w,' said I, quite carried
away by my favourite theme, 'that it's hardly possible to give him as
much praise as he deserves. I am sure I can never feel thankful enough
for the generosity with which he has protected me, so much younger and
lower in the school than himself.'

I was running on, very fast indeed, when my eyes rested on little
Em'ly's face, which was bent forward over the table, listening with the
deepest attention, her breath held, her blue eyes sparkling like jewels,
and the colour mantling in her cheeks. She looked so extraordinarily
earnest and pretty, that I stopped in a sort of wonder; and they all
observed her at the same time, for as I stopped, they laughed and looked
at her.

'Em'ly is like me,' said Peggotty, 'and would like to see him.'

Em'ly was confused by our all observing her, and hung down her head,
and her face was covered with blushes. Glancing up presently through her
stray curls, and seeing that we were all looking at her still (I am sure
I, for one, could have looked at her for hours), she ran away, and kept
away till it was nearly bedtime.

I lay down in the old little bed in the stern of the boat, and the wind
came moaning on across the flat as it had done before. But I could not
help fancying, now, that it moaned of those who were gone; and instead
of thinking that the sea might rise in the night and float the boat
away, I thought of the sea that had risen, since I last heard those
sounds, and drowned my happy home. I recollect, as the wind and water
began to sound fainter in my ears, putting a short clause into my
prayers, petitioning that I might grow up to marry little Em'ly, and so
dropping lovingly asleep.

The days passed pretty much as they had passed before, except--it was
a great exception--that little Em'ly and I seldom wandered on the beach
now. She had tasks to learn, and needle-work to do; and was absent
during a great part of each day. But I felt that we should not have had
those old wanderings, even if it had been otherwise. Wild and full of
childish whims as Em'ly was, she was more of a little woman than I
had supposed. She seemed to have got a great distance away from me,
in little more than a year. She liked me, but she laughed at me, and
tormented me; and when I went to meet her, stole home another way, and
was laughing at the door when I came back, disappointed. The best times
were when she sat quietly at work in the doorway, and I sat on the
wooden step at h