id my aunt, sharply.

Mr. Chillip was fluttered again, by the extreme severity of my aunt's
manner; so he made her a little bow and gave her a little smile, to
mollify her.

'Mercy on the man, what's he doing!' cried my aunt, impatiently. 'Can't
he speak?'

'Be calm, my dear ma'am,' said Mr. Chillip, in his softest accents.

'There is no longer any occasion for uneasiness, ma'am. Be calm.'

It has since been considered almost a miracle that my aunt didn't shake
him, and shake what he had to say, out of him. She only shook her own
head at him, but in a way that made him quail.

'Well, ma'am,' resumed Mr. Chillip, as soon as he had courage, 'I am
happy to congratulate you. All is now over, ma'am, and well over.'

During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to the delivery
of this oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly.

'How is she?' said my aunt, folding her arms with her bonnet still tied
on one of them.

'Well, ma'am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I hope,' returned Mr.
Chillip. 'Quite as comfortable as we can expect a young mother to be,
under these melancholy domestic circumstances. There cannot be any
objection to your seeing her presently, ma'am. It may do her good.'

'And SHE. How is SHE?' said my aunt, sharply.

Mr. Chillip laid his head a little more on one side, and looked at my
aunt like an amiable bird.

'The baby,' said my aunt. 'How is she?'

'Ma'am,' returned Mr. Chillip, 'I apprehended you had known. It's a
boy.'

My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the strings, in the
manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chillip's head with it, put it on
bent, walked out, and never came back. She vanished like a discontented
fairy; or like one of those supernatural beings, whom it was popularly
supposed I was entitled to see; and never came back any more.

No. I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; but Betsey
Trotwood Copperfield was for ever in the land of dreams and shadows, the
tremendous region whence I had so lately travelled; and the light upon
the window of our room shone out upon the earthly bourne of all such
travellers, and the mound above the ashes and the dust that once was he,
without whom I had never been.

CHAPTER 2. I OBSERVE

The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look
far back, into the blank of my infancy, are my mother with her pretty
hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty with no shape at all, and eyes so
dar