“Em’ly,” said he, “arter you left her, ma’am—and I never heerd her saying of her prayers at night, t’other side the canvas screen, when we was settled in the Bush, but what I heerd your name—and arter she and me lost sight of Mas’r Davy, that theer shining sundown—was that low, at first, that, if she had know’d then what Mas’r Davy kep from us so kind and thowtful, ’tis my opinion she’d have drooped away. But theer was some poor folks aboard as had illness among ’em, and she took care of them ; and theer was the children in our company, and she took care of them ; and so she got to be busy, and to be doing good, and that helped her.”
“When did she first hear of it?” I asked.
“I kep it from her arter I heerd on ’t,” said Mr. Peggotty, “going on nigh a year. We was living then in a solitary place, but among the beautifullest trees, and with the roses a-covering our beein to the roof. Theer come along one day, when I was out a-working on the land, a traveller from our own Norfolk or Suffolk in England (I doen’t rightly mind which), and of course we took him in, and giv him to eat and drink, and made him welcome. We all do that, all the colony over. He’d got an old newspaper with him, and some other account in print of the storm. That’s how she know’d it. When I came home at night, I found she know’d it.”
He dropped his voice as he said these words, and the gravity I so well remembered overspread his face.
“Did it change her much?” we asked.
“Aye, for a good long time,” he said, shaking his head; “if not to this present hour. But I think the solitoode done her good. And she had a deal to mind in the way of poultry and the like, and minded of it, and come through. I wonder,” he said thoughtfully, “if you could see my Em’ly now, Mas’r Davy, whether you’d know her!”