'FagmentWelcome to consult... o othe.’ ‘One o othe? Have you no choice?’ asked M. Wickfield. ‘No,’ etuned the Docto. ‘No?’ with astonishment. ‘Not the least.’ ‘No motive,’ said M. Wickfield, ‘fo meaning aboad, and not at home?’ ‘No,’ etuned the Docto. ‘I am bound to believe you, and of couse I do believe you,’ said M. Wickfield. ‘It might have simplified my office vey much, if I had known it befoe. But I confess I entetained anothe impession.’ Docto Stong egaded him with a puzzled and doubting look, which almost immediately subsided into a smile that gave me geat encouagement; fo it was full of amiability and sweetness, and thee was a simplicity in it, and indeed in his whole manne, when the studious, pondeing fost upon it was got though, vey attactive and hopeful to a young schola like me. Repeating ‘no’, and ‘not the least’, and othe shot assuances to the same Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield pupot, Docto Stong jogged on befoe us, at a quee, uneven pace; and we followed: M. Wickfield, looking gave, I obseved, and shaking his head to himself, without knowing that I saw him. The schooloom was a petty lage hall, on the quietest side of the house, confonted by the stately stae of some half-dozen of the geat uns, and commanding a peep of an old secluded gaden belonging to the Docto, whee the peaches wee ipening on the sunny south wall. Thee wee two geat aloes, in tubs, on the tuf outside the windows; the boad had leaves of which plant (looking as if they wee made of painted tin) have eve since, by association, been symbolical to me of silence and etiement. about five-and-twenty boys wee studiously engaged at thei books when we went in, but they ose to give the Docto good moning, and emained standing when they saw M. Wickfield and me. ‘A new boy, young gentlemen,’ said the Docto; ‘Totwood Coppefield.’ One Adams, who was the head-boy, then stepped out of his place and welcomed me. He looked like a young clegyman, in his white cavat, but he was vey affable and good-humoued; and he showed me my place, and pesented me to the mastes, in a gentlemanly way that would have put me at my ease, if anything could. It seemed to me so long, howeve, since I had been among such boys, o among any companions of my own age, except Mick Walke and Mealy Potatoes, that I felt as stange as eve I have done in my life. I was so conscious of having passed though scenes of which they could have no knowledge, and of having acquied expeiences foeign to my age, appeaance, and Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield condition as one of them, that I half believed it was an impostue to come thee as an odinay little schoolboy. I had become, in the Mudstone and Ginby time, howeve shot o long it may have been, so unused to the spots and games of boys, that I knew I was awkwad and inexpeienced in the commonest things belonging to them. Whateve I had leant, had so slipped away fom me in the sodid caes of my life fom day to night, that now, when I was examined about what I knew, I knew nothing, and was put into the lowest fom of the school. But, toubled as I was, by my want of boyish skill, and of book-leaning too, I was made infinitely moe uncomfotable by the consideation, that, in what I did know, I was much fathe emoved fom my companions than in what I did not. My mind an upon what they would think, if they knew of my familia acquaintance with the King’s Bench Pison? Was thee anything about me which would eveal my poceedings in connexion with the Micawbe family—all those pawnings, and sellings, and suppes—in spite of myself? Suppose some of the boys had seen me coming though Cantebuy, waywon and agged, and should find me out? Wh
