Ham staggered, as well he might, under the blow Mr. Peggotty dealt him in his unbounded joy, as a mark of confidence and friendship; but feeling called upon to say something to us, he said, with much faltering and great difficulty:
“She warn’t no higher than you was, Mas’r Davy—when you first come—when I thought what she’d grow up to be. I see her grown up—gent’lmen—like a flower. I’d lay down my life for her—Mas’r Davy—Oh! most content and cheerful! She’s more to me—gent’lmen—than—she’s all to me that ever I can want, and more than ever I—than ever I could say. I—I love her true. There ain’t a gent’lman in all the land—nor yet sailing upon all the sea—that can love his lady more than I love her, though there’s many a common man—would say better—what he meant.”
I thought it affecting to see such a sturdy fellow as Ham was now, trembling in the strength of what he felt for the pretty little creature who had won his heart. I thought the simple confidence reposed in us by Mr. Peggotty and by himself, was, in itself, affecting. I was affected by the story altogether. How far my emotions were influenced by the recollections of my childhood, I don’t know. Whether I had come there with any lingering fancy that I was still to love little Em’ly, I don’t know. I know that I was filled with pleasure by all this; but, at first, with an indescribably sensitive pleasure, that a very little would have changed to pain.
Therefore, if it had depended upon me to touch the prevailing chord among them with any skill, I should have made a poor hand of it. But it depended upon Steerforth; and he did it with such address, that in a few minutes we were all as easy and as happy as it was possible to be.