A (0:00)

Hello and welcome to Storytime for Grown Ups. I'm Faith Moore and this season we're reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Each episode I'll read a few chapters from the book, pausing from time to time to give brief explanations so it's easier to follow along. It's like an audiobook with built in notes. So brew a pot of tea, find a cozy chair and settle in. It's story time. Hi. Welcome back. I hope that wherever you are and whatever you're doing, you at least are in your cozy and comfy chair in your mind and that you have your pot of tea at least in in your mind and that you are ready to listen to some more David Copperfield, because I'm ready to read some more to you. Thank you so much for being here. I'm always so glad to be here with you and I don't know about you, but I really feel very ensconced in this novel. Something that's wonderful about reading such a long book is that it really feels like these characters are our friends now. It really feels like we're living in this world world, we're really in it, I think, and I don't know, I care very deeply at this point about David. I hope that you do too. And it's really fun to be doing that. It's fun to have this kind of imaginary world that we all get to meet up in twice a week. So welcome, welcome to the world of David Copperfield. So I don't have any new announcements today, but all of the same reminders apply. Please make sure that you are subscribed, subscribed to this show so you don't miss any episodes. Please make sure that if you're enjoying it, you've tapped the five stars in your podcast player. Please make sure that you have left a positive review if you have a couple of extra seconds and you're enjoying the show. And please, please do tell a friend, tell a family member, tell a colleague, tell a random person on the street, whoever it is, please tell somebody about this show. Let's get more people listening, more people into our funny imaginary worlds that we like to build and create and live in here. Because really, I mean, who doesn't want more friends to talk to about classic books? I know I certainly do, which is why I'm so glad you guys are all out there. So tell people about the show, spread the word. And if you're interested in learning more ways that you can support the show, you can scroll into the show notes and check out all the links that are there, you can buy some merch, you can make a financial donation, you can join our online community, which is called the Drawing Room. So check out the those links and see if anything there appeals to you. All right, so today we're going to be reading chapter 24 of David Copperfield. Last time we read chapter 23. It's a bit of a short chapter this time, but we'll talk first and then we'll get into it. So here is the recap. Okay, so where we left off. David and Steerforth leave Yarmouth and head back to London. David tells Steerforth that he's had a letter from his aunt suggesting he should be a proctor, which is a kind of lawyer. Steerforth says it's just as good as anything else and David decides to give it a try. He and Steerforth say goodbye, arranging to meet up again in a couple of days. And David goes to find his aunt, who is very glad to see him. Ms. Bessie says that she's happy to pay the fee to get him set up as a clerk to a lawyer and that she views him as a son and wants him to be happy. The next day they set off for the office of a proctor Miss Betsy knows who she thinks will hire him, but on the way a strange man follows them and Ms. Betsy insists on leaving David and getting into a carriage with this man. When she comes back, she's alone and she's clearly given the man some money, but she asks David. David not to say anything about it or to ask her any questions. So they go to the office of Mr. Spenlo and Mr. Jorkins and they meet Mr. Spenlo, who's a very stiff sort of person, but seems nice enough and says that David can come on for a month as a trial and if it goes well and he wants to stay, then Ms. Betsy can pay the fee and David can stay on there as a clerk making his way up to becoming a proctor. David takes a tour of the court and likes it well enough and is excited to start. His aunt then finds him a nice set of rooms to live in. And Miss Betsy returns to Dover, leaving David to start his new job in London. Alright, I'm going to read two comments today. The first one comes from Paula Fernandez. She says Chapter 23 was a refreshing change after Chapter 22, which seemed so disjointed and exceedingly verbose. Aunt Betsy has officially become one of my favorite characters. Her fear of fire was right up there with the donkeys. I love the relationship that she has with Trot. It was really touching that she wished his mother was alive to see the man he has become. David's appreciation of her generosity, as well as concern about having to pay £1,000 was also very sweet. However, I'm very concerned about the man that followed the two of them in London. Is he blackmailing Aunt Betsy? Way to go Charles Dickens for putting in that foreboding scene. And the next one comes from Elizabeth. She says, I'm not sure how I feel about David's new job as a proctor. He seemed to choose it kind of at random. And shouldn't he be doing something more creative or adventurous? It wasn't the job I was thinking he'd take. But then David himself seems kind of pleased with it. Should we be feeling good about his