and fearing that one
day he would grow up to be no better than they. He was given a bedroom
in the house of a Mr. Micawber, and this man was, in his way, a friend.

There was never a better-hearted man than Mr. Micawber, but he seemed to
be always unlucky. He had a head as bald as an egg, wore a tall, pointed
collar, and carried for ornament an eye-glass which he never used. He
never had any money, was owing everybody who would lend him any, and was
always, as he said, "waiting for something to turn up." With this
exception David had not a friend in London, and finally Mr. Micawber
himself was put in prison for debt, and his relatives, who paid his
debts to release him, did so on condition that he leave London. So at
length David had not even this one friend.

David bore this friendless and wretched life as long as he could, but at
length he felt that he could stay at the warehouse no longer and made up
his mind to run away.

The only one in the world he could think of who might help him
was--whom do you think? His great-aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood, who had
left his mother's house the night he was born because he did not happen
to be a girl. She was the only real relative he had in the world.

She lived, Peggotty had told him, in Dover, and that was seventy miles
away; but the distance did not daunt him. So one day he put all his
things into a box and hired a boy with a cart to take it to the coach
office. But the boy robbed him of all the money he had (a gold piece
Peggotty had sent him) and drove off with his box besides, and poor
David, crying, set out afoot, without a penny, in the direction he
thought Dover lay.

That evening he sold his waistcoat to a clothes-dealer for a few
pennies, and when night came he slept on the ground, under the walls of
Mr. Creakle's old school where he had known Steerforth and Tommy
Traddles. The next day he offered his jacket for sale to a half-crazy
old store-keeper, who took the coat but would not pay him at first, and
David had to sit all day on the door-step before the other would give
him the money.

The next four nights he slept under haystacks, greatly in fear of
tramps, and at length, on the sixth day, ragged, sunburned, dusty and
almost dead from weariness, he got to Dover.

He had to ask many people before he could find out where Miss Betsy
Trotwood lived. It was outside the town, in a cottage with a little
garden. Here she lived all alone, except for a simple-minded o