Bokelskere.no

Firmness, I may observe, was the grand quality on which both Mr and Miss Murdstone took their stand. However I might have expressed my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called upon, I nevertheless did clearly comprehend in my own way, that it was another name for tyranny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil's humour, that was in them both.

[Miss Murdstone] was brought into the parlour with many tokens of welcome, and there formally recognized my mother as a new and near relative. Then she looked at me, and said:

'Is that your boy, sister-in-law?

My mother acknowledged me.

'Generally speaking,' said Miss Murdstone, 'I don't like boys. How d'ye do, boy?'

Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very well, and that I hoped she was the same; with such an indifferent grace, that Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words:

'Wants manner!'

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her, two uncomprimising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out og a hard steel purse, and she lept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.

'I an't what I could wish myself to be,' said Mrs Gummidge. 'I'm far from it. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrairy. I feel my troubles, and they make me contrairy. [...] If thinks must go contrairy with me, and I must go contrairy myself, let me go contrairy in my parish.

'Yes, yes, it is,' cried Mrs Gummidge. 'I know what I am. I know that I am a lone lorn creetur', and not only that everythink goes contrairy with me, but that I go contrairy with everybody. Yes, yes. I feel more than other people do, and I show it more. It's my misfortun'.'

Mrs Gummidge had been in a low state all day, and had burst into tears in the forenoon, when the fire smoked. 'I am a long lorn creetur',' were Mrs Gummidge's words, when that unpleasant occurence took place, 'and everythink goes contrairy with me.'

'Oh, it'll soon leave off,' said Peggoty - I again mean our Peggotty - 'and besides, you know, it's not more disagreeable to you than to us.'

'I feel it more,' said Mrs Gummidge.

[...]She was constantly complaining of the cold, and of its occasioning a visitation in her back which she called 'the creeps'. At last she shed tears on that subject, and said again that she was 'a lone lorn creetur' and everythink went contrairy with her'.

'It is certainly very cold,' said Peggotty. 'Everybody must feel it so.'

'I feel it more than other people,' said Mrs Gummidge.

As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty in our way, little Em'ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger.

[...] Mr Peggotty went out to wash himself in a kettleful of hot water, remarking that 'cold water would never get his muck off'. He soon returned, greatly improved in appearance; but so rubicund, that I couldn't help thinking his face had this in common with the lobsters, crabs, and crawfish, - that it went into hot water very black, and came out very red.

One thing I particularly noticed in this delightful house, was the smell of fish; which was so searching, that when I took out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe my nose, I found it smelt exactly as if it had wrapped up a lobster.

On the walls there were some common coloured pictures, framed and glazed, of scripture subjects; [...]. Abraham in red going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow cast into a den of green lions, were the most prominent of these.