choice or bad? Okay, so here we are again at another one of these new beginnings for David, right. It's been a while, but we've been talking all along about how there keep being these endings and new beginnings. And at first most of them were bad. We had Mr. Birdstone showing up. David went to school, his mother died, he worked at the factory. But then lately they've been good. He got adopted by his aunt. He started at Dr. Strong's. And now here is another one. He is embarking on a career. He's going to be a proctor, which is kind of lawyer who deals with church issues and also maritime issues for some reason. And he's got his own apartment. So in modern terms, this is where he moves out of his parents house and gets his own place and starts his first job. So it's another ending. His school days are over, his time living with the Wickfields and with his aunt. Those are over. And it's another beginning. He's starting out in life on his own. And as Elizabeth says, David seems really very pleased with himself. He's thrilled to be out on his own for the first time and to have a job and all of this. And he's over the moon to have a whole apartment all to himself. Not only that, he is very aware of how good he has it now in comparison to how things used to be or how things might have turned out for him had he stayed stayed at Murdstone and Grinby's and never been adopted by his aunt. After moving into his new apartment, he says, I turned my face to the adelphi, pondering on the old days when I used to roam about in subterranean arches and on the happy changes which had brought me to the surface. Meaning he remembers coming to this same neighborhood when he was a poor factory worker, never thinking that one day he would be an educated middle class young man living in chambers here and preparing to start a good middle class job. And it is a good job. I mean, I agree with Elizabeth that being a lawyer and pouring over legal documents and sitting in court and all of this. It's not exactly what we might have pictured David doing. And it's true that he chooses the job kind of flippantly. It's less the thing he's dying to be and it's more that Miss Betsy says she knows a guy who can get him set up in this job and it's just as good as any other job as far as David can tell. And Steerforth doesn't help because he's kind of flippant about everything, you know, David says, well, we achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to doctor's comments and anticipating the distant days when I should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and whimsical lights that made us both marry. So it's not a sort of dream fulfilled or anything like that. He hasn't found his calling or whatever. But it is a good job. It's a solid middle class profession, it's respectable, it's lucrative at first. It won't be lucrative because he's essentially an unpaid intern at this point and in fact Ms. Betsy has to pay for him to essentially be a apprenticed first. But eventually it'll be a lucrative career for him. And remember all the time that he was poor and uneducated and all of this, the thing that bothered him the most was that he wasn't going to get to turn out to be the sort of middle class gentleman that he wanted to be. And this job is exactly the sort of job that a middle class gentleman should have. And I mean, he's still so young, right? 17 really is young by any standards. So what he cares most about is first that he does his aunt proud. And I will talk more about that in a moment, but this will achieve that. Ms. Betsy clearly approves of this job for him. So he cares about that and he cares about being a sort of distinguished gentleman. And this will achieve that too, he says. All this looked tolerably expensive, I thought, and gave me an agreeable notion of a proctor's business, meaning if he takes this job, he will be the sort of impressive gentleman that he longs to be and that makes him happy. And. But he has the good sense not to just leap headlong into this job he asks for a trial period, after which he can leave if he wants to, and Miss Betsy would then get her money back. So he's being thoughtful about it. He says that I could not absolutely pledge myself to like it until I knew something more about it. That, although it was little else than a matter of form, I presumed I should have an opportunity of trying how I liked it before I bound myself to it irrevocably. Okay, so overall, to answer Elizabeth's question, I do think that we're meant to feel good about this job for David at this point. You know, Charles Dickens, by the way, worked for a very short time as a law clerk, and lawyers and the legal system come up in a lot of his books. So you'll notice that he puts in these little asides from time to time about the legal system, and he seems to find it sort of humorous with all of its contradictory rules and regulations and things. But he also is clearly very fond of it in a way as well. So giving David this job is another one of these autobiographical details that are scattered throughout the book. And I think that this particular office where David has come to work has that flavor of humor and fondness that Dickens is so wonderful at creating. David's boss, Mr. Spenlow, is this ridiculous sort of overly genteel person who moves like a sock puppet because his clothes are so starched. And he has this partner, Jorkins, who is the bad cop to his good