Mr. Peggotty, in simple earnestness, waved his right arm, as if he were waving it at the town-lights for the last time, and then, exchanging a nod with Ham, whose eye he caught, proceeded as before.
“Well! I counsels him to speak to Em’ly. He’s big enough, but he’s bashfuller than a little ’un, and he don’t like. So I speak. ‘What! Him? ’ says Em’ly. ‘ Him that I’ve know’d so intimate so many years, and like so much. Oh, Uncle! I never can have him . He’s such a good fellow!’ I gives her a kiss, and I says no more to her than, ‘My dear, you’re right to speak out, you’re to choose for yourself, you’re as free as a little bird.’ Then I aways to him, and I says, ‘I wish it could have been so, but it can’t. But you can both be as you was, and wot I say to you is, Be as you was with her, like a man.’ He says to me, a-shaking of my hand, ‘I will!’ he says. And he was—honourable and manful—for two year going on, and we was just the same at home here as afore.”
Mr. Peggotty’s face, which had varied in its expression with the various stages of his narrative, now resumed all its former triumphant delight, as