ss it has some influence upon the present.
Perhaps I might have been better friends with your father and mother. When
you came to me, a little runaway boy, perhaps I thought so. From that time
until now, Trot, you have ever been a credit to me, and a pride and
pleasure. I have no other claim upon my means,--and you are my adopted
child. Only be a loving child to me in my old age, and bear with my whims
and fancies, and you will do more for an old woman whose prime of life was
not so happy as it might have been, than ever that old woman did for you."

It was the first time I had heard my aunt refer to her past history. Her
quiet way of doing it would have exalted her in my respect and affection,
if anything could.

"All is agreed and understood between us now, Trot," she said, "and we
need talk of this no more. Give me a kiss, and we'll go to the Commons in
the morning."

And accordingly at noon the next day we made our way to Doctors' Commons,
interviewed Mr. Spenlow, of the firm of Spenlow and Jorkins, and I was
accepted on a month's probation as an articled clerk. Mr. Spenlow then
conducted me through the Court, that I might see what sort of a place it
was. Then my aunt and I set off in search of lodgings for me, and before
night I was the proud and happy owner of the key to a little set of
chambers in the Adelphi, conveniently situated near the Court, and to my
taste in all ways. Seeing how enraptured I was with them, my aunt took
them for a month, with the privilege of a year, made arrangements with the
landlady about meals and linen, and I was to take possession in two days;
during which time I saw Aunt Betsey safely started on her homeward journey
towards Dover, dreading to leave me, but exulting in the coming
discomfiture of the vagrant donkeys.

It was a wonderfully fine thing to have that lofty castle to myself, and
when I had taken possession and shut my outer door, I felt like Robinson
Crusoe, when he had got within his fortification, and pulled his ladder up
after him. I felt rich, powerful, old, and important, and when I walked
out about town, with the keys of my house in my pocket, and able to ask
any fellow to come home with me, without giving anybody any inconvenience,
I became a quite different personage than ever heretofore.

Whatever there was of happiness or of sorrow, of success or of failure, in
my later life, does not belong on these pages. The identity of the child,
and of the boy, David Copp