cop, except that actually Jorkins isn't really the bad cop at all. Mr. Spenlow just pretends that he is. David says, I was quite dismayed by the idea of this terrible Jorkins, but I found out afterwards that he was a mild man of a heavy temperament whose place in the business was to keep himself in the background and be constantly exhibited by name as the most obdurate and ruthless of men. Okay, so Spenlo blames Jorkins anytime he wants to say that he can't do anyone any favors, essentially. So it seems like a funny sort of harmless place for David, which is good. But the other thing that's really wonderful about this chapter and really poignant is what Paula points out in her letter, and that's David's relationship with Ms. Betsy. Last week at tea time, we were talking about who our favorite characters are in the book so far, and Miss Betsy was a big contender. She's such a wonderful character. I really love her, too. And I think it's partly the way in which she has completely surprised us. We thought she was this cranky, eccentric old woman who didn't care about David at all because he wasn't a girl. And it turns out she's still an eccentric old woman, but actually she's incredibly kind, incredibly loving and absolutely devoted to David. And in fact, she's really very demonstrative toward David. She has this sort of prickly demeanor. So you think that she wouldn't tell David how much she cares about him or praise him or anything, but she really does. She gives him all the love and care and attention that he could want. She says, it's in vain, Trot, to recall the past unless it works some influence upon the present. Perhaps I might have been better friends with your. Your poor father. Perhaps I might have been better friends with that poor child, your mother. Even after your sister, Betsy Trotwood, disappointed me when you came to me, a little runaway boy, all dusty and way worn. Perhaps I thought so from that time until now, Trot, you have ever been a credit to me and a pride and a pleasure. And then later she says, you are my adopted child. Only be a loving child to me in my age and bear with my whims and fancies, and you will do more for an old woman who. Whose prime of life was not so happy or conciliating as it might have been than ever that old woman did for you. So it's really very touching. And she's a wonderful character. And David clearly knows this. He knows how lucky he is to have her and he wants very much to make her proud of him. And he worries about the fact that this new job requires her to pay this large sum of money for him to do it. He says, you have expended a great deal on my education and have always been as liberal to me in all things as it was possible to me be. You have been the soul of generosity. Surely there are some ways in which I might begin life with hardly any outlay and yet begin with a good hope of getting on by resolution and exertion. Are you sure that it would not be better to try that? Course. So, like we were talking about last time, David really does want to make a good start in life. He wants to be responsible. He wants to be hard working. He wants to be a credit to his aunt and to not a be of burden to her. For all of his admiration of Steerforth, he's really not like Steerforth at all. He's much more thoughtful, much more loving, much more responsible and earnest, and cares much more about doing the right thing and being an upstanding guy. So things are really looking very good for David. There is only one, or maybe potentially two, somehow troubling things going on. The first is what Paula points out in her letter. This guy who first showed up in the chapters when David was still a a child attending Dr. Strong's academy. But this guy who seems to be asking Miss Betsy for money, he shows up again in London. So if Mr. Dick was telling the truth back in those childhood chapters, which it now seems that he was, this guy has been bothering Ms. Betsy off and on for seven or eight years or something like this. And there seems to be some reason that Ms. Betsy feels she actually does have to pay him, rather than turning him into the police or running away from him or something like that. And this is clearly a decision that she's made, that she's going to pay this guy whenever he shows up asking for money. But she's also clearly very frightened of him as well, judging by the way that she reacts when she sees him. But she says, my dear child, never asked me what it was and don't refer to it. So it's something she feels that she must take care of on her own, that she doesn't want anyone else to know about. So that is definitely concerning. And it's a mystery that Dickens has opened up for us here and hopefully it will eventually be solved. But we do have this kind of open question, this open mystery at the moment. But there is actually one other mystery that we were alerted to in the last chapter that I'm not sure if anyone noticed because it went by really fast. It happens at the beginning of chapter 23, when Steerforth and David are leaving Yarmouth. And it has to do with Littomer, Steerforth's manservant. And there's this exchange between David, Sarah Steerforth and Littimer. It says, do you stay here long, Littimer, said I as he stood waiting to see the coach start. No, sir, he replied. Probably not very long, sir. He can hardly say just now, observed Steerforth carelessly. He knows what he has to do and