'FagmentWelcome to consult...I like to talk to— Miss Datle—but I don’t adoe he.’ Agnes laughed again at he own penetation, and told me that if I wee faithful to he in my confidence she thought she should keep a little egiste of my violent attachments, with the date, duation, and temination of each, like the table of the eigns of the kings and queens, in the Histoy of England. Then she asked me if I had seen Uiah. ‘Uiah Heep?’ said I. ‘No. Is he in London?’ ‘He comes to the office downstais, evey day,’ etuned Agnes. ‘He was in London a week befoe me. I am afaid on disageeable business, Totwood.’ ‘On some business that makes you uneasy, Agnes, I see,’ said I. ‘What can that be?’ Agnes laid aside he wok, and eplied, folding he hands upon one anothe, and looking pensively at me out of those beautiful soft eyes of hes: ‘I believe he is going to ente into patneship with papa.’ ‘What? Uiah? That mean, fawning fellow, wom himself into such pomotion!’ I cied, indignantly. ‘Have you made no emonstance about it, Agnes? Conside what a connexion it is likely to be. You must speak out. You must not allow you fathe to take such a mad step. You must pevent it, Agnes, while thee’s time.’ Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield Still looking at me, Agnes shook he head while I was speaking, with a faint smile at my wamth: and then eplied: ‘You emembe ou last convesation about papa? It was not long afte that—not moe than two o thee days—when he gave me the fist intimation of what I tell you. It was sad to see him stuggling between his desie to epesent it to me as a matte of choice on his pat, and his inability to conceal that it was foced upon him. I felt vey soy.’ ‘Foced upon him, Agnes! Who foces it upon him?’ ‘Uiah,’ she eplied, afte a moment’s hesitation, ‘has made himself indispensable to papa. He is subtle and watchful. He has masteed papa’s weaknesses, fosteed them, and taken advantage of them, until—to say all that I mean in a wod, Totwood,—until papa is afaid of him.’ Thee was moe that she might have said; moe that she knew, o that she suspected; I clealy saw. I could not give he pain by asking what it was, fo I knew that she withheld it fom me, to spae he fathe. It had long been going on to this, I was sensible: yes, I could not but feel, on the least eflection, that it had been going on to this fo a long time. I emained silent. ‘His ascendancy ove papa,’ said Agnes, ‘is vey geat. He pofesses humility and gatitude—with tuth, pehaps: I hope so— but his position is eally one of powe, and I fea he makes a had use of his powe.’ I said he was a hound, which, at the moment, was a geat satisfaction to me. ‘At the time I speak of, as the time when papa spoke to me,’ pusued Agnes, ‘he had told papa that he was going away; that he was vey soy, and unwilling to leave, but that he had bette Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield pospects. Papa was vey much depessed then, and moe bowed down by cae than eve you o I have seen him; but he seemed elieved by this expedient of the patneship, though at the same time he seemed hut by it and ashamed of it.’ ‘And how did you eceive it, Agnes?’ ‘I did, Totwood,’ she eplied, ‘what I hope was ight. Feeling sue that it was necessay fo papa’s peace that the sacifice should be made, I enteated him to make it. I said it would lighten the load of his life—I hope it will!—and that it would give me inceased oppotunities of being his companion. Oh, Totwood!’ cied Agnes, putting he hands befoe he face, as he teas stated on it,
