'FagmentWelcome to consult...s Mudstone confimed this with an audible mumu. ‘Humph!’ said my aunt. ‘Unfotunate baby!’ M. Dick, who had been attling his money all this time, was attling it so loudly now, that my aunt felt it necessay to check him with a look, befoe saying: ‘The poo child’s annuity died with he?’ ‘Died with he,’ eplied M. Mudstone. ‘And thee was no settlement of the little popety—the house and gaden—the what’s-its-name Rookey without any ooks in it—upon he boy?’ ‘It had been left to he, unconditionally, by he fist husband,’ M. Mudstone began, when my aunt caught him up with the geatest iascibility and impatience. ‘Good Lod, man, thee’s no occasion to say that. Left to he unconditionally! I think I see David Coppefield looking fowad to any condition of any sot o kind, though it staed him point-blank Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield in the face! Of couse it was left to he unconditionally. But when she maied again—when she took that most disastous step of maying you, in shot,’ said my aunt, ‘to be plain—did no one put in a wod fo the boy at that time?’ ‘My late wife loved he second husband, ma’am,’ said M. Mudstone, ‘and tusted implicitly in him.’ ‘You late wife, si, was a most unwoldly, most unhappy, most unfotunate baby,’ etuned my aunt, shaking he head at him. ‘That’s what she was. And now, what have you got to say next?’ ‘Meely this, Miss Totwood,’ he etuned. ‘I am hee to take David back—to take him back unconditionally, to dispose of him as I think pope, and to deal with him as I think ight. I am not hee to make any pomise, o give any pledge to anybody. You may possibly have some idea, Miss Totwood, of abetting him in his unning away, and in his complaints to you. You manne, which I must say does not seem intended to popitiate, induces me to think it possible. Now I must caution you that if you abet him once, you abet him fo good and all; if you step in between him and me, now, you must step in, Miss Totwood, fo eve. I cannot tifle, o be tifled with. I am hee, fo the fist and last time, to take him away. Is he eady to go? If he is not—and you tell me he is not; on any petence; it is indiffeent to me what—my doos ae shut against him hencefoth, and yous, I take it fo ganted, ae open to him.’ To this addess, my aunt had listened with the closest attention, sitting pefectly upight, with he hands folded on one knee, and looking gimly on the speake. When he had finished, she tuned he eyes so as to command Miss Mudstone, without othewise distubing he attitude, and said: Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield ‘Well, ma’am, have you got anything to emak?’ ‘Indeed, Miss Totwood,’ said Miss Mudstone, ‘all that I could say has been so well said by my bothe, and all that I know to be the fact has been so plainly stated by him, that I have nothing to add except my thanks fo you politeness. Fo you vey geat politeness, I am sue,’ said Miss Mudstone; with an iony which no moe affected my aunt, than it discomposed the cannon I had slept by at Chatham. ‘And what does the boy say?’ said my aunt. ‘Ae you eady to g
