Here she was, in the tiled kitchen, cooking dinner! The moment I knocked at the door she opened it, and asked me what I pleased to want. I looked at her with a smile, but she gave me no smile in return. I had never ceased to write to her, but it must have been seven years since we had met.
“Is Mr. Barkis at home, ma’am?” I said, feigning to speak roughly to her.
“He’s at home, sir,” returned Peggotty, “but he’s bad abed with the rheumatics.”
“Don’t he go over to Blunderstone now?” I asked.
“When he’s well, he do,” she answered.
“Do you ever go there, Mrs. Barkis?”
She looked at me more attentively, and I noticed a quick movement of her hands towards each other.
“Because I want to ask a question about a house there, that they call the—what is it?—the Rookery,” said I.
She took a step backward, and put out her hands in an undecided frightened way, as if to keep me off.
“Peggotty!” I cried to her.