For the same reason, added no doubt to the old dislike of her, I was seldom allowed to visit Peggotty. Faithful to her promise, she either came to see me, or met me somewhere near, once every week, and never empty-handed; but many and bitter were the disappointments I had, in being refused permission to pay a visit to her at her house. Some few times, however, at long intervals, I was allowed to go there; and then I found out that Mr. Barkis was something of a miser, or as Peggotty dutifully expressed it, was “a little near,” and kept a heap of money in a box under his bed, which he pretended was only full of coats and trousers. In this coffer his riches hid themselves with such a tenacious modesty, that the smallest instalments could only be tempted out by artifice; so that Peggotty had to prepare a long and elaborate scheme, a very Gunpowder Plot, for every Saturday’s expenses.
All this time I was so conscious of the waste of any promise I had given, and of my being utterly neglected, that I should have been perfectly miserable, I have no doubt, but for the old books. They were my only comfort; and I was as true to them as they were to me, and read them over and over I don’t know how many times more.
I now approach a period of my life which I can never lose the remembrance of while I remember anything; and the recollection of which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a ghost, and haunted happier times.
I had been out one day loitering somewhere, in the listless, meditative manner that my way of life engendered, when, turning the corner of a lane near our house, I came upon Mr. Murdstone walking with a gentleman. I was confused, and was going by them, when the gentleman cried—
“What? Brooks?”
“No, Sir, David Copperfield,” I said.
“Don’t tell me. You are Brooks,” said the gentleman. “You are Brooks of Sheffield. That’s your name.”
At these words I observed the gentleman more attentively. His laugh coming to my remembrance too, I knew him to be Mr. Quinion, whom I had gone over to Lowestoft with Mr. Murdstone to see, before—it is no matter—I need not recall when.
“And how do you get on, and where are you being educated, Brooks?” said Mr. Quinion.
He had put his hand upon my shoulder, and turned me about, to walk with them. I did not know what to reply, and glanced dubiously at Mr. Murdstone.
“He is at home at present,” said the latter. “He is not being educated anywhere. I don’t know what to do with him. He is a difficult subject.”
That old double look was on me for a moment; and then his eye darkened with a frown, as it turned, in its aversion, elsewhere.
“Humph!” said Mr. Quinion, looking at us both, I thought. “Fine weather.”
Silence ensued, and I was considering how I could best disengage my shoulder from his hand, and go away, when he said—
“I suppose you are a pretty sharp fellow still? Eh, Brooks?”
“Aye! He is sharp enough,” said Mr. Murdstone, impatiently. “You had better let him go. He will not thank you for troubling him.”