. You won't be quite at the other end of the world, will you?'
'Contrary ways, please God!' cried Peggotty, with great animation. 'As
long as you are here, my pet, I shall come over every week of my life to
see you. One day, every week of my life!'
I felt a great weight taken off my mind by this promise: but even this
was not all, for Peggotty went on to say:
'I'm a-going, Davy, you see, to my brother's, first, for another
fortnight's visit--just till I have had time to look about me, and
get to be something like myself again. Now, I have been thinking that
perhaps, as they don't want you here at present, you might be let to go
along with me.'
If anything, short of being in a different relation to every one about
me, Peggotty excepted, could have given me a sense of pleasure at that
time, it would have been this project of all others. The idea of being
again surrounded by those honest faces, shining welcome on me; of
renewing the peacefulness of the sweet Sunday morning, when the bells
were ringing, the stones dropping in the water, and the shadowy ships
breaking through the mist; of roaming up and down with little Em'ly,
telling her my troubles, and fi
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