Page 856 - david-copperfield

appetite. I stopped at the umble point of my learning, and
says I, ‘Hold hard!’ When you offered to teach me Latin, I
knew better. ‘People like to be above you,’ says father, ‘keep
yourself down.’ I am very umble to the present moment,
Master Copperfield, but I’ve got a little power!’
And he said all this - I knew, as I saw his face in the
moonlight - that I might understand he was resolved to rec-
ompense himself by using his power. I had never doubted
his meanness, his craft and malice; but I fully comprehend-
ed now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting, and
revengeful spirit, must have been engendered by this early,
and this long, suppression.
His account of himself was so far attended with an agree-
able result, that it led to his withdrawing his hand in order
that he might have another hug of himself under the chin.
Once apart from him, I was determined to keep apart; and
we walked back, side by side, saying very little more by the
way. Whether his spirits were elevated by the communica-
tion I had made to him, or by his having indulged in this
retrospect, I don’t know; but they were raised by some in-
fluence. He talked more at dinner than was usual with him;
asked his mother (off duty, from the moment of our re-en-
tering the house) whether he was not growing too old for a
bachelor; and once looked at Agnes so, that I would have
given all I had, for leave to knock him down.
When we three males were left alone after dinner, he got
into a more adventurous state. He had taken little or no
wine; and I presume it was the mere insolence of triumph
that was upon him, flushed perhaps by the temptation my