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'
'
Nelly!' said the old man.
Yes, yes, rather than live as we do now,' the child repeated, more
earnestly than before. 'If you are sorrowful, let me know why and be
sorrowful too; if you waste away and are paler and weaker every day,
let me be your nurse and try to comfort you. If you are poor, let us be
poor together; but let me be with you, do let me be with you; do not let
me see such change and not know why, or I shall break my heart and
die. Dear grandfather, let us leave this sad place to-morrow, and beg
our way from door to door.'
The old man covered his face with his hands, and hid it in the pillow
of the couch on which he lay.
'Let us be beggars,' said the child passing an arm round his neck, 'I
have no fear but we shall have enough, I am sure we shall. Let us
walk through country places, and sleep in fields and under trees, and
never think of money again, or anything that can make you sad, but
rest at nights, and have the sun and wind upon our faces in the day,
and thank God together! Let us never set foot in dark rooms or
melancholy houses, any more, but wander up and down wherever we
like to go; and when you are tired, you shall stop to rest in the
pleasantest place that we can find, and I will go and beg for both.'
The child's voice was lost in sobs as she dropped upon the old man's
neck; nor did she weep alone.
These were not words for other ears, nor was it a scene for other eyes.
And yet other ears and eyes were there and greedily taking in all that
passed, and moreover they were the ears and eyes of no less a person
than Mr Daniel Quilp, who, having entered unseen when the child
first placed herself at the old man's side, refrained - actuated, no
doubt, by motives of the purest delicacy - from interrupting the
conversation, and stood looking on with his accustomed grin.
Standing, however, being a tiresome attitude to a gentleman already
fatigued with walking, and the dwarf being one of that kind of persons
who usually make themselves at home, he soon cast his eyes upon a
chair, into which he skipped with uncommon agility, and perching
himself on the back with his feet upon the seat, was thus enabled to
look on and listen with greater comfort to himself, besides gratifying at
the same time that taste for doing something fantastic and monkey-
like, which on all occasions had strong possession of him. Here, then,
he sat, one leg cocked carelessly over the other, his chin resting on the
palm of his hand, his head turned a little on one side, and his ugly
features twisted into a complacent grimace. And in this position the
old man, happening in course of time to look that way, at length
chanced to see him: to his unbounded astonishment.
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