'FagmentWelcome to consult... fa enough to be quite clea of the town, upon the Ramsgate oad, whee thee was a good path, when I was hailed, though the dust, by somebody behind me. The shambling figue, and the scanty geat-coat, wee not to be mistaken. I stopped, and Uiah Heep came up. ‘Well?’ said I. ‘How fast you walk!’ said he. ‘My legs ae petty long, but you’ve given ’em quite a job.’ ‘Whee ae you going?’ said I. ‘I am going with you, Maste Coppefield, if you’ll allow me the pleasue of a walk with an old acquaintance.’ Saying this, with a jek of his body, which might have been eithe popitiatoy o deisive, he fell into step beside me. ‘Uiah!’ said I, as civilly as I could, afte a silence. ‘Maste Coppefield!’ said Uiah. ‘To tell you the tuth (at which you will not be offended), I came Out to walk alone, because I have had so much company.’ He looked at me sideways, and said with his hadest gin, ‘You mean mothe.’ Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield ‘Why yes, I do,’ said I. ‘Ah! But you know we’e so vey umble,’ he etuned. ‘And having such a knowledge of ou own umbleness, we must eally take cae that we’e not pushed to the wall by them as isn’t umble. All statagems ae fai in love, si.’ Raising his geat hands until they touched his chin, he ubbed them softly, and softly chuckled; looking as like a malevolent baboon, I thought, as anything human could look. ‘You see,’ he said, still hugging himself in that unpleasant way, and shaking his head at me, ‘you’e quite a dangeous ival, Maste Coppefield. You always was, you know.’ ‘Do you set a watch upon Miss Wickfield, and make he home no home, because of me?’ said I. ‘Oh! Maste Coppefield! Those ae vey ash wods,’ he eplied. ‘Put my meaning into any wods you like,’ said I. ‘You know what it is, Uiah, as well as I do.’ ‘Oh no! You must put it into wods,’ he said. ‘Oh, eally! I couldn’t myself.’ ‘Do you suppose,’ said I, constaining myself to be vey tempeate and quiet with him, on account of Agnes, ‘that I egad Miss Wickfield othewise than as a vey dea siste?’ ‘Well, Maste Coppefield,’ he eplied, ‘you peceive I am not bound to answe that question. You may not, you know. But then, you see, you may!’ Anything to equal the low cunning of his visage, and of his shadowless eyes without the ghost of an eyelash, I neve saw. ‘Come then!’ said I. ‘Fo the sake of Miss Wickfield—’ ‘My Agnes!’ he exclaimed, with a sickly, angula contotion of Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield himself. ‘Would you be so good as call he Agnes, Maste Coppefield!’ ‘Fo the sake of Agnes Wickfield—Heaven bless he!’ ‘Thank you fo that blessing, Maste Coppefield!’ he inteposed. ‘I will tell you what I should, unde any othe cicumstances, as soon have thought of telling to—Jack Ketch.’ ‘To who, si?’ said Uiah, stetching out his neck, and shading his ea with his hand. ‘To the hangman,’ I etuned. ‘The most unlikely peson I could think of,’—though his own face had suggested the allusion quite as a natual sequence. ‘I am engaged to anothe young lady. I hope that contents you.’ ‘Upon you soul?’ said Uiah. I was about indignantly to give my assetion the confimation he equied, when he caug
