CHAPTER 23. I CORROBORATE Mr. DICK, AND CHOOSE A PROFESSION

When I awoke in the morning I thought very much of little Em’ly, and her

emotion last night, after Martha had left. I felt as if I had come into

the knowledge of those domestic weaknesses and tendernesses in a sacred

confidence, and that to disclose them, even to Steerforth, would be

wrong. I had no gentler feeling towards anyone than towards the

pretty creature who had been my playmate, and whom I have always been

persuaded, and shall always be persuaded, to my dying day, I then

devotedly loved. The repetition to any ears--even to Steerforth’s--of

what she had been unable to repress when her heart lay open to me by an

accident, I felt would be a rough deed, unworthy of myself, unworthy of

the light of our pure childhood, which I always saw encircling her head.

I made a resolution, therefore, to keep it in my own breast; and there

it gave her image a new grace.

While we were at breakfast, a letter was delivered to me from my aunt.

As it contained matter on which I thought Steerforth could advise me

as well as anyone, and on which I knew I should be delighted to consult

him, I resolved to make it a subject of discussion on our journey home.

For the present we had enough to do, in taking leave of all our friends.

Mr. Barkis was far from being the last among them, in his regret at

our departure; and I believe would even have opened the box again, and

sacrificed another guinea, if it would have kept us eight-and-forty

hours in Yarmouth. Peggotty and all her family were full of grief at our

going. The whole house of Omer and Joram turned out to bid us good-bye;

and there were so many seafaring volunteers in attendance on Steerforth,

when our portmanteaux went to the coach, that if we had had the baggage

of a regiment with us, we should hardly have wanted porters to carry it.

In a word, we departed to the regret and admiration of all concerned,

and left a great many people very sorry behind US.

‘Do you stay long here, Littimer?’ said I, as he stood waiting to see the

coach start.

‘No, sir,’ he replied; ‘probably not very long, sir.’

‘He can hardly say, just now,’ observed Steerforth, carelessly. ‘He

knows what he has to do, and he’ll do it.’

‘That I am sure he will,’ said I.

Littimer touched his hat in acknowledgement of my good opinion, and I

felt about eight years old. He touched it once more, wishing us a good

journey; and we left him standing on the pavement, as respectable a

mystery as any pyramid in Egypt.

For some little time we held no conversation, Steerforth being unusually

silent, and I being sufficiently engaged in wondering, within myself,

when I should see the old places again, and what new changes might

happen to me or them in the meanwhile. At length Steerforth, becoming

gay and talkative in a moment, as he could become anything he liked at

any moment, pulled me by the arm:

‘Find a voice, David. What about that letter you were speaking of at

breakfast?’

‘Oh!’ said I, taking it out of my pocket. ‘It’s from my aunt.’

‘And what does she say, requiring consideration?’

‘Why, she reminds me, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘that I came out on this

expedition to look about me, and to think a little.’

‘Which, of course, you have done?’

‘Indeed I can’t say I have, particularly. To tell you the truth, I am

afraid I have forgotten it.’

‘Well! look about you now, and make up for your negligence,’ said

Steerforth. ‘Look to the right, and you’ll see a flat country, with a

good deal of marsh in it; look to the left, and you’ll see the same.

Look to the front, and you’ll find no difference; look to the rear,

and there it is still.’ I laughed, and replied that I saw no suitable

profession in the whole prospect; which was perhaps to be attributed to

its flatness.

‘What says our aunt on the subject?’ inquired Steerforth, glancing at

the letter in my hand. ‘Does she suggest anything?’

‘Why, yes,’ said I. ‘She asks me, here, if I think I should like to be a

proctor? What do you think of it?’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ replied Steerforth, coolly. ‘You may as well do

that as anything else, I suppose?’

I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all callings and

professions so equally; and I told him so.

‘What is a proctor, Steerforth?’ said I.

‘Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney,’ replied Steerforth. ‘He is, to

some faded courts held in Doctors’ Commons,--a lazy old nook near St.

Paul’s Churchyard--what solicitors are to the courts of law and equity.

