“You’ll make yourself ill,” said Miss Betsey, “and you know that will not be good either for you or for my goddaughter. Come! You mustn’t do it!”
This argument had some share in quieting my mother, though her increasing indisposition had a larger one. There was an interval of silence, only broken by Miss Betsey’s occasionally ejaculating “Ha!” as she sat with her feet upon the fender.
“David had bought an annuity for himself with his money, I know,” said she, by and by. “What did he do for you?”
“ Mr. Copperfield,” said my mother, answering with some difficulty, “was so considerate and good as to secure the reversion of a part of it to me.”
“How much?” asked Miss Betsey.
“A hundred and five pounds a year,” said my mother.
“He might have done worse,” said my aunt.
The word was appropriate to the moment. My mother was so much worse that Peggotty, coming in with the teaboard and candles, and seeing at a glance how ill she was—as Miss Betsey might have done sooner if there had been light enough—conveyed her upstairs to her own room with all speed; and immediately dispatched Ham Peggotty, her nephew, who had been for some days past secreted in the house, unknown to my mother, as a special messenger in case of emergency, to fetch the nurse and doctor.
Those allied powers were considerably astonished, when they arrived within a few minutes of each other, to find an unknown lady of portentous appearance, sitting before the fire, with her bonnet tied over her left arm, stopping her ears with jewellers’ cotton. Peggotty knowing