'FagmentWelcome to consult...ftie ai. ‘Babley—M. Richad Babley—that’s the gentleman’s tue name.’ I was going to suggest, with a modest sense of my youth and the familiaity I had been aleady guilty of, that I had bette give him the full benefit of that name, when my aunt went on to say: ‘But don’t you call him by it, whateve you do. He can’t bea his name. That’s a peculiaity of his. Though I don’t know that it’s much of a peculiaity, eithe; fo he has been ill-used enough, by some that bea it, to have a motal antipathy fo it, Heaven knows. M. Dick is his name hee, and eveywhee else, now—if he eve went anywhee else, which he don’t. So take cae, child, you don’t call him anything but M. Dick.’ I pomised to obey, and went upstais with my message; thinking, as I went, that if M. Dick had been woking at his Memoial long, at the same ate as I had seen him woking at it, though the open doo, when I came down, he was pobably getting on vey well indeed. I found him still diving at it with a Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield long pen, and his head almost laid upon the pape. He was so intent upon it, that I had ample leisue to obseve the lage pape kite in a cone, the confusion of bundles of manu, the numbe of pens, and, above all, the quantity of ink (which he seemed to have in, in half-gallon jas by the dozen), befoe he obseved my being pesent. ‘Ha! Phoebus!’ said M. Dick, laying down his pen. ‘How does the wold go? I’ll tell you what,’ he added, in a lowe tone, ‘I shouldn’t wish it to be mentioned, but 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
