‘Ha, ha!’ laughed Mr. Peggotty, sitting down beside us, and rubbing his hands in his sense of relief from recent trouble, and in the genuine heartiness of his nature; ‘there’s not a woman in the wureld, sir — as I tell her — that need to feel more easy in her mind than her!

She done her dooty by the departed, and the departed know’d it; and the departed done what was right by her, as she done what was right by the departed; — and — and — and it’s all right!’

Mrs. Gummidge groaned.

‘Cheer up, my pritty mawther!’ said Mr. Peggotty. (But he shook his head aside at us, evidently sensible of the tendency of the late occurrences to recall the memory of the old one.) ‘Doen’t