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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com-David Copperfield by Charles Dickens


CHAPTER 20
STEERFORTH'S HOME

When the chambermaid tapped at my door at eight o'clock, and
informed me that my shaving-water was outside, I felt severely the
having no occasion for it, and blushed in my bed. The suspicion
that she laughed too, when she said it, preyed upon my mind all the
time I was dressing; and gave me, I was conscious, a sneaking and
guilty air when I passed her on the staircase, as I was going down
to breakfast. I was so sensitively aware, indeed, of being younger
than I could have wished, that for some time I could not make up my
mind to pass her at all, under the ignoble circumstances of the
case; but, hearing her there with a broom, stood peeping out of
window at King Charles on horseback, surrounded by a maze of
hackney-coaches, and looking anything but regal in a drizzling rain
and a dark-brown fog, until I was admonished by the waiter that the
gentleman was waiting for me.

It was not in the coffee-room that I found Steerforth expecting me,
but in a snug private apartment, red-curtained and Turkey-carpeted,
where the fire burnt bright, and a fine hot breakfast was set forth
on a table covered with a clean cloth; and a cheerful miniature of
the room, the fire, the breakfast, Steerforth, and all, was shining
in the little round mirror over the sideboard. I was rather
bashful at first, Steerforth being so self-possessed, and elegant,
and superior to me in all respects (age included); but his easy
patronage soon put that to rights, and made me quite at home. I
could not enough admire the change he had wrought in the Golden
Cross; or compare the dull forlorn state I had held yesterday, with
this morning's comfort and this morning's entertainment. As to the
waiter's familiarity, it was quenched as if it had never been. He
attended on us, as I may say, in sackcloth and ashes.

'Now, Copperfield,' said Steerforth, when we were alone, 'I should
like to hear what you are doing, and where you are going, and all
about you. I feel as if you were my property.'

Glowing with pleasure to find that he had still this interest in
me, I told him how my aunt had proposed the little expedition that
I had before me, and whither it tended.

'As you are in no hurry, then,' said Steerforth, 'come home with me
to Highgate, and stay a day or two. You will be pleased with my
mother - she is a little vain and prosy about me, but that you can
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