David Copperfield

The car­rier’s horse was the lazi­est horse in the world,

I went out to the Com­mons, I charged Mrs. Crupp with par­tic­u­lar dir­ec­tions to leave the win­dows open, that my sit­ting room might be aired, and purged of his pres­ence.

I was much im­pressed by the ex­tremely com­fort­able and sat­is­fied man­ner in which Mr. Wa­ter­brook de­livered him­self of this little word “Yes,” every now and then. There was won­der­ful ex­pres­sion in it.

Mrs. Henry Spiker was this lady’s name; and her hus­band was there too: so cold a man, that his head, in­stead of be­ing grey, seemed to be sprinkled with hoar­frost.

Mrs. Wa­ter­brook, who was a large lady—or who wore a large dress: I don’t ex­actly know which, for I don’t know which was dress and which was lady—came sail­ing in.

Near the bot­tom, some­body fell, and rolled down. Some­body else said it was Cop­per­field. I was angry at that false re­port, un­til, find­ing my­self on my back in the pas­sage, I began to think there might be some found­a­tion for it.

That was I too. I was very pale in the look­ing-glass; my eyes had a va­cant ap­pear­ance; and my hair—only my hair, noth­ing else—looked drunk.

in the curve of the horse­shoe, was an old gen­tle­man, whom, if I had seen him in an avi­ary, I should cer­tainly have taken for an owl,

“I wish with all my soul I had been bet­ter guided!” he ex­claimed. “I wish with all my soul I could guide my­self bet­ter!”

I was so fresh and lively my­self, in the pleas­ure of be­ing there, that I could have stopped the people in the streets and shaken hands with them.