‘Well, Trot,’ she began, ‘what do you think of the proctor plan?
Or have you not begun to think about it yet?’
‘I have thought a good deal about it, my dear aunt, and I have
talked a good deal about it with Steerforth. I like it very much
indeed. I like it exceedingly.’
‘Come!’ said my aunt. ‘That’s cheering!’
‘I have only one difficulty, aunt.’
‘Say what it is, Trot,’ she returned.
‘Why, I want to ask, aunt, as this seems, from what I
understand, to be a limited profession, whether my entrance into
it would not be very expensive?’
‘It will cost,’ returned my aunt, ‘to article you, just a thousand
pounds.’
‘Now, my dear aunt,’ said I, drawing my chair nearer, ‘I am
uneasy in my mind about that. It’s a large sum of money. You have
expended a great deal on my education, and have always been as
liberal to me in all things as it was possible to be. You have been
the soul of generosity. Surely there are some ways in which I
might begin life with hardly any outlay, and yet begin with a good
hope of getting on by resolution and exertion. Are you sure that it
would not be better to try that course? Are you certain that you
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can afford to part with so much money, and that it is right that it
should be so expended? I only ask you, my second mother, to
consider. Are you certain?’
My aunt finished eating the piece of toast on which she was
then engaged, looking me full in the face all the while; and then
setting her glass on the chimney-piece, and folding her hands
upon her folded skirts, replied as follows:
‘Trot, my child, if I have any object in life, it is to provide for
your being a good, a sensible, and a happy man. I am bent upon
it—so is Dick. I should like some people that I know to hear Dick’s
conversation on the subject. Its sagacity is wonderful. But no one
knows the resources of that man’s intellect, except myself!’
She stopped for a moment to take my hand between hers, and
went on:
‘It’s in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some
influence upon the present. Perhaps I might have been better
friends with your poor father. Perhaps I might have been better
friends with that poor child your mother, even after your sister
Betsey Trotwood disappointed me. When you came to me, a little
runaway boy, all dusty and way-worn, perhaps I thought so. From
that time until now, Trot, you have ever been a credit to me and a
pride and a pleasure. I have no other claim upon my means; at
least’—here to my surprise she hesitated, and was confused—‘no, I
have no other claim upon my means—and you are my adopted
child. only be a loving child to me in my age, and bear with my
whims and fancies; and you will do more for an old woman whose
prime of life was not so happy or conciliating as it might have
been, than ever that old woman did for you.’
It was the first time I had heard my aunt refer to her past
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David Copperfield
history. There was a magnanimity in her quiet way of doing so,
and of dismissing it, which would have exalted her in my respect
and affection, if anything could.
‘All is agreed and understood between us, now, Trot,’ said my
aunt, ‘and we need talk of this no more. Give me a kiss, and we’ll
go to the Commons after breakfast tomorrow.’
We had a long chat by the fire before we went to bed. I slept in a
room on the same floor with my aunt’s, and was a little disturbed
in the course of the night by her knocking at my door as often as
she was agitated by a distant sound of hackney-coaches or market-
carts, and inquiring, ‘if I heard the engines?’ But towards morning
she slept better, and suffered me to do so too.
At about mid-day, we set out for the office of Messrs Spenlow
and Jorkins, in Doctors’ Commons. My aunt, who had this other
general opinion in reference to London, that every man she saw
was a pickpocket, gave me her purse to car"};
