“Me leave you, my precious!” cried Peggotty. “Not for all the world and his wife. Why, what’s put that in your silly little head?”⁠—For Peggotty had been used of old to talk to my mother sometimes like a child.

But my mother made no answer, except to thank her, and Peggotty went running on in her own fashion.

“Me leave you? I think I see myself. Peggotty go away from you? I should like to catch her at it! No, no, no,” said Peggotty, shaking her head, and folding her arms; “not she, my dear. It isn’t that there ain’t some cats that would be well enough pleased if she did, but they shan’t be pleased. They shall be aggravated. I’ll stay with you till I am a cross cranky old woman. And when I’m too deaf, and too lame, and too blind, and too mumbly for want of teeth, to be of any use at all, even to be found fault with, than I shall go to my Davy, and ask him to take me in.”

“And, Peggotty,” says I, “I shall be glad to see you, and I’ll make you as welcome as a queen.”