For a time my aunt was deep in thought. Then she replied:
"Trot, my child, if I have any object in life, it is to provide for your being a good, sensible, and happy man. I am bent upon it. It's in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it has some influence upon the present. Perhaps I might have been better friends with your father and mother. When you came to me, a little runaway boy, perhaps I thought so. From that time until now, Trot, you have ever been a credit to me, and a pride and pleasure. I have no other claim upon my means,—and you are my adopted child. Only be a loving child to me in my old age, and bear with my whims and fancies, and you will do more for an old woman whose prime of life was not so happy as it might have been, than ever that old woman did for you."
It was the first time I had heard my aunt refer to her past history. Her quiet way of doing it would have exalted her in my respect and affection, if anything could.
"All is agreed and understood between us now, Trot," she said, "and we need talk of this no more. Give me a kiss, and we'll go to the Commons in the morning."
And accordingly at noon the next day we made our way to Doctors' Commons, interviewed Mr. Spenlow, of the firm of Spenlow and Jorkins, and I was accepted on a month's probation as an articled clerk. Mr. Spenlow then conducted me through the Court, that I might see what sort of a place it was. Then my aunt and I set off in search of lodgings for me, and before night I was the proud and happy owner of the key to a little set of chambers in the Adelphi, conveniently situated near the Court, and to my taste in all ways. Seeing how enraptured I was with them, my aunt took them for a month, with the privilege of a year, made arrangements with the landlady about meals and linen, and I was to take possession in two days; during which time I saw Aunt Betsey safely started on her homeward journey towards Dover, dreading to leave me, but exulting in the coming discomfiture of the vagrant donkeys.
It was a wonderfully fine thing to have that lofty castle to myself, and when I had taken possession and shut my outer door, I felt like Robinson Crusoe, when he had got within his fortification, and pulled his ladder up after him. I felt rich, powerful, old, and important, and when I walked out about town, with the keys of my house in my pocket, and able to ask any fellow to come home with me, without giving anybody any inconvenience, I became a quite different personage than ever heretofore.
Whatever there was of happiness or of sorrow, of success or of failure, in my later life, does not belong on these pages. The identity of the child, and of the boy, David Copperfield is now forever merged in the personality of—Trotwood Copperfield, Esquire, householder and Man.