Page 1291 - david-copperfield

CHAPTER 63

A VISITOR

hat I have purposed to record is nearly finished; but
Wthere is yet an incident conspicuous in my memory,
on which it often rests with delight, and without which one
thread in the web I have spun would have a ravelled end.
I had advanced in fame and fortune, my domestic joy
was perfect, I had been married ten happy years. Agnes and
I were sitting by the fire, in our house in London, one night
in spring, and three of our children were playing in the
room, when I was told that a stranger wished to see me.
He had been asked if he came on business, and had an-
swered No; he had come for the pleasure of seeing me, and
had come a long way. He was an old man, my servant said,
and looked like a farmer.
As this sounded mysterious to the children, and more-
over was like the beginning of a favourite story Agnes used
to tell them, introductory to the arrival of a wicked old Fairy
in a cloak who hated everybody, it produced some commo-
tion. One of our boys laid his head in his mother’s lap to be
out of harm’s way, and little Agnes (our eldest child) left her
doll in a chair to represent her, and thrust out her little heap

1 0 David Copperfield