“I found out an English gen’leman as was in authority,” said Mr. Peggotty, “and told him I was a-going to seek my niece. He got me them papers as I wanted fur to carry me through—I doen’t rightly know how they’re called—and he would have give me money, but that I was thankful to have no need on. I thank him kind, for all he done, I’m sure! ‘I’ve wrote afore you,’ he says to me, ‘and I shall speak to many as will come that way, and many will know you, fur distant from here, when you’re a-travelling alone.’ I told him, best as I was able, what my gratitoode was, and went away through France.”
“Alone, and on foot?” said I.
“Mostly afoot,” he rejoined; “sometimes in carts along with people going to market; sometimes in empty coaches. Many mile a day afoot, and often with some poor soldier or another, travelling to see his friends. I couldn’t talk to him,” said Mr. Peggotty, “nor he to me; but we was company for one another, too, along the dusty roads.”
I should have known that by his friendly tone.
“When I come to any town,” he pursued, “I found the inn, and waited about the yard till someone turned up (someone mostly did) as know’d English. Then I told how that I was on my way to seek my niece, and they told me what manner of gentlefolks was in the house, and I waited to see any as seemed like her, going in or out. When it warn’t Em’ly, I went on agen. By little and little, when I come to a new village or that, among the poor people, I found they know’d about me. They would set me down at their cottage doors, and give me whatnot fur to eat and drink, and show me where to sleep; and many a woman, Mas’r Davy, as has had a daughter of about Em’ly’s age, I’ve found awaiting fur me, at Our Saviour’s Cross outside the village, fur to do me sim’lar kindnesses. Some has had daughters as was dead. And God only knows how good them mothers was to me!”