affected almost to tears.
I returned thanks, and hoped the present company would dine with me
tomorrow, and the day after--each day at five o'clock, that we might
enjoy the pleasures of conversation and society through a long evening.
I felt called upon to propose an individual. I would give them my aunt.
Miss Betsey Trotwood, the best of her sex!

Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his forehead
against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his
face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as 'Copperfield', and
saying, 'Why did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn't
do it.' Now, somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the
looking-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking-glass;
my eyes had a vacant appearance; and my hair--only my hair, nothing
else--looked drunk.

Somebody said to me, 'Let us go to the theatre, Copperfield!' There was
no bedroom before me, but again the jingling table covered with glasses;
the lamp; Grainger on my right hand, Markham on my left, and Steerforth
opposite--all sitting in a mist, and a long way off. The theatre? To
be sure. The very thing. Come along! But they must excuse me if I saw
everybody out first, and turned the lamp off--in case of fire.

Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was gone. I was feeling
for it in the window-curtains, when Steerforth, laughing, took me by
the arm and led me out. We went downstairs, one behind another. Near
the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was
Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until, finding myself on
my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation
for it.

A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in the streets!
There was an indistinct talk of its being wet. I considered it frosty.
Steerforth dusted me under a lamp-post, and put my hat into shape, which
somebody produced from somewhere in a most extraordinary manner, for
I hadn't had it on before. Steerforth then said, 'You are all right,
Copperfield, are you not?' and I told him, 'Neverberrer.'

A man, sitting in a pigeon-hole-place, looked out of the fog, and took
money from somebody, inquiring if I was one of the gentlemen paid for,
and appearing rather doubtful (as I remember in the glimpse I had of
him) whether to take the money for me or not. Shortly afterwards, we
were very high up in a very hot theatre, looking down into a