I replied that such was the fact.
“Well. I’ll tell you what,” said Mr. Barkis. “P’raps you might be writin’ to her?”
“I shall certainly write to her,” I rejoined.
“Ah!” he said, slowly turning his eyes towards me. “Well! If you was writin’ to her, p’raps you’d recollect to say that Barkis was willin’; would you?”
“That Barkis is willing,” I repeated, innocently. “Is that all the message?”
“Ye-es,” he said, considering. “Ye-es. Barkis is willin’.”
“But you will be at Blunderstone again tomorrow, Mr. Barkis,” I said, faltering a little at the idea of my being far away from it then, “and could give your own message so much better.”
As he repudiated this suggestion, however, with a jerk of his head, and once more confirmed his previous request by saying, with profound gravity, “Barkis is willin’. That’s the message,” I readily undertook its transmission. While I was waiting for the coach in the hotel at Yarmouth that very afternoon, I procured a sheet of paper and an inkstand, and wrote a note to Peggotty, which ran thus: “My dear Peggotty. I have come here safe. Barkis is willing. My love to mama. Yours affectionately. P.S. He says he particularly wants you to know— Barkis is willing .”
When I had taken this commission on myself prospectively, Mr. Barkis relapsed into perfect silence; and I, feeling quite worn out by all that had happened lately, lay down on a sack in the cart and fell asleep. I slept soundly until we got to Yarmouth; which was so entirely new and strange to me in the innyard to which we drove, that I at once abandoned a latent hope I had had of meeting with some of Mr. Peggotty’s family there, perhaps even with little Em’ly herself.