He is a functionary whose existence, in the natural course of things,

would have terminated about two hundred years ago. I can tell you best

what he is, by telling you what Doctors’ Commons is. It’s a

little out-of-the-way place, where they administer what is called

ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old

monsters of acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the world know

nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in

a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards. It’s a place that has an

ancient monopoly in suits about people’s wills and people’s marriages,

and disputes among ships and boats.’

‘Nonsense, Steerforth!’ I exclaimed. ‘You don’t mean to say that there

is any affinity between nautical matters and ecclesiastical matters?’

‘I don’t, indeed, my dear boy,’ he returned; ‘but I mean to say that

they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that

same Doctors’ Commons. You shall go there one day, and find them

blundering through half the nautical terms in Young’s Dictionary,

apropos of the “Nancy” having run down the “Sarah Jane”, or Mr. Peggotty

and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in a gale of wind with an anchor

and cable to the “Nelson” Indiaman in distress; and you shall go there

another day, and find them deep in the evidence, pro and con, respecting

a clergyman who has misbehaved himself; and you shall find the judge

in the nautical case, the advocate in the clergyman’s case, or

contrariwise. They are like actors: now a man’s a judge, and now he is

not a judge; now he’s one thing, now he’s another; now he’s something

else, change and change about; but it’s always a very pleasant,

profitable little affair of private theatricals, presented to an

uncommonly select audience.’

‘But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?’ said I, a little

puzzled. ‘Are they?’

‘No,’ returned Steerforth, ‘the advocates are civilians--men who have

taken a doctor’s degree at college--which is the first reason of my

knowing anything about it. The proctors employ the advocates. Both get

very comfortable fees, and altogether they make a mighty snug little

party. On the whole, I would recommend you to take to Doctors’ Commons

kindly, David. They plume themselves on their gentility there, I can

tell you, if that’s any satisfaction.’

I made allowance for Steerforth’s light way of treating the subject,

and, considering it with reference to the staid air of gravity and

antiquity which I associated with that ‘lazy old nook near St. Paul’s

Churchyard’, did not feel indisposed towards my aunt’s suggestion; which

she left to my free decision, making no scruple of telling me that it

had occurred to her, on her lately visiting her own proctor in Doctors’

Commons for the purpose of settling her will in my favour.

‘That’s a laudable proceeding on the part of our aunt, at all events,’

said Steerforth, when I mentioned it; ‘and one deserving of all

encouragement. Daisy, my advice is that you take kindly to Doctors’

Commons.’

I quite made up my mind to do so. I then told Steerforth that my aunt

was in town awaiting me (as I found from her letter), and that she had

taken lodgings for a week at a kind of private hotel at Lincoln’s Inn

Fields, where there was a stone staircase, and a convenient door in

the roof; my aunt being firmly persuaded that every house in London was

going to be burnt down every night.

We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to

Doctors’ Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I should be a

proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and

whimsical lights, that made us both merry. When we came to our journey’s

end, he went home, engaging to call upon me next day but one; and I

drove to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where I found my aunt up, and waiting

supper.

If I had been round the world since we parted, we could hardly have been

better pleased to meet again. My aunt cried outright as she embraced me;

and said, pretending to laugh, that if my poor mother had been alive,

that silly little creature would have shed tears, she had no doubt.

‘So you have left Mr. Dick behind, aunt?’ said I. ‘I am sorry for that.

Ah, Janet, how do you do?’

As Janet curtsied, hoping I was well, I observed my aunt’s visage

lengthen very much.

‘I am sorry for it, too,’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose. ‘I have had

no peace of mind, Trot, since I have been here.’ Before I could ask why,

she told me.

‘I am convinced,’ said my aunt, laying her hand with melancholy firmness

on the table, ‘that Dick’s character is not a character to keep the

donkeys off. I am confident he wants strength of purpose. I ought to

have left Janet at home, instead, and then my mind might perhaps have

been at ease. If ever there was a donkey trespassing on my green,’ said

my aunt, with emphasis, ‘there was one this afternoon at four o’clock.

A cold feeling came over me from head to foot, and I know it was a

donkey!’

I tried to comfort her on this point, but she rejected consolation.

