self what she is; but neither of you can’t fully know what she has been, is, and will be, to my loving ’art. I am rough, sir,” said Mr. Peggotty, “I am as rough as a Sea Porkypine; but no one, unless, mayhap, it is a woman, can know, I think, what our little Em’ly is to me. And betwixt ourselves,” sinking his voice lower yet, “ that woman’s name ain’t Missis Gummidge neither, though she has a world of merits.” Mr. Peggotty ruffled his hair again, with both hands, as a further preparation for what he was going to say, and went on, with a hand upon each of his knees:
“There was a certain person as had know’d our Em’ly, from the time when her father was drownded; as had seen her constant; when a babby, when a young gal, when a woman. Not much of a person to look at, he warn’t,” said Mr. Peggotty, “something o’ my own build—rough—a good deal o’ the sou’-wester in him—wery salt—but, on the whole, a honest sort of a chap, with his ’art in the right place.”
I thought I had never seen Ham grin to anything like the extent to which he sat grinning at us now.
“What does this here blessed tarpaulin go and do,” said Mr. Peggotty, with his face one high noon of enjoyment, “but he loses that there ’art of his to our little Em’ly. He follers her about, he makes hisself a sort o’ servant to her, he loses in a great measure his relish for his wittles, and in the long-run he makes it clear to me wot’s amiss. Now I could wish myself, you see, that our little Em’ly was in a fair way of being married. I could wish to see her, at all ewents, under articles to a honest man as had a right to defend her. I don’t know how long I may live, or how soon I may die; but I know that if I was capsized, any night, in a gale of wind in Yarmouth Roads here, and was to see the town-lights shining for the last time over the rollers as I couldn’t make no head against, I could go down quieter for thinking ‘There’s a man ashore there, iron-true to my little Em’ly, God bless her, and no wrong can touch my Em’ly while so be as that man lives.’ ”