e
bedclothes, and pressed her from me with my hand, when she would have
raised me up.

'This is your doing, Peggotty, you cruel thing!' said my mother. 'I have
no doubt at all about it. How can you reconcile it to your conscience,
I wonder, to prejudice my own boy against me, or against anybody who is
dear to me? What do you mean by it, Peggotty?'

Poor Peggotty lifted up her hands and eyes, and only answered, in a
sort of paraphrase of the grace I usually repeated after dinner, 'Lord
forgive you, Mrs. Copperfield, and for what you have said this minute,
may you never be truly sorry!'

'It's enough to distract me,' cried my mother. 'In my honeymoon, too,
when my most inveterate enemy might relent, one would think, and not
envy me a little peace of mind and happiness. Davy, you naughty boy!
Peggotty, you savage creature! Oh, dear me!' cried my mother, turning
from one of us to the other, in her pettish wilful manner, 'what a
troublesome world this is, when one has the most right to expect it to
be as agreeable as possible!'

I felt the touch of a hand that I knew was neither hers nor Peggotty's,
and slipped to my feet at the bed-side. It was Mr. Murdstone's hand, and
he kept it on my arm as he said:

'What's this? Clara, my love, have you forgotten?--Firmness, my dear!'

'I am very sorry, Edward,' said my mother. 'I meant to be very good, but
I am so uncomfortable.'

'Indeed!' he answered. 'That's a bad hearing, so soon, Clara.'

'I say it's very hard I should be made so now,' returned my mother,
pouting; 'and it is--very hard--isn't it?'

He drew her to him, whispered in her ear, and kissed her. I knew as
well, when I saw my mother's head lean down upon his shoulder, and her
arm touch his neck--I knew as well that he could mould her pliant nature
into any form he chose, as I know, now, that he did it.

'Go you below, my love,' said Mr. Murdstone. 'David and I will come
down, together. My friend,' turning a darkening face on Peggotty, when
he had watched my mother out, and dismissed her with a nod and a smile;
'do you know your mistress's name?'

'She has been my mistress a long time, sir,' answered Peggotty, 'I ought
to know it.' 'That's true,' he answered. 'But I thought I heard you, as
I came upstairs, address her by a name that is not hers. She has taken
mine, you know. Will you remember that?'

Peggotty, with some uneasy glances at me, curtseyed herself out of the
room without replying; seeing, I supp