‘It was a donkey,’ said my aunt; ‘and it was the one with the stumpy

tail which that Murdering sister of a woman rode, when she came to my

house.’ This had been, ever since, the only name my aunt knew for Miss

Murdstone. ‘If there is any Donkey in Dover, whose audacity it is harder

to me to bear than another’s, that,’ said my aunt, striking the table,

‘is the animal!’

Janet ventured to suggest that my aunt might be disturbing herself

unnecessarily, and that she believed the donkey in question was then

engaged in the sand-and-gravel line of business, and was not available

for purposes of trespass. But my aunt wouldn’t hear of it.

Supper was comfortably served and hot, though my aunt’s rooms were very

high up--whether that she might have more stone stairs for her money, or

might be nearer to the door in the roof, I don’t know--and consisted of

a roast fowl, a steak, and some vegetables, to all of which I did ample

justice, and which were all excellent. But my aunt had her own ideas

concerning London provision, and ate but little.

‘I suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought up in a cellar,’

said my aunt, ‘and never took the air except on a hackney coach-stand. I

hope the steak may be beef, but I don’t believe it. Nothing’s genuine in

the place, in my opinion, but the dirt.’

‘Don’t you think the fowl may have come out of the country, aunt?’ I

hinted.

‘Certainly not,’ returned my aunt. ‘It would be no pleasure to a London

tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was.’

I did not venture to controvert this opinion, but I made a good supper,

which it greatly satisfied her to see me do. When the table was cleared,

Janet assisted her to arrange her hair, to put on her nightcap, which

was of a smarter construction than usual (‘in case of fire’, my aunt

said), and to fold her gown back over her knees, these being her usual

preparations for warming herself before going to bed. I then made her,

according to certain established regulations from which no deviation,

however slight, could ever be permitted, a glass of hot wine and

water, and a slice of toast cut into long thin strips. With these

accompaniments we were left alone to finish the evening, my aunt sitting

opposite to me drinking her wine and water; soaking her strips of toast

in it, one by one, before eating them; and looking benignantly on me,

from among the borders of her nightcap.

‘Well, Trot,’ she began, ‘what do you think of the proctor plan? Or have

you not begun to think about it yet?’

‘I have thought a good deal about it, my dear aunt, and I have talked a

good deal about it with Steerforth. I like it very much indeed. I like

it exceedingly.’

‘Come!’ said my aunt. ‘That’s cheering!’

‘I have only one difficulty, aunt.’

‘Say what it is, Trot,’ she returned.

‘Why, I want to ask, aunt, as this seems, from what I understand, to

be a limited profession, whether my entrance into it would not be very

expensive?’

‘It will cost,’ returned my aunt, ‘to article you, just a thousand

pounds.’

‘Now, my dear aunt,’ said I, drawing my chair nearer, ‘I am uneasy in

my mind about that. It’s a large sum of money. You have expended a

great deal on my education, and have always been as liberal to me in all

things as it was possible to be. You have been the soul of generosity.

Surely there are some ways in which I might begin life with hardly any

outlay, and yet begin with a good hope of getting on by resolution and

exertion. Are you sure that it would not be better to try that course?

Are you certain that you can afford to part with so much money, and that

it is right that it should be so expended? I only ask you, my second

mother, to consider. Are you certain?’

My aunt finished eating the piece of toast on which she was then

engaged, looking me full in the face all the while; and then setting

her glass on the chimney-piece, and folding her hands upon her folded

skirts, replied as follows:

‘Trot, my child, if I have any object in life, it is to provide for

your being a good, a sensible, and a happy man. I am bent upon it--so is

Dick. I should like some people that I know to hear Dick’s conversation

on the subject. Its sagacity is wonderful. But no one knows the

resources of that man’s intellect, except myself!’

She stopped for a moment to take my hand between hers, and went on:

‘It’s in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some influence

upon the present. Perhaps I might have been better friends with your

poor father. Perhaps I might have been better friends with that poor

child your mother, even after your sister Betsey Trotwood disappointed

me. When you came to me, a little runaway boy, all dusty and way-worn,

perhaps I thought so. From that time until now, Trot, you have ever been

a credit to me and a pride and a pleasure. I have no other claim upon

my means; at least’--here to my surprise she hesitated, and was

confused--‘no, I have no other claim upon my means--and you are my

adopted child. Only be a loving child to me in my 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 or conciliating 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.

