‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said my mother, answering with some difficulty, ‘was so considerate and good as to secure the reversion of a part of it to me.’

‘How much?’ asked Miss Betsey.

‘A hundred and five pounds a year,’ said my mother.

‘He might have done worse,’ said my aunt.

The word was appropriate to the moment. My mother was so much worse that Peggotty, coming in with the teaboard and candles, and seeing at a glance how ill she was, — as Miss Betsey might have done sooner if there had been light enough, — conveyed her upstairs to her own room with all speed; and immediately dispatched Ham Peggotty, her nephew, who had been for some days past secreted