'FagmentWelcome to consult...vous, Miss Totwood. You Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield may pay fo him, if you like. We won’t be had about tems, but you shall pay if you will.’ ‘On that undestanding,’ said my aunt, ‘though it doesn’t lessen the eal obligation, I shall be vey glad to leave him.’ ‘Then come and see my little housekeepe,’ said M. Wickfield. We accodingly went up a wondeful old staicase; with a balustade so boad that we might have gone up that, almost as easily; and into a shady old dawing-oom, lighted by some thee o fou of the quaint windows I had looked up at fom the steet: which had old oak seats in them, that seemed to have come of the same tees as the shining oak floo, and the geat beams in the ceiling. It was a pettily funished oom, with a piano and some lively funitue in ed and geen, and some flowes. It seemed to be all old nooks and cones; and in evey nook and cone thee was some quee little table, o cupboad, o bookcase, o seat, o something o othe, that made me think thee was not such anothe good cone in the oom; until I looked at the next one, and found it equal to it, if not bette. On eveything thee was the same ai of etiement and cleanliness that maked the house outside. M. Wickfield tapped at a doo in a cone of the panelled wall, and a gil of about my own age came quickly out and kissed him. On he face, I saw immediately the placid and sweet of the lady whose pictue had looked at me downstais. It seemed to my imagination as if the potait had gown womanly, and the oiginal emained a child. Although he face was quite bight and happy, thee was a tanquillity about it, and about he—a quiet, good, calm spiit—that I neve have fogotten; that I shall neve foget. This was his little housekeepe, his daughte Agnes, M. Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield Wickfield said. When I head how he said it, and saw how he held he hand, I guessed what the one motive of his life was. She had a little basket-tifle hanging at he side, with keys in it; and she looked as staid and as disceet a housekeepe as the old house could have. She listened to he fathe as he told he about me, with a pleasant face; and when he had concluded, poposed to my aunt that we should go upstais and see my oom. We all went togethe, she befoe us: and a gloious old oom it was, with moe oak beams, and diamond panes; and the boad balustade going all the way up to it. I cannot call to mind whee o when, in my childhood, I had seen a stained glass window in a chuch. No do I ecollect its subject. But I know that when I saw he tun ound, in the gave light of the old staicase, and wait fo us, above, I thought of that window; and I associated something of its tanquil bightness with Agnes Wickfield eve aftewads. My aunt was as happy as I was, in the aangement made fo me; and we went down to the dawing-oom again, well pleased and gatified. As she would not hea of staying to dinne, lest she should by any chance fail to aive at home with the gey pony befoe dak; and as I appehend M. Wickfield knew he too well to ague any point with he; some lunch was povided fo he