he'll do it. That I am sure he will, said I. Okay, so the question is, why would Steerforth's manservant need to stay in Yarmouth for some indefinite period of time? Does it have to do with. With this boat that Steerforth bought that Mr. Peggotty is going to take care of for him? Maybe that's a possibility. In which case it's probably no big deal. But it's a little weird that Steerforth is like, he knows what he has to do and then won't elaborate on that. So it might be nothing. But I did want to point that out as another mystery that Dickens serves us up in this chapter, because he does make a point of putting that there. But otherwise, essentially, here we are at another new beginning. David is set up in his bachelor pad. He's got his cushy new job, and he's ready to take on the world. Right? What could go wrong? Maybe nothing, but maybe something. Who knows? We've got to keep reading and find out. So let's do that. But of course, don't forget to write to me. It's faithkmoore.com click on Contact. Send me your questions and thoughts. I love to hear from you. Please do write in and tell me your thoughts about this chapter. All right, let's get started with chapter 24 of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. It's story time. Chapter 24. My first dissipation. It was a wonderfully fine thing to have that lofty castle to myself and to feel when I shut my outer door, like Robinson Crusoe when he had got into his fortification and pulled his ladder up after him. It was a wonderfully fine thing to walk about town with the key of my house in my pocket and to know that I could ask any fellow to come home and make quite sure of its being inconvenient to nobody if it were not so. To me. It was a wonderfully fine thing to let myself in and out and to come and go without a word to any one, and to ring Mrs. Crupp up gasping from the depths of the earth when I wanted her and when she was disposed to come. All this, I say, was wonderfully fine. But I must say, too, that there were times when it was very dreary. It was fine in the morning, particularly in the fine mornings. It looked a very fresh, free life by daylight, still fresher and more free by sunlight. But as the day declined, the life seemed to go down, too. I don't know how it was. It seldom looked well by candlelight. I wanted somebody to talk to. Then I missed Agnes. I found a tremendous blank in the place of that smiling repository of my confidence. Mrs. Crupp appeared to be a long way off. I thought about my predecessor, who had died of drink and smoke, and I could have wished he had been so good as to live and not bother me with his decease. After two days and nights I felt as if I had lived there for a year. And yet I was not an hour older, but was quite as Much tormented by my own youthfulness as ever. Steerforth not yet appearing, which induced me to apprehend that he must be ill. I left the Commons early on the third day and walked out to Highgate. Mrs. Steerforth was very glad to see me and said that he had gone away with one of his Oxford friends to see another who lived near St. Albans, but that she expected him to return to morrow. I was so fond of him that I felt quite jealous of his Oxford friends. As she pressed me to stay to dinner, I remained, and I believe we talked about nothing but him all day. I told her how much the people liked him at Yarmouth and what a delightful companion he had been. Miss Dardle was full of hints and mysterious questions, but took a great interest in all our proceedings there and said, was it really though and so forth so often that she got everything out of me? She wanted to know. Her appearance was exactly what I have described it when I first saw her. But the society of the two ladies was so agreeable and came so natural to me that I felt myself falling a little in love with her. I could not help thinking several times in the course of the evening, and particularly when I walked home at night, what delightful company she would be in Buckingham Street. Buckingham street is where David lives now. I was taking my coffee and roll in the morning before going to the commons, and I may observe in this place that it is surprising how much coffee Mrs. Crupp used and how weak it was, considering when Steerforth himself walked in. To my unbounded joy. My dear Steerforth, cried I. I began to think I should never see you again. I was carried off by force of arms, said Steerforth the very next morning after I got home. Why, Daisy, what a rare old bachelor you are here. I showed him over the establishment, not omitting the pantry with no little pride, and he commended it highly. I tell you what, old boy, he added, I shall make quite a townhouse of this place unless you give me notice to quit. Meaning he'll stay with David when he's in town? Unless David says no. This was a delightful hearing. I told him if he waited for that, he would have to wait till doomsday. Meaning if he waited for David to tell him to go, he'd keep on waiting forever. But you shall have some breakfast, said I with my hand on the bell rope. And Mrs. Crupp shall make you some fresh coffee, and I'll toast you some bacon in a bachelor's Dutch oven that I have got here. No, no, said Steerforth. Don't Ring. I can't. I'm going to breakfast with one of these fellows who is at the Piazza Hotel in Covent Garden. But you'll come back for dinner? Said I, I can't. Upon my life, there's nothing I