“It’s getting late, my dear,” said Mr. Peggotty, “and here’s Ham come fur to take you home. Theer! Go along with t’other loving ’art! What Em’ly? Eh, my pretty?”
The sound of her voice had not reached me, but he bent his head as if he listened to her, and then said:
“Let you stay with your uncle? Why, you doen’t mean to ask me that! Stay with your uncle, Moppet? When your husband that’ll be so soon, is here fur to take you home? Now a person wouldn’t think it, fur to see this little thing alongside a rough-weather chap like me,” said Mr. Peggotty, looking round at both of us, with infinite pride; “but the sea ain’t more salt in it than she has fondness in her for her uncle—a foolish little Em’ly!”
“Em’ly’s in the right in that, Mas’r Davy!” said Ham. “Lookee here! As Em’ly wishes of it, and as she’s hurried and frightened, like, besides, I’ll leave her till morning. Let me stay too!”
“No, no,” said Mr. Peggotty. “You doen’t ought—a married man like you—or what’s as good—to take and hull away a day’s work. And you doen’t ought to watch and work both. That won’t do. You go home and turn in. You ain’t afeerd of Em’ly not being took good care on, I know.”
Ham yielded to this persuasion, and took his hat to go. Even when he kissed her—and I never saw him approach her, but I felt that nature had given him the soul of a gentleman—she seemed to cling closer to her uncle, even to the avoidance of her chosen husband. I shut the door after him, that it might cause no disturbance of the quiet that prevailed; and when I turned back, I found Mr. Peggotty still talking to her.
“Now, I’m a-going upstairs to tell your aunt as Mas’r Davy’s here, and that’ll cheer her up a bit,” he said. “Sit ye down by the fire, the while, my dear, and warm those mortal cold hands. You doen’t need to be so