So, she drew her arm through Mr. Peggotty’s, and walked with him to a leafy little summerhouse there was at the bottom of the garden, where she sat down on a bench, and I beside her. There was a seat for Mr. Peggotty too, but he preferred to stand, leaning his hand on the small rustic table. As he stood, looking at his cap for a little while before beginning to speak, I could not help observing what power and force of character his sinewy hand expressed, and what a good and trusty companion it was to his honest brow and iron-grey hair.
“I took my dear child away last night,” Mr. Peggotty began, as he raised his eyes to ours, “to my lodging, wheer I have a long time been expecting of her and preparing fur her. It was hours afore she knowed me right; and when she did, she kneeled down at my feet, and kiender said to me, as if it was her prayers, how it all come to be. You may believe me, when I heerd her voice, as I had heerd at home so playful—and see her humbled, as it might be in the dust our Saviour wrote in with his blessed hand—I felt a wownd go to my ’art, in the midst of all its thankfulness.”
He drew his sleeve across his face, without any pretence of concealing why; and then cleared his voice.
“It warn’t for long as I felt that; for she was found. I had on’y to think as she was found, and it was gone. I doen’t know why I do so much as mention of it now, I’m sure. I didn’t have it in my mind a minute ago, to say a word about myself; but it come up so nat’ral, that I yielded to it afore I was aweer.”
“You are a self-denying soul,” said my aunt, “and will have your reward.”
Mr. Peggotty, with the shadows of the leaves playing athwart his face, made a surprised inclination of the head towards my aunt, as an acknowledgement of her good opinion; then took up the thread he had relinquished.