should like better, but I must remain with these two fellows. We are all three off together tomorrow morning. Then bring them here to dinner. I returned. Do you think they would come? Oh, they would come fast enough, said Steerforth, but we should inconvenience you. You had better come and dine with us somewhere. I would not by any means consent to this, for it occurred to me that I really ought to have a little house warming and that there never could be a better opportunity. I had a new pride in my rooms after his approval of them and burned with a desire to develop their utmost resources. I therefore made him promise positively in the names of his two friends, and we appointed six o' clock as the dinner hour. When he was gone, I rang for Mrs. Crupp and acquainted her with my desperate design. Mrs. Crupp said, in the first place, of course, it was well known she couldn't be expected to wait, meaning she can't be their waiter at the table during dinner. But she knew a handy young man who she thought could be prevailed upon to do it, and whose terms would be 5 shillings and what I pleased. I said, certainly we would have him next. Mrs. Crupp said it was clear she couldn't be in two places at once, which I felt to be reasonable, and that a young gal stationed in the pantry with a bedroom candle there never to desist from washing plates, would be indispensable. I said, what would be the expense of this young female? And Mrs. Crupp said she supposed 18 pence would neither make me nor break me. And I said, I suppose not. And that was settled. Then Mrs. Crupp said, now, about the dinner. It was a remarkable instance of want of forethought on the part of the ironmonger who had made Mrs. Crupp's kitchen fireplace, that it was capable of cooking nothing but chops and mashed potatoes. As to a fish kittle, Mrs. Crupp said, well, would I only come and look at the range? She couldn't say fairer than that. Would I come and look at it, as I should not have been much the wiser if I had looked at it, I declined and said, never mind fish. But Mrs. Crupp said, don't say that oysters was in, was not them, so that was settled. Mrs. Crupp then said, what she would recommend would be a pair of hot roast fowls from the pastry cook's, a dish of stewed beef with vegetables from the pastry cook's two little corner things as a raised pie and a dish of kidneys from the pastry cooks, a tart, and if I liked, a shape of jelly from the pastry cooks. This, Mrs. Crupp said, would leave her at full liberty to concentrate her mind on the potatoes and to serve up the cheese and celery as she could wish to see it done. Okay, so basically she's telling him to spend all his money so that she doesn't have to actually cook anything. I acted on Mrs. Krupp's opinion and gave the order at the pastry cook's myself. Walking along the strand afterwards and observing a hard mottled substance in the window of a ham and beef shop which resembled marble but was labelled Mock Turtle, I went in and bought a slab of it, which I have since seen reason to believe would have sufficed for 15 people. This preparation, Mrs. Crupp, after some difficulty, consented to warm up, and it shrunk so much in a liquid state that we found it what Steerforth called rather a tight fit. For four. These preparations happily completed, I bought a little dessert in Covent Garden market and gave a rather extensive order, a retail wine merchant's in the vicinity. When I came home in the afternoon and saw the bottles drawn up in a square on the pantry floor, they looked so numerous, though there were two missing, which made Mrs. Crupp very uncomfortable, meaning Mrs. Crup probably took them, that I was absolutely frightened at them. One of Steerforth's friends was named Granger, and the other Markham. They were both very gay and lively fellows, Granger something older than Steerforth, Markham youthful looking, and I should say not more than 20. I observed that the latter always spoke of himself indefinitely as a man, and seldom or never in the first person singular. A man might get on very well here, Mr. Copperfield, said Markham, meaning himself. It's not a bad situation, said I, and the rooms are really commodious. I hope you have both brought appetites with you, said Steerforth. Upon my honour, returned Markham. Town seems to sharpen a man's appetite. A man is hungry all day long. A man is perpetually eating. Being a little embarrassed at first and feeling much too young to preside, I made Steerforth take the head of the table when dinner was announced and seated myself opposite to him. Everything was very good. We did not spare the wine, and he exerted himself so brilliantly to make the thing pass off well that there was no pause in our festivity. I was not quite such good company during dinner as I could have wished to be, for my chair was opposite the door, and my attention was distracted by observing that the handy young man went out of the room very often and that his shadow always presented itself immediately afterwards on the wall of the entry with a bottle at its mouth. The young gal likewise occasioned me some uneasiness, not so much my neglecting to wash the plates as by breaking them. For being of an inquisitive disposition and unable to confine herself, as her positive instructions were, to the pantry, she was constantly peering in at us and constantly imagining herself detected, in which belief she several