There was a magnanimity in her quiet way of doing so, and of dismissing

it, which would have exalted her in my respect and affection, if

anything could.

‘All is agreed and understood between us, now, Trot,’ said my aunt,

‘and we need talk of this no more. Give me a kiss, and we’ll go to the

Commons after breakfast tomorrow.’

We had a long chat by the fire before we went to bed. I slept in a room

on the same floor with my aunt’s, and was a little disturbed in the

course of the night by her knocking at my door as often as she was

agitated by a distant sound of hackney-coaches or market-carts, and

inquiring, ‘if I heard the engines?’ But towards morning she slept

better, and suffered me to do so too.

At about mid-day, we set out for the office of Messrs Spenlow and

Jorkins, in Doctors’ Commons. My aunt, who had this other general

opinion in reference to London, that every man she saw was a pickpocket,

gave me her purse to carry for her, which had ten guineas in it and some

silver.

We made a pause at the toy shop in Fleet Street, to see the giants of

Saint Dunstan’s strike upon the bells--we had timed our going, so as to

catch them at it, at twelve o’clock--and then went on towards Ludgate

Hill, and St. Paul’s Churchyard. We were crossing to the former place,

when I found that my aunt greatly accelerated her speed, and looked

frightened. I observed, at the same time, that a lowering ill-dressed

man who had stopped and stared at us in passing, a little before, was

coming so close after us as to brush against her.

‘Trot! My dear Trot!’ cried my aunt, in a terrified whisper, and

pressing my arm. ‘I don’t know what I am to do.’

‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said I. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. Step into

a shop, and I’ll soon get rid of this fellow.’

‘No, no, child!’ she returned. ‘Don’t speak to him for the world. I

entreat, I order you!’

‘Good Heaven, aunt!’ said I. ‘He is nothing but a sturdy beggar.’

‘You don’t know what he is!’ replied my aunt. ‘You don’t know who he is!

You don’t know what you say!’

We had stopped in an empty door-way, while this was passing, and he had

stopped too.

‘Don’t look at him!’ said my aunt, as I turned my head indignantly, ‘but

get me a coach, my dear, and wait for me in St. Paul’s Churchyard.’

‘Wait for you?’ I replied.

‘Yes,’ rejoined my aunt. ‘I must go alone. I must go with him.’

‘With him, aunt? This man?’

‘I am in my senses,’ she replied, ‘and I tell you I must. Get me a

coach!’

However much astonished I might be, I was sensible that I had no right

to refuse compliance with such a peremptory command. I hurried away a

few paces, and called a hackney-chariot which was passing empty. Almost

before I could let down the steps, my aunt sprang in, I don’t know how,

and the man followed. She waved her hand to me to go away, so earnestly,

that, all confounded as I was, I turned from them at once. In doing so,

I heard her say to the coachman, ‘Drive anywhere! Drive straight on!’

and presently the chariot passed me, going up the hill.

What Mr. Dick had told me, and what I had supposed to be a delusion of

his, now came into my mind. I could not doubt that this person was the

person of whom he had made such mysterious mention, though what the

nature of his hold upon my aunt could possibly be, I was quite unable

to imagine. After half an hour’s cooling in the churchyard, I saw the

chariot coming back. The driver stopped beside me, and my aunt was

sitting in it alone.

She had not yet sufficiently recovered from her agitation to be quite

prepared for the visit we had to make. She desired me to get into the

chariot, and to tell the coachman to drive slowly up and down a little

while. She said no more, except, ‘My dear child, never ask me what

it was, and don’t refer to it,’ until she had perfectly regained her

composure, when she told me she was quite herself now, and we might get

out. On her giving me her purse to pay the driver, I found that all the

guineas were gone, and only the loose silver remained.

