'You were not equally matched,
child--if any two people can be equally matched--and so I asked the
question. You were an orphan, weren't you?' 'Yes.'

'And a governess?'

'I was nursery-governess in a family where Mr. Copperfield came to
visit. Mr. Copperfield was very kind to me, and took a great deal of
notice of me, and paid me a good deal of attention, and at last proposed
to me. And I accepted him. And so we were married,' said my mother
simply.

'Ha! Poor Baby!' mused Miss Betsey, with her frown still bent upon the
fire. 'Do you know anything?'

'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' faltered my mother.

'About keeping house, for instance,' said Miss Betsey.

'Not much, I fear,' returned my mother. 'Not so much as I could wish.
But Mr. Copperfield was teaching me--'

('Much he knew about it himself!') said Miss Betsey in a parenthesis.
--'And I hope I should have improved, being very anxious to learn, and
he very patient to teach me, if the great misfortune of his death'--my
mother broke down again here, and could get no farther.

'Well, well!' said Miss Betsey. --'I kept my housekeeping-book
regularly, and balanced it with Mr. Copperfield every night,' cried my
mother in another burst of distress, and breaking down again.

'Well, well!' said Miss Betsey. 'Don't cry any more.' --'And I am
sure we never had a word of difference respecting it, except when Mr.
Copperfield objected to my threes and fives being too much like each
other, or to my putting curly tails to my sevens and nines,' resumed my
mother in another burst, and breaking down again.

'You'll make yourself ill,' said Miss Betsey, 'and you know that will
not be good either for you or for my god-daughter. Come! You mustn't do
it!'

This argument had some share in quieting my mother, though her
increasing indisposition had a larger one. There was an interval of
silence, only broken by Miss Betsey's occasionally ejaculating 'Ha!' as
she sat with her feet upon the fender.

'David had bought an annuity for himself with his money, I know,' said
she, by and by. 'What did he do for you?'

'Mr. Copperfield,' said my mother, answering with some difficulty, 'was
so considerate and good as to secure the reversion of a part of it to
me.'

'How much?' asked Miss Betsey.

'A hundred and five pounds a year,' said my mother.

'He might have done worse,' said my aunt.

The word was appropriate to the moment. My mother was so much worse
that Peggotty, coming in