The gentleman was serious immediately, and looked at me, I thought, as if he would entreat me to say nothing about the window.
“Mr. Dick,” said my aunt, “you have heard me mention David Copperfield? Now don’t pretend not to have a memory, because you and I know better.”
“David Copperfield?” said Mr. Dick, who did not appear to me to remember much about it. “David Copperfield? Oh yes, to be sure. David, certainly.”
“Well,” said my aunt, “this is his boy—his son. He would be as like his father as it’s possible to be, if he was not so like his mother, too.”
“His son?” said Mr. Dick. “David’s son? Indeed!”
“Yes,” pursued my aunt, “and he has done a pretty piece of business. He has run away. Ah! His sister, Betsey Trotwood, never would have run away.” My aunt shook her head firmly, confident in the character and behaviour of the girl who never was born.
“Oh! you think she wouldn’t have run away?” said Mr. Dick.
“Bless and save the man,” exclaimed my aunt, sharply, “how he talks! Don’t I know she wouldn’t? She would have lived with her god-mother, and we should have been devoted to one another. Where, in the name of wonder, should his sister, Betsey Trotwood, have run from, or to?”
“Nowhere,” said Mr. Dick.
“Well then,” returned my aunt, softened by the reply, “how can you pretend to be wool-gathering, Dick, when you are as sharp as a surgeon’s lancet? Now, here you see young David Copperfield, and the question I put to you is, what shall I do with him?”