Doctors’ Commons was approached by a little low archway. Before we had

taken many paces down the street beyond it, the noise of the city seemed

to melt, as if by magic, into a softened distance. A few dull courts

and narrow ways brought us to the sky-lighted offices of Spenlow and

Jorkins; in the vestibule of which temple, accessible to pilgrims

without the ceremony of knocking, three or four clerks were at work as

copyists. One of these, a little dry man, sitting by himself, who wore

a stiff brown wig that looked as if it were made of gingerbread, rose to

receive my aunt, and show us into Mr. Spenlow’s room.

‘Mr. Spenlow’s in Court, ma’am,’ said the dry man; ‘it’s an Arches day;

but it’s close by, and I’ll send for him directly.’

As we were left to look about us while Mr. Spenlow was fetched, I

availed myself of the opportunity. The furniture of the room was

old-fashioned and dusty; and the green baize on the top of the

writing-table had lost all its colour, and was as withered and pale as

an old pauper. There were a great many bundles of papers on it, some

endorsed as Allegations, and some (to my surprise) as Libels, and some

as being in the Consistory Court, and some in the Arches Court, and some

in the Prerogative Court, and some in the Admiralty Court, and some in

the Delegates’ Court; giving me occasion to wonder much, how many Courts

there might be in the gross, and how long it would take to understand

them all. Besides these, there were sundry immense manuscript Books

of Evidence taken on affidavit, strongly bound, and tied together in

massive sets, a set to each cause, as if every cause were a history in

ten or twenty volumes. All this looked tolerably expensive, I thought,

and gave me an agreeable notion of a proctor’s business. I was casting

my eyes with increasing complacency over these and many similar objects,

when hasty footsteps were heard in the room outside, and Mr. Spenlow,

in a black gown trimmed with white fur, came hurrying in, taking off his

hat as he came.

He was a little light-haired gentleman, with undeniable boots, and the

stiffest of white cravats and shirt-collars. He was buttoned up, mighty

trim and tight, and must have taken a great deal of pains with his

whiskers, which were accurately curled. His gold watch-chain was so

massive, that a fancy came across me, that he ought to have a sinewy

golden arm, to draw it out with, like those which are put up over the

goldbeaters’ shops. He was got up with such care, and was so stiff, that

he could hardly bend himself; being obliged, when he glanced at some

papers on his desk, after sitting down in his chair, to move his whole

body, from the bottom of his spine, like Punch.

I had previously been presented by my aunt, and had been courteously

received. He now said:

‘And so, Mr. Copperfield, you think of entering into our profession?

I casually mentioned to Miss Trotwood, when I had the pleasure of an

interview with her the other day,’--with another inclination of his

body--Punch again--‘that there was a vacancy here. Miss Trotwood was

good enough to mention that she had a nephew who was her peculiar care,

and for whom she was seeking to provide genteelly in life. That

nephew, I believe, I have now the pleasure of’--Punch again. I bowed my

acknowledgements, and said, my aunt had mentioned to me that there was

that opening, and that I believed I should like it very much. That I was

strongly inclined to like it, and had taken immediately to the proposal.

That I could not absolutely pledge myself to like it, until I knew

something more about it. That although it was little else than a matter

of form, I presumed I should have an opportunity of trying how I liked

it, before I bound myself to it irrevocably.

‘Oh surely! surely!’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘We always, in this house,

propose a month--an initiatory month. I should be happy, myself, to

propose two months--three--an indefinite period, in fact--but I have a

partner. Mr. Jorkins.’

‘And the premium, sir,’ I returned, ‘is a thousand pounds?’

‘And the premium, Stamp included, is a thousand pounds,’ said Mr.

Spenlow. ‘As I have mentioned to Miss Trotwood, I am actuated by no

mercenary considerations; few men are less so, I believe; but Mr.

Jorkins has his opinions on these subjects, and I am bound to respect

Mr. Jorkins’s opinions. Mr. Jorkins thinks a thousand pounds too little,

in short.’

‘I suppose, sir,’ said I, still desiring to spare my aunt, ‘that it is

not the custom here, if an articled clerk were particularly useful,

and made himself a perfect master of his profession’--I could not help

blushing, this looked so like praising myself--‘I suppose it is not the

custom, in the later years of his time, to allow him any--’

Mr. Spenlow, by a great effort, just lifted his head far enough out of

his cravat to shake it, and answered, anticipating the word ‘salary’:

‘No. I will not say what consideration I might give to that point

myself, Mr. Copperfield, if I were unfettered. Mr. Jorkins is

immovable.’

