“Not dead, too! Oh, she’s not dead, Peggotty?”

Peggotty cried out No! with an astonishing volume of voice; and then sat down, and began to pant, and said I had given her a turn.

I gave her a hug to take away the turn, or to give her another turn in the right direction, and then stood before her, looking at her in anxious inquiry.

“You see, dear, I should have told you before now,” said Peggotty, “but I hadn’t an opportunity. I ought to have made it, perhaps, but I couldn’t azackly”⁠—that was always the substitute for exactly, in Peggotty’s militia of words⁠—“bring my mind to it.”

“Go on, Peggotty,” said I, more frightened than before.

“Master Davy,” said Peggotty, untying her bonnet with a shaking hand, and speaking in a breathless sort of way. “What do you think? You have got a Pa!”