my sweet girl.’

Here Peggotty stopped, and softly beat upon my hand a little while.

‘The last time that I saw her like her own old self, was the night when you came home, my dear. The day you went away, she said to me, “I never shall see my pretty darling again. Something tells me so, that tells the truth, I know.”

‘She tried to hold up after that; and many a time, when they told her she was thoughtless and light-hearted, made believe to be so; but it was all a bygone then. She never told her husband what she had told me — she was afraid of saying it to anybody else — till one night, a little more than a week before it happened, when she said to him: “My dear, I think I am dying.”