2012年4月7日星期六
to consider this communication strictly private
'I entreat Mr. Traddles to bear with me in entering into these details. Without them, Mr. T. would indeed find it difficult to form the faintest conception
of my heart-rending situation.
'May I now venture to confide to Mr. T. the purport of my letter? Will he now allow me to throw myself on his friendly consideration? Oh yes, for I know his
heart!
'The quick eye of affection is not easily blinded, when of the female sex. Mr. Micawber is going to London. Though he studiously concealed his hand, this
morning before breakfast, in writing the direction-card which he attached to the little brown valise of happier days, the eagle-glance of matrimonial anxiety
detected, d, o, n, distinctly traced. The West-End destination of the coach, is the Golden Cross. Dare I fervently implore Mr. T. to see my misguided
husband, and to reason with him? Dare I ask Mr. T. to endeavour to step in between Mr. Micawber and his agonized family? Oh no, for that would be too much!
'If Mr. Copperfield should yet remember one unknown to fame, will Mr. T. take charge of my unalterable regards and similar entreaties? In any case, he will
have the benevolence to consider this communication strictly private, and on no account whatever to be alluded to, however distantly, in the presence of Mr.
Micawber. If Mr. T. should ever reply to it (which I cannot but feel to be most improbable), a letter addressed to M. E., Post Office, Canterbury, will be
fraught with less painful consequences than any addressed immediately to one, who subscribes herself, in extreme distress,
'Mr. Thomas Traddles's respectful friend and suppliant,
'EMMA MICAWBER.'
'What do you think of that letter?' said Traddles, casting his eyes upon me, when I had read it twice.
'What do you think of the other?' said I. For he was still reading it with knitted brows.
'I think that the two together, Copperfield,' replied Traddles, 'mean more than Mr. and Mrs. Micawber usually mean in their correspondence - but I don't know
what. They are both written in good faith, I have no doubt, and without any collusion. Poor thing!' he was now alluding to Mrs. Micawber's letter, and we
were standing side by side comparing the two; 'it will be a charity to write to her, at all events, and tell her that we will not fail to see Mr. Micawber.'
I acceded to this the more readily, because I now reproached myself with having treated her former letter rather lightly. It had set me thinking a good deal
at the time, as I have mentioned in its place; but my absorption in my own affairs, my experience of the family, and my hearing nothing more, had gradually
ended in my dismissing the subject. I had often thought of the Micawbers, but chiefly to wonder what 'pecuniary liabilities' they were establishing in
Canterbury, and to recall how shy Mr. Micawber was of me when he became clerk to Uriah Heep.
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