“Me handsome, Davy!” said Peggotty. “Lawk, no, my dear! But what put marriage in your head?”
“I don’t know!—You mustn’t marry more than one person at a time, may you, Peggotty?”
“Certainly not,” says Peggotty, with the promptest decision.
“But if you marry a person, and the person dies, why then you may marry another person, mayn’t you, Peggotty?”
“You MAY,” says Peggotty, “if you choose, my dear. That’s a matter of opinion.”
“But what is your opinion, Peggotty?” said I.
I asked her, and looked curiously at her, because she looked so curiously at me.
“My opinion is,” said Peggotty, taking her eyes from me, after a little indecision and going on with her work, “that I never was married myself, Master Davy, and that I don’t expect to be. That’s all I know about the subject.”
“You an’t cross, I suppose, Peggotty, are you?” said I, after sitting quiet for a minute.
I really thought she was, she had been so short with me; but I was quite mistaken: for she laid aside her work, (which was a stocking of her own,) and opening her arms wide, took my curly head within them, and gave it a good squeeze. I know it was a good squeeze, because, being very plump, whenever she made any little exertion after she was dressed, some of the buttons on the back of her gown flew off. And I recollect two bursting to the opposite side of the parlor, while she was hugging me.