The tune across the yard that seemed as if it never had left off—alas! it was the tune that never does leave off—was beating, softly, all the while.
"Wouldn't you like to step in," said Mr. Omer, "and speak to her? Walk in and speak to her, sir! Make yourself at home!"
I was too bashful to do so then—I was afraid of confusing her, and I was no less afraid of confusing myself: but I informed myself of the hour at which she left of an evening, in order that our visit might be timed accordingly; and taking leave of Mr. Omer, and his pretty daughter, and her little children, went away to my dear old Peggotty's.
Here she was, in the tiled kitchen, cooking dinner! The moment I knocked at the door she opened it, and asked me what I pleased to want. I looked at her with a smile, but she gave me no smile in return. I had never ceased to write to her, but it must have been seven years since we had met.
"Is Mr. Barkis at home, ma'am?" I said, feigning to speak roughly to her.
"He's at home, sir," returned Peggotty, "but he's bad abed with the rheumatics."
"Don't he go over to Blunderstone now?" I asked.
"When he's well, he do," she answered.
"Do you ever go there, Mrs. Barkis?"
She looked at me more attentively, and I noticed a quick movement of her hands towards each other.
"Because I want to ask a question about a house there, that they call the—what is it?—the Rookery," said I.
She took a step backward, and put out her hands in an undecided frightened way, as if to keep me off.
"Peggotty!" I cried to her.
She cried, "My darling boy!" and we both burst into tears, and were locked in one another's arms.
What extravagancies she committed; what laughing and crying over me; what pride she showed, what joy, what sorrow that she whose pride and joy I might have been, could never hold me in a fond embrace; I have not the heart to tell. I was troubled with no misgiving that it was young in me to respond to her emotions. I had never laughed and cried in all my life, I dare say—not even to her—more freely than I did that morning.
"Barkis will be so glad," said Peggotty, wiping her eyes with her apron, "that it'll do him more good than pints of liniment. May I go and tell him you are here? Will you come up and see him, my dear?"
Of course I would. But Peggotty could not get out of the room as easily as she meant to, for as often as she got to the door and looked round at me, she came back again to have another laugh and another cry upon my shoulder. At last, to make the matter easier, I went up-stairs with her; and having waited outside for a minute, while she said a word of preparation to Mr. Barkis, presented myself before that invalid.
He received me with absolute enthusiasm. He was too rheumatic to be shaken hands with, but he begged me to shake the tassel on the top of his nightcap, which I did most cordially. When I sat down by the side of the bed, he said that it did him a world of good to feel as if he was driving me on the Blunderstone road again. As he lay in bed, face upward, and so covered, with that exception, that he seemed to be nothing but a face—like a conventional cherubim,—he looked the queerest object I ever beheld.
