I remembered the time when Minnie was a young and pretty girl; and I was glad she remembered it too, so feelingly.

“My little Minnie,” said Mrs. Joram, “has only just now been got to sleep. Even in her sleep she is sobbing for Em’ly. All day long, little Minnie has cried for her, and asked me, over and over again, whether Em’ly was wicked? What can I say to her, when Em’ly tied a ribbon off her own neck round little Minnie’s the last night she was here, and laid her head down on the pillow beside her till she was fast asleep! The ribbon’s round my little Minnie’s neck now. It ought not to be, perhaps, but what can I do? Em’ly is very bad, but they were fond of one another. And the child knows nothing!”

Mrs. Joram was so unhappy, that her husband came out to take care of her. Leaving them together, I went home to Peggotty’s; more melancholy myself, if possible, than I had been yet.

That good creature—I mean Peggotty—all untired by her late anxieties and sleepless nights, was at her brother’s, where she meant to stay till morning. An old woman, who had been employed about the house for some weeks past, while Peggotty had been unable to attend to it, was the house’s only other occupant besides myself. As I had no occasion for her services, I sent her to bed, by no means against her will; and sat down before the kitchen fire a little while, to think about all this.

I was blending it with the deathbed of the late Mr. Barkis, and was driving out with the tide towards the distance at which Ham had looked so singularly in the morning, when I was recalled from my wanderings by a knock at the door. There was a knocker upon the door, but it was not that which made the sound. The tap was from a hand, and low down upon the door, as if it were given by a child.

It made me start as much as if it had been the knock of a footman to a person of distinction. I opened the door; and at first looked down, to my amazement, on nothing but a great umbrella that appeared to be walking about of itself. But presently I discovered underneath it, Miss Mowcher.

I might not have been prepared to give the little creature a very kind reception, if, on her removing the umbrella, which her utmost efforts were unable to shut up, she had shown me the “volatile” expression of face which had made so great an impression on me at our first and last meeting. But her face, as she turned it up to mine, was so earnest; and when I relieved her of the umbrella (which would have been an inconvenient one for the Irish Giant), she wrung her little hands in such an afflicted manner; that I rather inclined towards her.

“Miss Mowcher!” said I, after glancing up and down the empty street, without distinctly knowing what I expected to see besides; “how do you come here? What is the matter?”

She motioned to me, with her short right arm, to shut the umbrella for her; and passing me hurriedly, went into the kitchen. When I had closed the door, and followed, with the umbrella in my hand, I found her sitting on the corner of the fender—it was a low iron one, with two flat bars at top to stand plates upon—in the shadow of the boiler, swaying herself backwards and forwards, and chafing her hands upon her knees like a person in pain.

Quite alarmed at being the only recipient of this untimely visit, and the only spectator of this portentous behaviour, I exclaimed again, “Pray tell me, Miss Mowcher, what is the matter? are you ill?”

“My dear young soul,” returned Miss Mowcher, squeezing her hands upon her heart one over the other. “I am ill here, I am very ill. To think that it should come to this, when I might have known it, and perhaps prevented it, if I hadn’t been a thoughtless fool!”

Again her large bonnet (very disproportionate to her figure) went backwards and forwards, in her swaying of her little body to and fro; while a most gigantic bonnet rocked, in unison with it, upon the wall.

“I am surprised,” I began, “to see you so distressed and serious”—when she interrupted me.