Page 482 - david-copperfield

amazed me. He was more unlike himself than I could have
supposed possible.
‘It would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of
a nephew,’ he said, getting up and leaning moodily against
the chimney-piece, with his face towards the fire, ‘than to
be myself, twenty times richer and twenty times wiser, and
be the torment to myself that I have been, in this Devil’s
bark of a boat, within the last half-hour!’
I was so confounded by the alteration in him, that at first
I could only observe him in silence, as he stood leaning his
head upon his hand, and looking gloomily down at the fire.
At length I begged him, with all the earnestness I felt, to tell
me what had occurred to cross him so unusually, and to let
me sympathize with him, if I could not hope to advise him.
Before I had well concluded, he began to laugh - fretfully at
first, but soon with returning gaiety.
‘Tut, it’s nothing, Daisy! nothing!’ he replied. ‘I told you
at the inn in London, I am heavy company for myself, some-
times. I have been a nightmare to myself, just now - must
have had one, I think. At odd dull times, nursery tales come
up into the memory, unrecognized for what they are. I be-
lieve I have been confounding myself with the bad boy who
‘didn’t care’, and became food for lions - a grander kind of
going to the dogs, I suppose. What old women call the hor-
rors, have been creeping over me from head to foot. I have
been afraid of myself.’
‘You are afraid of nothing else, I think,’ said I.
‘Perhaps not, and yet may have enough to be afraid of
too,’ he answered. ‘Well! So it goes by! I am not about to be

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