David Copperfield
her little hands in such an afflicted manner; that I rather
inclined towards her.
‘Miss Mowcher!’ said I, after glancing up and down the
empty street, without distinctly knowing what I expected
to see besides; ‘how do you come here? What is the matter?’
She motioned to me with her short right arm, to shut the
umbrella for her; and passing me hurriedly, went into the
kitchen. When I had closed the door, and followed, with the
umbrella in my hand, I found her sitting on the corner of
the fender - it was a low iron one, with two flat bars at top to
stand plates upon - in the shadow of the boiler, swaying her-
self backwards and forwards, and chafing her hands upon
her knees like a person in pain.
Quite alarmed at being the only recipient of this untime-
ly visit, and the only spectator of this portentous behaviour,
I exclaimed again, ‘Pray tell me, Miss Mowcher, what is the
matter! are you ill?’
‘My dear young soul,’ returned Miss Mowcher, squeezing
her hands upon her heart one over the other. ‘I am ill here,
I am very ill. To think that it should come to this, when I
might have known it and perhaps prevented it, if I hadn’t
been a thoughtless fool!’
Again her large bonnet (very disproportionate to the fig-
ure) went backwards and forwards, in her swaying of her
little body to and fro; while a most gigantic bonnet rocked,
in unison with it, upon the wall.
‘I am surprised,’ I began, ‘to see you so distressed and se-
rious’- when she interrupted me.
‘Yes, it’s always so!’ she said. ‘They are all surprised, these