It was Martha at the door. I saw her haggard, listening face distinctly. My dread was lest he should turn his head, and see her too.
“They would often put their children—particular their little girls,” said Mr. Peggotty, “upon my knee; and many a time you might have seen me sitting at their doors, when night was coming in, a’most as if they’d been my Darling’s children. Oh, my Darling!”
Overpowered by sudden grief, he sobbed aloud. I laid my trembling hand upon the hand he put before his face. “Thankee, sir,” he said, “doen’t take no notice.”
In a very little while he took his hand away and put it on his breast, and went on with his story. “They often walked with me,” he said, “in the morning, maybe a mile or two upon my road; and when we parted, and I said, ‘I’m very thankful to you! God bless you!’ they always seemed to understand, and answered pleasant. At last I come to the sea. It warn’t hard, you may suppose, for a seafaring man like me to work his way over to Italy. When I got theer, I wandered on as I had done afore. The people was just as good to me, and I should have gone from town to town, maybe the country through, but that I got news of her being seen among them Swiss mountains yonder. One as know’d his servant see ’em there, all three, and told me how they travelled, and where they was. I made fur them mountains, Mas’r Davy, day and night. Ever so fur as I went, ever so fur the mountains seemed to shift away from me. But I come up with ’em, and I crossed ’em. When I got nigh the place as I had been told of, I began to think within my own self, ‘What shall I do when I see her?’ ”
The listening face, insensible to the inclement night, still drooped at the door, and the hands begged me—prayed me—not to cast it forth.
“I never doubted her,” said Mr. Peggotty. “No! Not a bit! On’y let her see my face—on’y let her heer my voice—on’y let my stanning still afore her bring to her thoughts the home she had fled away from, and the child