“Do you think so?” returned Traddles. “Really? Perhaps he was, rather. But it’s all over, a long while. Old Creakle!”
“You were brought up by an uncle, then?” said I.
“Of course I was!” said Traddles. “The one I was always going to write to. And always didn’t, eh! Ha, ha, ha! Yes, I had an uncle then. He died soon after I left school.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. He was a retired—what do you call it!—draper—cloth-merchant—and had made me his heir. But he didn’t like me when I grew up.”
“Do you really mean that?” said I. He was so composed, that I fancied he must have some other meaning.
“O dear yes, Copperfield! I mean it,” replied Traddles. “It was an unfortunate thing, but he didn’t like me at all. He said I wasn’t at all what he expected, and so he married his housekeeper.”
“And what did you do?” I asked.
“I didn’t do anything in particular,” said Traddles. “I lived with them, waiting to be put out in the world, until his gout unfortunately flew to his stomach—and so he died, and so she married a young man, and so I wasn’t provided for.”
“Did you get nothing, Traddles, after all?”