d in his usual manner, and as if
he were answering something I had just said. 'I am glad of it. You are
company to us both. It is wholesome to have you here. Wholesome for me,
wholesome for Agnes, wholesome perhaps for all of us.'

'I am sure it is for me, sir,' I said. 'I am so glad to be here.'

'That's a fine fellow!' said Mr. Wickfield. 'As long as you are glad
to be here, you shall stay here.' He shook hands with me upon it, and
clapped me on the back; and told me that when I had anything to do
at night after Agnes had left us, or when I wished to read for my own
pleasure, I was free to come down to his room, if he were there and if
I desired it for company's sake, and to sit with him. I thanked him for
his consideration; and, as he went down soon afterwards, and I was
not tired, went down too, with a book in my hand, to avail myself, for
half-an-hour, of his permission.

But, seeing a light in the little round office, and immediately feeling
myself attracted towards Uriah Heep, who had a sort of fascination for
me, I went in there instead. I found Uriah reading a great fat book,
with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up
every line as he read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so I
fully believed) like a snail.

'You are working late tonight, Uriah,' says I.

'Yes, Master Copperfield,' says Uriah.

As I was getting on the stool opposite, to talk to him more
conveniently, I observed that he had not such a thing as a smile about
him, and that he could only widen his mouth and make two hard creases
down his cheeks, one on each side, to stand for one.

'I am not doing office-work, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah.

'What work, then?' I asked.

'I am improving my legal knowledge, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah. 'I
am going through Tidd's Practice. Oh, what a writer Mr. Tidd is, Master
Copperfield!'

My stool was such a tower of observation, that as I watched him reading
on again, after this rapturous exclamation, and following up the lines
with his forefinger, I observed that his nostrils, which were thin and
pointed, with sharp dints in them, had a singular and most uncomfortable
way of expanding and contracting themselves--that they seemed to twinkle
instead of his eyes, which hardly ever twinkled at all.

'I suppose you are quite a great lawyer?' I said, after looking at him
for some time.

'Me, Master Copperfield?' said Uriah. 'Oh, no! I'm a very umble person.'