with his lessons, while in return David used to tell him
stories from the books he had read.

What with the beatings and tasks, David was glad enough when vacation
time came. But his home-coming was anything but pleasant. He found his
mother with a little baby, and she looked careworn and ill.

Mr. Murdstone, he saw at once, hated him as much as ever, and Miss
Murdstone would not let him even so much as touch his baby brother. He
was forbidden to sit in the kitchen with Peggotty, and when he crept
away to the upper room with the books Mr. Murdstone called him sullen
and obstinate. David was so miserable every day that he was almost glad
to bid his mother good-by, and as he rode away, to look back at her as
she stood there at the gate holding up her baby for David to see.

That was the last picture David carried in his heart of his pretty
mother. One day not long after, he was called from the school-room to
the parlor, and there Mr. Creakle told him that his mother was dead and
that the baby had died, too.

David reached home the next day. Peggotty took him into her arms at the
door and called his mother her "dear, poor pretty," and comforted him,
but he was very sad. It seemed to him that life could never be bright
again.

After the funeral Miss Murdstone discharged Peggotty and, probably not
knowing what else to do with him, let David go with the faithful old
servant down to the old house-boat at Yarmouth, where he had been
visiting when his mother was married to Mr. Murdstone.

The wonderful house on the beach was just the same. Mr. Peggotty and Ham
and Mrs. Gummidge were still there, with everything smelling just as
usual of salt water and lobsters; and little Em'ly was there, too, grown
to be quite a big girl. It seemed, somehow, like coming back to a dear
old quiet home, where nothing changed and where all was restful and
good.

But this happiness was not to last. David had to go home again, and
there it was worse than ever. He was utterly neglected. He was sent to
no school, taught nothing, allowed to make no friends. And at last Mr.
Murdstone, as if he could think of nothing worse, apprenticed him as a
chore boy in a warehouse in London.

The building where David now was compelled to work was on a wharf on the
river bank, and was dirty and dark and overrun with rats. Here he had to
labor hard for bare living wages, among rough boys and rougher men, with
no counselor, hearing their coarse oaths about him,