I was quite dismayed by the idea of this terrible Jorkins. But I found

out afterwards that he was a mild man of a heavy temperament, whose

place in the business was to keep himself in the background, and be

constantly exhibited by name as the most obdurate and ruthless of men.

If a clerk wanted his salary raised, Mr. Jorkins wouldn’t listen to such

a proposition. If a client were slow to settle his bill of costs, Mr.

Jorkins was resolved to have it paid; and however painful these things

might be (and always were) to the feelings of Mr. Spenlow, Mr. Jorkins

would have his bond. The heart and hand of the good angel Spenlow would

have been always open, but for the restraining demon Jorkins. As I have

grown older, I think I have had experience of some other houses doing

business on the principle of Spenlow and Jorkins!

It was settled that I should begin my month’s probation as soon as I

pleased, and that my aunt need neither remain in town nor return at

its expiration, as the articles of agreement, of which I was to be the

subject, could easily be sent to her at home for her signature. When

we had got so far, Mr. Spenlow offered to take me into Court then and

there, and show me what sort of place it was. As I was willing enough

to know, we went out with this object, leaving my aunt behind; who would

trust herself, she said, in no such place, and who, I think, regarded

all Courts of Law as a sort of powder-mills that might blow up at any

time.

Mr. Spenlow conducted me through a paved courtyard formed of grave brick

houses, which I inferred, from the Doctors’ names upon the doors, to be

the official abiding-places of the learned advocates of whom Steerforth

had told me; and into a large dull room, not unlike a chapel to my

thinking, on the left hand. The upper part of this room was fenced off

from the rest; and there, on the two sides of a raised platform of the

horse-shoe form, sitting on easy old-fashioned dining-room chairs, were

sundry gentlemen in red gowns and grey wigs, whom I found to be the

Doctors aforesaid. Blinking over a little desk like a pulpit-desk, in

the curve of the horse-shoe, was an old gentleman, whom, if I had seen

him in an aviary, I should certainly have taken for an owl, but who, I

learned, was the presiding judge. In the space within the horse-shoe,

lower than these, that is to say, on about the level of the floor, were

sundry other gentlemen, of Mr. Spenlow’s rank, and dressed like him in

black gowns with white fur upon them, sitting at a long green table.

Their cravats were in general stiff, I thought, and their looks haughty;

but in this last respect I presently conceived I had done them an

injustice, for when two or three of them had to rise and answer a

question of the presiding dignitary, I never saw anything more sheepish.

The public, represented by a boy with a comforter, and a shabby-genteel

man secretly eating crumbs out of his coat pockets, was warming itself

at a stove in the centre of the Court. The languid stillness of the

place was only broken by the chirping of this fire and by the voice of

one of the Doctors, who was wandering slowly through a perfect library

of evidence, and stopping to put up, from time to time, at little

roadside inns of argument on the journey. Altogether, I have never,

on any occasion, made one at such a cosey, dosey, old-fashioned,

time-forgotten, sleepy-headed little family-party in all my life; and

I felt it would be quite a soothing opiate to belong to it in any

character--except perhaps as a suitor.

Very well satisfied with the dreamy nature of this retreat, I informed

Mr. Spenlow that I had seen enough for that time, and we rejoined

my aunt; in company with whom I presently departed from the Commons,

feeling very young when I went out of Spenlow and Jorkins’s, on account

of the clerks poking one another with their pens to point me out.

We arrived at Lincoln’s Inn Fields without any new adventures, except

encountering an unlucky donkey in a costermonger’s cart, who suggested

painful associations to my aunt. We had another long talk about my

plans, when we were safely housed; and as I knew she was anxious to

get home, and, between fire, food, and pickpockets, could never be

considered at her ease for half-an-hour in London, I urged her not to be

uncomfortable on my account, but to leave me to take care of myself.

‘I have not been here a week tomorrow, without considering that too, my

dear,’ she returned. ‘There is a furnished little set of chambers to be

let in the Adelphi, Trot, which ought to suit you to a marvel.’