times retired upon the plates with which she had carefully paved the floor and did a great deal of destruction. These, however, were small drawbacks and easily forgotten when the cloth was cleared and the dessert put on the table. At which period of the entertainment the handy young man was discovered to be speechless, meaning he's drunk. Giving him private directions to seek the Society of Mrs. Crupp and to remove the young gal to the basement. Also I abandoned myself to enjoyment. I began by being singularly cheerful and light hearted. All sorts of half forgotten things to talk about came rushing into my mind and made me hold forth in a most unwonted manner. Unwanted here means unaccustomed or unusual. So he's being much more talkative and lively than usual. I laughed heartily at my own jokes and everybody else's. Called Steerforth to order for not passing the wine. Made several engagements to go to Oxford. Announced that I meant to have a dinner party exactly like that once a week until further notice. And madly took so much snuff out of Granger's box that I was obliged to go into the pantry and have a private fit of sneezing. 10 minutes long. I went on by passing the wine faster and faster yet and continually starting up with a corkscrew to open more wine long before any was needed. I proposed Steerforth's health. I said he was my dearest friend, the protector of my boyhood and the companion of my prime. I said I was delighted to propose his health. I said I owed him more obligations than I could ever repay and held him in a higher admiration than I could ever express. I finished by saying, I give you Steerforth, God bless him. Hurrah. We gave him three times, three and another, and a good one to finish with, meaning they cheered for him. I broke my glass in going round the table to Shake hands with him. And I said in two words, steerforth, you're the greatest star of my existence. I went on by finding suddenly that somebody was in the middle of a song. Markham was the singer and he sang when the heart of a man is depressed with care. He said when he had sung it, he would give us woman. I took objection to that and I couldn't allow it. I said it was not a respectful way of proposing the toast and I would never permit that toast to be drunk in my house otherwise than as the ladies. I was very high with him, mainly, I think, because I saw Steerforth and Granger laughing at me or at him, or at both of us. He said a man was not to be dictated to. I said a man was. He said a man was not to be insulted. Then I said he was right there, never under my roof, where the lares were sacred. Larrys are like household deities and the laws of hospitality paramount. He said it was no derogation from a man's dignity to confess that I was a devilish good fellow. I instantly proposed his health. Somebody was smoking. We were all smoking. I was smoking and trying to suppress a rising tendency to shudder. Steerforth had made a speech about me, in the course of which I had been affected almost to tears. I returned thanks and hoped the present company would dine with me to morrow and the day after each day at five o', clock, that we might enjoy the pleasures of conversation and society through a long evening. I felt called upon to propose an individual. I would give them my aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood, the best of her sex. Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his forehead against the cool stone of the parapet and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as Copperfield and saying, why, did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn't do it. Now somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the looking glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking glass. My eyes had a vacant appearance and my hair, only my hair, nothing else looked drunk. Somebody said to me, let's go out to the theatre, Copperfield. There was no bedroom before me, but again the jingling table covered with glasses, the lamp. Granger on my right hand, Markham on my left, and Steerforth opposite, all sitting in a mist and a long way off the theater, to be sure. The very thing. Come along. But they must excuse me if I saw everybody out first and turned the lamp off in case of fire. Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was gone. I was feeling for it in the window curtains when Steerforth, laughing, took me by the arm and led me out. We went downstairs, one behind another. Near the bottom somebody fell and rolled down. Somebody else said it was Copperfield. I was angry at that false report until finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation for it. A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in the streets. There was an indistinct talk of its being wet. I considered it frosty. Steerforth dusted me under a lamp post and put my hat into shape, which somebody produced from somewhere in a most extraordinary manner, for I hadn't had it on before. Steerforth then said, you're all right, Copperfield, are you not? And I told him, never better. A man sitting in a pigeon hole place looked out of the fog and took money from somebody, inquiring if I was one of the gentlemen paid for, and appearing rather doubtful, as I remember in the glimpse I had of him, whether to take the money for me or not. Shortly afterwards we were very high up in a very hot theatre, looking down into a large pit