FragmentWelcome to consult...t know what may be among tho**bs and jars
and old tea-chests, when there is nobody in there with a dimly-
burning light, letting a mouldy air come out of the door, in which
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David Copperfield
there is the smell of soap, pickles, pepper, candles, and coffee, all
at one whiff. Then there are the two parlours: the parlour in which
we sit of an evening, my mother and I and Peggotty—for Peggotty
is quite our companion, when her work is done and we are alone—
and the best parlour where we sit on a Sunday; grandly, but not so
comfortably. There is something of a do**l air about that room to
me, for Peggotty has told me—I don’t know when, but apparently
ages ago—about my father’s funeral, and the company having
their black cloaks put on. One Sunday night my mother reads to
Peggotty and me in there, how Lazarus was raised up from the
dead. And I am so frightened that they are afterwards obliged to
take me out of bed, and show me the quiet churchyard out of the
bedroom window, with the dead all lying in their graves at rest,
below the solemn moon.
There is nothing half so green that I know anywhere, as the
grass of that churchyard; nothing half so shady as its trees;
nothing half so quiet as its tombstones. The sheep are feeding
there, when I kneel up, early in the morning, in my little bed in a
closet within my mother’s room, to look out at it; and I see the red
light shining on the sun-dial, and think within myself, ‘Is the sundial glad, I wonder, that it can tell the time again?’
Here is our pew in the church. What a high-backed pew! With a
window near it, out of which our house can be seen, and is seen
many times during the morning’s service, by Peggotty, who likes
to make herself as sure as she can that it’s not being robbed, or is
not in flames. But though Peggotty’s eye wanders, she is much
offended if mine does, and frowns to me, as I stand upon the seat,
that I am to look at the clergyman. But I can’t always look at him—
I know him without that white thing on, and I am afraid of his
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David Copperfield
wondering why I stare so, and perhaps stopping the service to
inquire—and what am I to do? It’s a dreadful thing to gape, but I
must do something. I look at my mother, but she pretends not to
see me. I look at a boy in the aisle, and he makes faces at me. I
look at the sunlight coming in at the open door through the porch,
and there I see a stray sheep—I don’t mean a sinner, but mutton—
half making up his mind to come into the church. I feel that if I
looked at him any longer, I might be tempted to say something out
loud; and what would become of me then! I look up at the
monumental tablets on the wall, and try to think of Mr. Bodgers
late of this parish, and what the feelings of Mrs. Bodgers must
have been, when affliction sore, long time Mr. Bodgers bore, and
physicians were in vain. I wonder whether they called in Mr.
Chillip, and he was in vain; and if so, how he likes to be reminded
of it once a week. I look from Mr. Chillip, in his Sunday neckcloth,
to the pulpit; and think what a good place it would be to play in,
and what a castle it would make, with another boy coming up the
stairs to attack it, and having the velvet cushion with the tassels
thrown down on his head. In time my eyes gradually shut up; and,
from seeming to hear the clergyman singing a drowsy song in the
heat, I hear nothing, until I fall off the seat with a cras**m
taken out, more dead than alive, by Peggotty.
And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed
bedroom-windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air,
and the ragged old rooks’-nests still dangling in the elm-trees at
the bottom of the front garden.
