“Though they are that sort of people that you mentioned,” I returned.
“Aha! What! you recollect my skirmishes with Rosa, do you?” he exclaimed with a quick look. “Confound the girl, I am half afraid of her. She’s like a goblin to me. But never mind her. Now what are you going to do? You are going to see your nurse, I suppose?”
“Why, yes,” I said, “I must see Peggotty first of all.”
“Well,” replied Steerforth, looking at his watch. “Suppose I deliver you up to be cried over for a couple of hours. Is that long enough?”
I answered, laughing, that I thought we might get through it in that time, but that he must come also; for he would find that his renown had preceded him, and that he was almost as great a personage as I was.
“I’ll come anywhere you like,” said Steerforth, “or do anything you like. Tell me where to come to; and in two hours I’ll produce myself in any state you please, sentimental or comical.”
I gave him minute directions for finding the residence of Mr. Barkis, carrier to Blunderstone and elsewhere, and, on this understanding, went out alone. There was a sharp bracing air; the ground was dry; the sea was crisp and clear; the sun was diffusing abundance of light, if not much warmth; and everything was fresh and lively. I was so fresh and lively myself, in the pleasure of being there, that I could have stopped the people in the streets and shaken hands with them.
The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children, always do, I believe, when we go back to them. But I had forgotten nothing in them, and found nothing changed, until I came to Mr. Omer’s shop. Omer and Joram was now written up, where Omer used to be; but the inscription, Draper, Tailor, Haberdasher, Funeral Furnisher, &c., remained as it was.
My footsteps seemed to tend so naturally to the shop-door, after I had read these words from over the way, that I went across the road and looked in. There was a pretty woman at the back of the shop, dancing a little child in her arms, while another little fellow clung to her apron. I had no difficulty in recognising either Minnie or Minnie’s children. The glass-door of the parlor was not open; but in the workshop across the yard I could faintly hear the old tune playing, as if it had never left off.
“Is Mr. Omer at home?” said I, entering. “I should like to see him, for a moment, if he is.”