that seemed to me to smoke. The people with whom it was crammed were so indistinct. There was a great stage, too, looking very clean and smooth after the streets, and there were people upon it talking about something or other, but not at all intelligibly. There was an abundance of bright lights and there was music, and there were ladies down in the boxes, and I don't know what more. The whole building looked to me as if it were learning to swim. It conducted itself in such an unaccountable manner when I tried to steady it on somebody's motion. We resolved to go downstairs to the dress boxes where the ladies were. A gentleman, lounging full dressed on a sofa with an opera glass in his hand passed before my view and also my own figure at full length in a glass. Then I was being ushered into one of these boxes and found myself saying something as I sat down, and people about me crying silence to somebody, and ladies casting indignant glances at me and what? Yes, Agnes, sitting on the seat before me in the same box with a lady and gentleman beside her whom I didn't know. I see her face now better than I did then, I dare say, with its indelible look of regret and wonder turned upon me. Agnes, I said thickly. Lor bless M. Agnes. Hush, pray, she answered. I could not conceive why you disturb the company. Look at the stage. I tried on her injunction to fix it and to hear something of what was going on there, but quite in vain. I looked at her again by and by, and saw her shrink into her corner and put her gloved hand to her forehead. Agnes, I said, I'm afraid you're not well. Yes, yes, don't mind me, Trotwood, she returned. Listen, are you going away soon? I'm going away soon, I repeated. Yes. I had a stupid intention of replying that I was going to wait to hand her downstairs. I suppose I expressed it somehow, for after she had looked at me attentively for a little while, she appeared to understand and replied in a low tone, I know you will do as I ask you, if I tell you I am very earnest in it. Go away now, Trotwood, for my sake, and ask your friends to take you home. She had so far improved me for the time that, though I was angry with her, I felt ashamed, and with a short grr. Which I intended for good night, got up and went away. They followed, and I stepped at once out of the box door into my bedroom, where only Steerforth was with me, helping me to undress, and where I was, by turns telling him that Agnes was my sister and adjuring him to bring the corkscrew that I might open another bott of wine. How somebody lying in my bed lay saying and doing all this over again at cross purposes, in a feverish dream all night, the bed a rocking sea that was never still. How, as that somebody slowly settled down into myself, did I begin to parch and feel as if my outer covering of skin were a hard board? My tongue, the bottom of an empty kettle furred with long service and burning up over a slow fire. The palms of my hands, hot plates of metal which no ice could cool. But the agony of mind, the remorse and shame I felt when I became conscious next day. My horror of having committed a thousand offences I had forgotten and which nothing could ever expiate. My recollection of that indelible look which Agnes had given me. The torturing impossibility of communicating with her, not knowing, beast that I was, how she came to be in London or where she stayed. My disgust of the very sight of the room where the revel had been held, my racking head, the smell of smoke, the sight of glasses, the impossibility of going out or even getting up. Oh, what a day it was. Oh, what an evening when I sat down by my fire to a basin of mutton broth, dimpled all over with fat, and thought I was going the way of my predecessor and should succeed to his dismal story, as well as to his chambers, and had half a mind to rush express to Dover and reveal all. What an evening, when Mrs. Crupp, coming in to take away the broth basin, produced one kidney on a cheese plate as the entire remains of yesterday's feast, and I was really inclined to fall upon her nankeen breast and say in heartfelt penitence, oh, Mrs. Crupp, Mrs. Crupp, never mind the broken meats, I am very miserable. Only that I doubted, even at that pass, if Mrs. Crupp were quite the sort of woman to confide in. Thank you so much for listening. I'd love to know what you thought of the chapters. Is there anything you'd like me to clarify? Did something particularly interest you? Please go to my website, faithkmoore.com click on contact and send me your questions and thoughts. Or you can click on the link in the Show Notes to contact me. I'll feature one or two of your entries at the start of the next episode. Speaking of links, don't forget to take a look at the other links in the Show Notes. You can learn more about me, check out our merch store, or become a member of the Storytime for Grown Ups online community. Before I go, I'd like to ask a quick favor. This is an independent podcast. It's produced, recorded and marketed by me, so I need your help. Spread the word about the show by posting about it on social media or texting a link to your friends. Subscribe, tap those five stars and leave a positive review wherever you're listening. If you are able to support the show financially, there's a link in the Show Notes to make a donation. I would really, really appreciate it. Alright everyone, story time is over. To be continued. Sam.