come into!) and she ain't here, or I ain't theer, I shall put the candle in the winder, and sit afore the fire, pretending I'm expecting of her, like I'm a doing now. There's a babby for you," said Mr. Peggotty, with another roar, "in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Why, at the present minute, when I see the candle sparkle up, I says to myself, 'She's a looking at it! Em'ly's a coming!' There's a babby for you, in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Eight for all that," said Mr. Peggotty, stopping in his roar, and smiting his hands together; "fur here she is!"
It was only Ham. The night should have turned more wet since I came in, for he had a large sou'wester hat on, slouched over his face.
"Where 's Em'ly?" said Mr. Peggotty.
Ham made a motion with his head, as if she were outside. Mr. Peggotty took the light from the window, trimmed it, put it on the table, and was busily stirring the fire, when Ham, who had not moved, said:
"Mas'r Davy, will you come out a minute, and see what Em'ly and me has got to show you?"
We went out. As I passed him at the door, I saw, to my astonishment and fright, that he was deadly pale. He pushed me hastily into the open air, and closed the door upon us. Only upon us two.
"Ham! what's the matter!"
"Mas'r Davy!—" Oh, for his broken heart, how dreadfully he wept!
I was paralyzed by the sight of such grief. I don't know what I thought, or what I dreaded. I could only look at him.
"Ham! Poor good fellow! For Heaven's sake tell me what's the matter!"
"My love, Mas'r Davy—the pride and hope of my art—her that I'd have died for, and would die for now—she's gone!"
"Gone?"
"Em'ly's run away! Oh, Mas'r Davy, think how she's run away, when I pray my good and gracious God to kill her (her that is so dear above all things) sooner than let her come to ruin and disgrace!"
The face he turned up to the troubled sky, the quivering of his clasped hands, the agony of his figure, remain associated with that lonely waste, in my remembrance, to this hour. It is always night there, and he is the only object in the scene.
"You're a scholar," he said, hurriedly, "and know what's right and best. What am I to say, in-doors? How am I ever to break it to him, Mas'r Davy?"
I saw the door move, and instinctively tried to hold the latch on the outside, to gain a moment's time. It was too late. Mr. Peggotty thrust forth his face; and never could I forget the change that came upon it when he saw us, if I were to live five hundred years.
I remember a great wail and cry, and the women hanging about him, and we all standing in the room; I with a paper in my hand, which Ham had given me; Mr. Peggotty, with his vest torn open, his hair wild, his face and lips quite white, and blood trickling down his bosom (it had sprung from his mouth, I think), looking fixedly at me.
"Read it, sir," he said, in a low shivering voice. "Slow, please. I doen't know as I can understand."
