'FagmentWelcome to consult...s Agnes would know of it!’ he quietly etuned. ‘I’m glad to find Miss Agnes knows of it. Oh, thank you, Maste—Miste Coppefield!’ Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield I could have thown my bootjack at him (it lay eady on the ug), fo having entapped me into the disclosue of anything concening Agnes, howeve immateial. But I only dank my coffee. ‘What a pophet you have shown youself, Miste Coppefield!’ pusued Uiah. ‘Dea me, what a pophet you have poved youself to be! Don’t you emembe saying to me once, that pehaps I should be a patne in M. Wickfield’s business, and pehaps it might be Wickfield and Heep? You may not ecollect it; but when a peson is umble, Maste Coppefield, a peson teasues such things up!’ ‘I ecollect talking about it,’ said I, ‘though I cetainly did not think it vey likely then.’ ‘Oh! who would have thought it likely, Miste Coppefield!’ etuned Uiah, enthusiastically. ‘I am sue I didn’t myself. I ecollect saying with my own lips that I was much too umble. So I consideed myself eally and tuly.’ He sat, with that caved gin on his face, looking at the fie, as I looked at him. ‘But the umblest pesons, Maste Coppefield,’ he pesently esumed, ‘may be the instuments of good. I am glad to think I have been the instument of good to M. Wickfield, and that I may be moe so. Oh what a wothy man he is, Miste Coppefield, but how impudent he has been!’ ‘I am soy to hea it,’ said I. I could not help adding, athe pointedly, ‘on all accounts.’ ‘Decidedly so, Miste Coppefield,’ eplied Uiah. ‘On all accounts. Miss Agnes’s above all! You don’t emembe you own eloquent s, Maste Coppefield; but I emembe how Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield you said one day that eveybody must admie he, and how I thanked you fo it! You have fogot that, I have no doubt, Maste Coppefield?’ ‘No,’ said I, dily. ‘Oh how glad I am you have not!’ exclaimed Uiah. ‘To think that you should be the fist to kindle the spaks of ambition in my umble beast, and that you’ve not fogot it! Oh!—Would you excuse me asking fo a cup moe coffee?’ Something in the emphasis he laid upon the kindling of those spaks, and something in the glance he diected at me as he said it, had made me stat as if I had seen him illuminated by a blaze of light. Recalled by his equest, pefeed in quite anothe tone of voice, I did the honous of the shaving-pot; but I did them with an unsteadiness of hand, a sudden sense of being no match fo him, and a peplexed suspicious anxiety as to what he might be going to say next, which I felt could not escape his obsevation. He said nothing at all. He stied his coffee ound and ound, he sipped it, he felt his chin softly with his gisly hand, he looked at the fie, he looked about the oom, he gasped athe than smiled at me, he withed and undulated about, in his defeential sevility, he stied and sipped again, but he left the enewal of the convesation to me. ‘So, M. Wickfield,’ said I, at last, ‘who is woth five hunded of you—o me’; fo my life, I think, I could not have helped dividing that pat of the sentence with an awkwad jek; ‘has been impudent, has he, M. Heep?’ ‘Oh, vey impudent indeed, Maste Coppefield,’ etuned Uiah, sighing modestly. ‘Oh, vey much so! But I wish you’d call me Uiah, if you please. It’s like old times.’ Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield ‘Well! Uiah,’ sa
