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The Micawber family were lodged in a little, dirty, tumble-down public-house, which in those days was close to the stairs, and whose protruding wooden rooms overhung the river. The family, as emigrants, being objects of some interest in and about Hungerford, attracted so many beholders, that we were glad to take refuge in their room. It was one of the wooden chambers upstairs, with the tide flowing underneath. My aunt and Agnes were there, busily making some little extra comforts, in the way of dress, for the children. Peggotty was quietly assisting, with the old insensible work-box, yard-measure, and bit of wax-candle before her, that had now outlived so much.

It was not easy to answer her inquiries; still less to whisper Mr. Peggotty, when Mr. Micawber brought him in, that I had given the letter, and all was well. But I did both, and made them happy. If I showed any trace of what I felt, my own sorrows were sufficient to account for it.

‘And when does the ship sail, Mr. Micawber?’ asked my aunt.

Mr. Micawber considered it necessary to prepare either my aunt or his wife, by degrees, and said, sooner than he had expected yesterday.

‘The boat brought you word, I suppose?’ said my aunt.

‘It did, ma’am,’ he returned.

‘Well?’ said my aunt. ‘And she sails—’

‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘I am informed that we must positively be on board before seven tomorrow morning.’

‘Heyday!’ said my aunt, ‘that’s soon. Is it a sea-going fact, Mr. Peggotty?’ ‘’Tis so, ma’am. She’ll drop down the river with that theer tide. If Mas’r Davy and my sister comes aboard at Gravesen’, arternoon o’ next day, they’ll see the last on us.’

‘And that we shall do,’ said I, ‘be sure!’

‘Until then, and until we are at sea,’ observed Mr. Micawber, with a glance of intelligence at me, ‘Mr. Peggotty and myself will constantly keep a double look-out together, on our goods and chattels. Emma, my love,’ said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat in his magnificent way, ‘my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles is so obliging as to solicit, in my ear, that he should have the privilege of ordering the ingredients necessary to the composition of a moderate portion of that Beverage which is peculiarly associated, in our minds, with the Roast Beef of Old England. I allude to—in short, Punch. Under ordinary circumstances, I should scruple to entreat the indulgence of Miss Trotwood and Miss Wickfield, but-’

‘I can only say for myself,’ said my aunt, ‘that I will drink all happiness and success to you, Mr. Micawber, with the utmost pleasure.’

‘And I too!’ said Agnes, with a smile.

Mr. Micawber immediately descended to the bar, where he appeared to be quite at home; and in due time returned with a steaming jug. I could not but observe that he had been peeling the lemons with his own clasp-knife, which, as became the knife of a practical settler, was about a foot long; and which he wiped, not wholly without ostentation, on the sleeve of his coat. Mrs. Micawber and the two elder members of the family I now found to be provided with similar formidable instruments, while every child had its own wooden spoon attached to its body by a strong line. In a similar anticipation of life afloat, and in the Bush, Mr. Micawber, instead of helping Mrs. Micawber and his eldest son and daughter to punch, in wine-glasses, which he might easily have done, for there was a shelf-full in the room, served it out to them in a series of villainous little tin pots; and I never saw him enjoy anything so much as drinking out of his own particular pint pot, and putting it in his pocket at the close of the evening.

‘The luxuries of the old country,’ said Mr. Micawber, with an intense satisfaction in their renouncement, ‘we abandon. The denizens of the forest cannot, of course, expect to participate in the refinements of the land of the Free.’

Here, a boy came in to say that Mr. Micawber was wanted downstairs.

‘I have a presentiment,’ said Mrs. Micawber, setting down her tin pot, ‘that it is a member of my family!’

‘If so, my dear,’ observed Mr. Micawber, with his usual suddenness of warmth on that subject, ‘as the member of your family—whoever he, she, or it, may be—has kept us waiting for a considerable period, perhaps the Member may now wait MY convenience.’

‘Micawber,’ said his wife, in a low tone, ‘at such a time as this—’

‘“It is not meet,”’ said Mr. Micawber, rising, ‘“that every nice offence should bear its comment!” Emma, I stand reproved.’

‘The loss, Micawber,’ observed his wife, ‘has been my family’s, not yours. If my family are at length sensible of the deprivation to which their own conduct has, in the past, exposed them, and now desire to extend the hand of fellowship, let it not be repulsed.’

‘My dear,’ he returned, ‘so be it!’

‘If not for their sakes; for mine, Micawber,’ said his wife.

‘Emma,’ he returned, ‘that view of the question is, at such a moment, irresistible. I cannot, even now, distinctly pledge myself to fall upon your family’s neck; but the member of your family, who is now in attendance, shall have no genial warmth frozen by me.’

Mr. Micawber withdrew, and was absent some little time; in the course of which Mrs. Micawber was not wholly free from an apprehension that words might have arisen between him and the Member. At length the same boy reappeared, and presented me with a note written in pencil, and headed, in a legal manner, ‘Heep v. Micawber’. From this document, I learned that Mr. Micawber being again arrested, ‘Was in a final paroxysm of despair; and that he begged me to send him his knife and pint pot, by bearer, as they might prove serviceable during the brief remainder of his existence, in jail. He also requested, as a last act of friendship, that I would see his family to the Parish Workhouse, and forget that such a Being ever lived.

Of course I answered this note by going down with the boy to pay the money, where I found Mr. Micawber sitting in a corner, looking darkly at the Sheriff ‘s Officer who had effected the capture. On his release, he embraced me with the utmost fervour; and made an entry of the transaction in his pocket-book—being very particular, I recollect, about a halfpenny I inadvertently omitted from my statement of the total.