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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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I remarked that my mother, though she smiled when Peggotty looked at her, became more serious and thoughtful. I had seen at first that she was changed. Her face was very pretty still, but it looked careworn, and too delicate; and her hand was so thin and white that it seemed to me to be almost transparent. But the change to which I now refer was superadded to this: it was in her manner, which became anxious and fluttered. At last she said, putting out her hand, and laying it affectionately on the hand of her old servant, 'Peggotty, dear, you are not going to be married?' 'Me, ma'am?' returned Peggotty, staring. 'Lord bless you, no!' 'Not just yet?' said my mother, tenderly. 'Never!' cried Peggotty. My mother took her hand, and said: 'Don't leave me, Peggotty. Stay with me. It will not be for long, perhaps. What should I ever do without you!' 'Me leave you, my precious!' cried Peggotty. 'Not for all the world and his wife. Why, what's put that in your silly little head?' - For Peggotty had been used of old to talk to my mother sometimes like a child. But my mother made no answer, except to thank her, and Peggotty went running on in her own fashion. 'Me leave you? I think I see myself. Peggotty go away from you? I should like to catch her at it! No, no, no,' said Peggotty, shaking her head, and folding her arms; 'not she, my dear. It isn't that there ain't some Cats that would be well enough pleased if she did, but they sha'n't be pleased. They shall be aggravated. I'll stay with you till I am a cross cranky old woman. And when I'm too deaf, and too lame, and too blind, and too mumbly for want of teeth, to be of any use at all, even to be found fault with, than I shall go to my Davy, and ask him to take me in.' 'And, Peggotty,' says I, 'I shall be glad to see you, and I'll make you as welcome as a queen.' 'Bless your dear heart!' cried Peggotty. 'I know you will!' And |
