“Where?” cried Ham, interposing himself before the door.
“Anywhere! I’m a-going to seek my niece through the wureld. I’m a-going to find my poor niece in her shame, and bring her back. No one stop me! I tell you I’m a-going to seek my niece!”
“No, no!” cried Mrs. Gummidge, coming between them, in a fit of crying. “No, no, Dan’l, not as you are now. Seek her in a little while, my lone lorn Dan’l, and that’ll be but right! but not as you are now. Sit ye down, and give me your forgiveness for having ever been a worrit to you, Dan’l—what have my contraries ever been to this!—and let us speak a word about them times when she was first an orphan, and when Ham was too, and when I was a poor widder woman, and you took me in. It’ll soften your poor heart, Dan’l,” laying her head upon his shoulder, “and you’ll bear your sorrow better; for you know the promise, Dan’l, ‘As you have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto me’—and that can never fail under this roof, that’s been our shelter for so many, many year!”
He was quite passive now; and when I heard him crying, the impulse that had been upon me to go down upon my knees, and ask their pardon for the desolation I had caused, and curse Steerforth, yielded to a better feeling, My overcharged heart found the same relief, and I cried too.