as like Cain before he was grown up, as he can be.’

Mr. Dick looked hard at me, as if to identify me in this character.

‘And then there’s that woman with the Pagan name,’ said my aunt, ‘that Peggotty, she goes and gets married next. Because she has not seen enough of the evil attending such things, she goes and gets married next, as the child relates. I only hope,’ said my aunt, shaking her head, ‘that her husband is one of those Poker husbands who abound in the newspapers, and will beat her well with one.’

I could not bear to hear my old nurse so decried, and made the subject of such a wish.

I told my aunt that indeed she was mistaken. That Peggotty was the best, the truest, the most faithful, most devoted, and most self-denying