David Copperfield
ringing of old bellses to hear YOU say Uriah. I beg your par-
don. Was I making any observation?’
‘About Mr. Wickfield,’ I suggested.
‘Oh! Yes, truly,’ said Uriah. ‘Ah! Great imprudence, Mas-
ter Copperfield. It’s a topic that I wouldn’t touch upon, to
any soul but you. Even to you I can only touch upon it, and
no more. If anyone else had been in my place during the last
few years, by this time he would have had Mr. Wickfield (oh,
what a worthy man he is, Master Copperfield, too!) under
his thumb. Un—der—his thumb,’ said Uriah, very slowly,
as he stretched out his cruel-looking hand above my table,
and pressed his own thumb upon it, until it shook, and
shook the room.
If I had been obliged to look at him with him splay foot
on Mr. Wickfield’s head, I think I could scarcely have hated
him more.
‘Oh, dear, yes, Master Copperfield,’ he proceeded, in a
soft voice, most remarkably contrasting with the action
of his thumb, which did not diminish its hard pressure in
the least degree, ‘there’s no doubt of it. There would have
been loss, disgrace, I don’t know what at all. Mr. Wickfield
knows it. I am the umble instrument of umbly serving him,
and he puts me on an eminence I hardly could have hoped
to reach. How thankful should I be!’ With his face turned
towards me, as he finished, but without looking at me, he
took his crooked thumb off the spot where he had planted it,
and slowly and thoughtfully scraped his lank jaw with it, as
if he were shaving himself.
I recollect well how indignantly my heart beat, as I saw