ee as a little
bird." Then I aways to him, and I says, "I wish it could have been so,
but it can't. But you can both be as you was, and wot I say to you is,
Be as you was with her, like a man." He says to me, a-shaking of my
hand, "I will!" he says. And he was--honourable and manful--for two year
going on, and we was just the same at home here as afore.'

Mr. Peggotty's face, which had varied in its expression with the various
stages of his narrative, now resumed all its former triumphant delight,
as he laid a hand upon my knee and a hand upon Steerforth's (previously
wetting them both, for the greater emphasis of the action), and divided
the following speech between us:

'All of a sudden, one evening--as it might be tonight--comes little
Em'ly from her work, and him with her! There ain't so much in that,
you'll say. No, because he takes care on her, like a brother, arter
dark, and indeed afore dark, and at all times. But this tarpaulin chap,
he takes hold of her hand, and he cries out to me, joyful, "Look here!
This is to be my little wife!" And she says, half bold and half shy, and
half a laughing and half a crying, "Yes, Uncle! If you please."--If I
please!' cried Mr. Peggotty, rolling his head in an ecstasy at the idea;
'Lord, as if I should do anythink else!--"If you please, I am steadier
now, and I have thought better of it, and I'll be as good a little wife
as I can to him, for he's a dear, good fellow!" Then Missis Gummidge,
she claps her hands like a play, and you come in. Theer! the murder's
out!' said Mr. Peggotty--'You come in! It took place this here present
hour; and here's the man that'll marry her, the minute she's out of her
time.'

Ham staggered, as well he might, under the blow Mr. Peggotty dealt
him in his unbounded joy, as a mark of confidence and friendship; but
feeling called upon to say something to us, he said, with much faltering
and great difficulty:

'She warn't no higher than you was, Mas'r Davy--when you first
come--when I thought what she'd grow up to be. I see her grown
up--gent'lmen--like a flower. I'd lay down my life for
her--Mas'r Davy--Oh! most content and cheerful! She's more to
me--gent'lmen--than--she's all to me that ever I can want, and more
than ever I--than ever I could say. I--I love her true. There ain't a
gent'lman in all the land--nor yet sailing upon all the sea--that
can love his lady more than I love her, though there's many a common
man--would say better--what he