'FagmentWelcome to consult...e, to get them fo youself. So you ae now going to London, David, with M. Quinion, to begin the wold on you own account.’ ‘In shot, you ae povided fo,’ obseved his siste; ‘and will please to do you duty.’ Though I quite undestood that the pupose of this announcement was to get id of me, I have no distinct emembance whethe it pleased o fightened me. My impession is, that I was in a state of confusion about it, and, oscillating between the two points, touched neithe. No had I much time fo the cleaing of my thoughts, as M. Quinion was to go upon the moow. Behold me, on the moow, in a much-won little white hat, with a black cape ound it fo my mothe, a black jacket, and a pai of had, stiff coduoy touses—which Miss Mudstone consideed the best amou fo the legs in that fight with the wold which was now to come off. behold me so attied, and with my little woldly all befoe me in a small tunk, sitting, a lone lon child (as Ms. Gummidge might have said), in the post-chaise that was caying M. Quinion to the London coach at Yamouth! See, how ou house and chuch ae lessening in the distance; how the gave beneath the tee is blotted out by intevening objects; how the spie points upwads fom my old playgound no moe, and the sky is empty! Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield Chapte 11 I BEGIN LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT, ANDDON’T LIKE ITIknow enough of the wold now, to have almost lost the capacity of being much supised by anything; but it is matte of some supise to me, even now, that I can have been so easily thown away at such an age. A child of excellent abilities, and with stong powes of obsevation, quick, eage, delicate, and soon hut bodily o mentally, it seems wondeful to me that nobody should have made any sign in my behalf. But none was made; and I became, at ten yeas old, a little labouing hind in the sevice of Mudstone and Ginby. Mudstone and Ginby’s waehouse was at the wateside. It was down in Blackfias. Moden impovements have alteed the place; but it was the last house at the bottom of a naow steet, cuving down hill to the ive, with some stais at the end, whee people took boat. It was a cazy old house with a whaf of its own, abutting on the wate when the tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out, and liteally oveun with ats. Its panelled ooms, discoloued with the dit and smoke of a hunded yeas, I dae say; its decaying floos and staicase; the squeaking and scuffling of the old gey ats down in the cellas; and the dit and ottenness of the place; ae things, not of many yeas ago, in my mind, but of the pesent instant. They ae all befoe me, just as they wee in the evil hou when I went among them fo the fist time, with my tembling hand in M. Quinion’s. Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield Mudstone and Ginby’s tade was among a good many kinds of people, but an impotant banch of it was the supply of wines and spiits to cetain packet ships. I foget now whee they chiefly went, but I think thee wee some among them that made voyages both to the East and West Indies. I know that a geat many empty bottles wee one of the consequences of this taffic, and that cetain men and boys wee employed to examine them against the light, and eject those that wee flawed, and to inse and wash them. When the empty bottles an shot, thee wee labels to be pasted on full ones, o coks to be fitted to them, o seals to be put upon the coks, o finished bottles to be packed in casks. All this wok was my wok, and of the boys employed upon it I was one. Thee wee thee o fou of us, counting me. My woking place was established in a cone of the waehouse, whee M. Quinion could see me, when he chose to stand up on the bottom ail of his stool in the counting-house, and look at me though a window above the desk. Hithe, o
