1 0 David Copperfield

CHAPTER 63

A VISITOR

W

hat I have purposed to record is nearly finished; but

there 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