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CHAPTER 23

I CORROBORATE Mr.

DICK, AND CHOOSE

A PROFESSION

W

hen I awoke in the morning I thought very much of

little Em’ly, and her emotion last night, after Martha

had left. I felt as if I had come into the knowledge of those

domestic weaknesses and tendernesses in a sacred confi-

dence, and that to disclose them, even to Steerforth, would

be wrong. I had no gentler feeling towards anyone than to-

wards the pretty creature who had been my playmate, and

whom I have always been persuaded, and shall always be

persuaded, to my dying day, I then devotedly loved. The

repetition to any ears - even to Steerforth’s - of what she

had been unable to repress when her heart lay open to me

by an accident, I felt would be a rough deed, unworthy of

myself, unworthy of the light of our pure childhood, which

I always saw encircling her head. I made a resolution, there-

fore, to keep it in my own breast; and there it gave her image

a new grace.