comfort and this morning’s entertainment. As to the waiter’s familiarity, it was quenched as if it had never been. He attended on us, as I may say, in sackcloth and ashes.

‘Now, Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, when we were alone, ‘I should like to hear what you are doing, and where you are going, and all about you. I feel as if you were my property.’ Glowing with pleasure to find that he had still this interest in me, I told him how my aunt had proposed the little expedition that I had before me, and whither it tended.

‘As you are in no hurry, then,’ said Steerforth, ‘come home with me to Highgate, and stay a day or two.

You will be pleased with my mother — she is a little vain and prosy about me, but that you can forgive her —