With this brief introduction, she produced from her pocket an

advertisement, carefully cut out of a newspaper, setting forth that in

Buckingham Street in the Adelphi there was to be let furnished, with a

view of the river, a singularly desirable, and compact set of chambers,

forming a genteel residence for a young gentleman, a member of one

of the Inns of Court, or otherwise, with immediate possession. Terms

moderate, and could be taken for a month only, if required.

‘Why, this is the very thing, aunt!’ said I, flushed with the possible

dignity of living in chambers.

‘Then come,’ replied my aunt, immediately resuming the bonnet she had a

minute before laid aside. ‘We’ll go and look at ‘em.’

Away we went. The advertisement directed us to apply to Mrs. Crupp

on the premises, and we rung the area bell, which we supposed to

communicate with Mrs. Crupp. It was not until we had rung three or four

times that we could prevail on Mrs. Crupp to communicate with us, but

at last she appeared, being a stout lady with a flounce of flannel

petticoat below a nankeen gown.

‘Let us see these chambers of yours, if you please, ma’am,’ said my

aunt.

‘For this gentleman?’ said Mrs. Crupp, feeling in her pocket for her

keys.

‘Yes, for my nephew,’ said my aunt.

‘And a sweet set they is for sich!’ said Mrs. Crupp.

So we went upstairs.

They were on the top of the house--a great point with my aunt, being

near the fire-escape--and consisted of a little half-blind entry where

you could see hardly anything, a little stone-blind pantry where you

could see nothing at all, a sitting-room, and a bedroom. The furniture

was rather faded, but quite good enough for me; and, sure enough, the

river was outside the windows.

As I was delighted with the place, my aunt and Mrs. Crupp withdrew into

the pantry to discuss the terms, while I remained on the sitting-room

sofa, hardly daring to think it possible that I could be destined to

live in such a noble residence. After a single combat of some duration

they returned, and I saw, to my joy, both in Mrs. Crupp’s countenance

and in my aunt’s, that the deed was done.

‘Is it the last occupant’s furniture?’ inquired my aunt.

‘Yes, it is, ma’am,’ said Mrs. Crupp.

‘What’s become of him?’ asked my aunt.

Mrs. Crupp was taken with a troublesome cough, in the midst of which

she articulated with much difficulty. ‘He was took ill here, ma’am,

and--ugh! ugh! ugh! dear me!--and he died!’

‘Hey! What did he die of?’ asked my aunt.

‘Well, ma’am, he died of drink,’ said Mrs. Crupp, in confidence. ‘And

smoke.’

‘Smoke? You don’t mean chimneys?’ said my aunt.

‘No, ma’am,’ returned Mrs. Crupp. ‘Cigars and pipes.’

‘That’s not catching, Trot, at any rate,’ remarked my aunt, turning to

me.

‘No, indeed,’ said I.

In short, my aunt, seeing how enraptured I was with the premises, took

them for a month, with leave to remain for twelve months when that

time was out. Mrs. Crupp was to find linen, and to cook; every other

necessary was already provided; and Mrs. Crupp expressly intimated that

she should always yearn towards me as a son. I was to take possession

the day after tomorrow, and Mrs. Crupp said, thank Heaven she had now

found summun she could care for!

On our way back, my aunt informed me how she confidently trusted that

the life I was now to lead would make me firm and self-reliant, which

was all I wanted. She repeated this several times next day, in the

intervals of our arranging for the transmission of my clothes and books

from Mr. Wickfield’s; relative to which, and to all my late holiday, I

wrote a long letter to Agnes, of which my aunt took charge, as she was

to leave on the succeeding day. Not to lengthen these particulars, I

need only add, that she made a handsome provision for all my

possible wants during my month of trial; that Steerforth, to my great

disappointment and hers too, did not make his appearance before she went

away; that I saw her safely seated in the Dover coach, exulting in the

coming discomfiture of the vagrant donkeys, with Janet at her side; and

that when the coach was gone, I turned my face to the Adelphi, pondering

on the old days when I used to roam about its subterranean arches, and

on the happy changes which had brought me to the surface.