w,' the child repeated, more
earnestly than before. 'If you are sorrowful, let me know why and be
sorrowful too; if you waste away and are paler and weaker every day,
let me be your nurse and try to comfort you. If you are poor, let us
be poor together; but let me be with you, do let me be with you; do not
let me see such change and not know why, or I shall break my heart and
die. Dear grandfather, let us leave this sad place to-morrow, and beg
our way from door to door.'

The old man covered his face with his hands, and hid it in the pillow
of the couch on which he lay.

'Let us be beggars,' said the child passing an arm round his neck, 'I
have no fear but we shall have enough, I am sure we shall. Let us walk
through country places, and sleep in fields and under trees, and never
think of money again, or anything that can make you sad, but rest at
nights, and have the sun and wind upon our faces in the day, and thank
God together! Let us never set foot in dark rooms or melancholy
houses, any more, but wander up and down wherever we like to go; and
when you are tired, you shall stop to rest in the pleasantest place
that we can find, and I will go and beg for both.'

The child's voice was lost in sobs as she dropped upon the old man's
neck; nor did she weep alone.

These were not words for other ears, nor was it a scene for other eyes.
And yet other ears and eyes were there and greedily taking in all that
passed, and moreover they were the ears and eyes of no less a person
than Mr Daniel Quilp, who, having entered unseen when the child first
placed herself at the old man's side, refrained--actuated, no doubt, by
motives of the purest delicacy--from interrupting the conversation, and
stood looking on with his accustomed grin. Standing, however, being a
tiresome attitude to a gentleman already fatigued with walking, and the
dwarf being one of that kind of persons who usually make themselves at
home, he soon cast his eyes upon a chair, into which he skipped with
uncommon agility, and perching himself on the back with his feet upon
the seat, was thus enabled to look on and listen with greater comfort
to himself, besides gratifying at the same time that taste for doing
something fantastic and monkey-like, which on all occasions had strong
possession of him. Here, then, he sat, one leg cocked carelessly over
the other, his chin resting on the palm of his hand, his head turned a
little on one side, and his ugly featur