Page 844 - david-copperfield

‘I don’t know what to call it,’ I replied. ‘I think I am ear-
nest and persevering?’
‘I am sure of it,’ said Agnes.
‘And patient, Agnes?’ I inquired, with a little hesitation.
‘Yes,’ returned Agnes, laughing. ‘Pretty well.’
‘And yet,’ said I, ‘I get so miserable and worried, and am
so unsteady and irresolute in my power of assuring myself,
that I know I must want - shall I call it - reliance, of some
kind?’
‘Call it so, if you will,’ said Agnes.
‘Well!’ I returned. ‘See here! You come to London, I rely
on you, and I have an object and a course at once. I am driven
out of it, I come here, and in a moment I feel an altered per-
son. The circumstances that distressed me are not changed,
since I came into this room; but an influence comes over me
in that short interval that alters me, oh, how much for the
better! What is it? What is your secret, Agnes?’
Her head was bent down, looking at the fire.
‘It’s the old story,’ said I. ‘Don’t laugh, when I say it was
always the same in little things as it is in greater ones. My
old troubles were nonsense, and now they are serious; but
whenever I have gone away from my adopted sister -’
Agnes looked up - with such a Heavenly face! - and gave
me her hand, which I kissed.
‘Whenever I have not had you, Agnes, to advise and ap-
prove in the beginning, I have seemed to go wild, and to get
into all sorts of difficulty. When I have come to you, at last
(as I have always done), I have come to peace and happi-
ness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and find such