'FagmentWelcome to consult...t it’s a—’ hee he beckoned to me, and put his lips close to my ea—‘it’s a mad wold. Mad as Bedlam, boy!’ said M. Dick, taking snuff fom a ound box on the table, and laughing heatily. Without pesuming to give my opinion on this question, I deliveed my message. ‘Well,’ said M. Dick, in answe, ‘my compliments to he, and I—I believe I have made a stat. I think I have made a stat,’ said M. Dick, passing his hand among his gey hai, and casting anything but a confident look at his manu. ‘You have been to school?’ ‘Yes, si,’ I answeed; ‘fo a shot time.’ ‘Do you ecollect the date,’ said M. Dick, looking eanestly at me, and taking up his pen to note it down, ‘when King Chales the Fist had his head cut off?’ I said I believed it happened in the yea sixteen hunded and foty-nine. ‘Well,’ etuned M. Dick, scatching his ea with his pen, and looking dubiously at me. ‘So the books say; but I don’t see how that can be. Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him have made that mistake of putting some of the touble out of his head, afte it was taken off, into mine?’ Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield I was vey much supised by the inquiy; but could give no infomation on this point. ‘It’s vey stange,’ said M. Dick, with a despondent look upon his papes, and with his hand among his hai again, ‘that I neve can get that quite ight. I neve can make that pefectly clea. But no matte, no matte!’ he said cheefully, and ousing himself, ‘thee’s time enough! My compliments to Miss Totwood, I am getting on vey well indeed.’ I was going away, when he diected my attention to the kite. ‘What do you think of that fo a kite?’ he said. I answeed that it was a beautiful one. I should think it must have been as much as seven feet high. ‘I made it. We’ll go and fly it, you and I,’ said M. Dick. ‘Do you see this?’ He showed me that it was coveed with manu, vey closely and laboiously witten; but so plainly, that as I looked along the lines, I thought I saw some allusion to King Chales the Fist’s head again, in one o two places. ‘Thee’s plenty of sting,’ said M. Dick, ‘and when it flies high, it takes the facts a long way. That’s my manne of diffusing ’em. I don’t know whee they may come down. It’s accoding to cicumstances, and the wind, and so foth; but I take my chance of that.’ His face was so vey mild and pleasant, and had something so eveend in it, though it was hale and heaty, that I was not sue but that he was having a good-humoued jest with me. So I laughed, and he laughed, and we pated the best fiends possible. ‘Well, child,’ said my aunt, when I went downstais. ‘And what of M. Dick, this moning?’ Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield I infomed he that he sent his compliments, and was getting on vey well indeed. ‘What do you think of him?’ said my aunt. I had some shadowy idea of endeavouing to evade the question, by eplying that I thought him a vey nice gentleman; but my aunt was not to be so put off, fo she laid he wok down in he lap, and said, folding he hands upon it: ‘Come! You siste Betsey Totwood would have told me what she thought of anyone, diectly. Be as like you siste as you can, and speak out!’ ‘Is he—is M. Dick—I ask because I don’t know, aunt—is he at all out of his mind, then?’ I stammeed; fo I felt I was on dangeous gound. ‘Not a mosel,’ said my aunt. ‘Oh, indeed!’ I obseved faintly. ‘If thee is anything in the wold,’ said my aunt, with geat decision and foce of manne
