Later, when Mr. Peggotty-Bull came home to tea, this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge-Gladstone was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched and miserable condition. Her knitting—a nondescript piece of work—seemed to be a regular Egyptian labyrinth for complicated tangle, and a very Penelope’s web for inconclusiveness and power of alternate weaving and unweaving. “Cheer up, Grand Mawther!” cried Mr. Peggotty-Bull. (Mr. Peggotty meant Grand Old Girl.)
Mrs. Gummidge did not appear to be able to cheer up. She dropped her knitting with a gesture of despair.
“What’s amiss, Dame?” said Mr. Peggotty-Bull.
“Everythink!” returned Mrs. Gummidge. “Including you,” she continued, dolefully. “You’ve a willing mind to face the troubles before you, but you ain’t ready. I’m sorry it should be along o’ me that you’re so unready.”
“Along o’ you? It ain’t along o’ you!” said Mr. Peggotty, good naturedly, and perhaps without quite meaning it. “Don’t ye believe a bit on it,”
“Yes, yes, it is!” cried Mrs. Gummidge-Gladstone. “I know what I am. I know that I am a much-crossed cretur’, and not only that everythink goes contrairy with me, but that I go contrairy with everybody. Yes, yes. I feel more than other people do, and I show it more. It’s my misfortun.”
One really couldn’t help thinking that the misfortune extended to some other Members of that House, besides Mrs. Gummidge.
“I ain’t what I could wish myself to be,” said Mrs. Gummidge. “I am far from it. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrairy. I feel my troubles, and they makes me contrairy. I wish I didn’t feel them, but I do. I wish I could be harden’d to ’em, but I ain’t. If I felt less, I could do more. I make the House uncomfortable. I don’t wonder at it. It’s far from right that I should do it. I’d better leave the House. I’m a much-crossed cretur’, and had better not make myself contrairy here. If thinks must go contrairy with me, and I must go contrairy myself, let me go contrairy alone at my own place. I’d better leave the House, and retire and be a riddance.”
Mr. Peggotty-Bull, whose countenance had exhibited the mixed traces of many feelings, including puzzlement, impatience, and profound sympathy, looked upward at a portrait of an ancient, but buck-like and somewhat Hebraic personage upon the wall, and, shaking his head, with a lively expression of those mixed sentiments still animating his face, said, in a solemn whisper,
“She’s been thinking of the Old ’Un!”