We had our signs, too, and they was hundreds in number. Sometimes she
would sit looking at me and considering hard how to communicate with me
about something fresh,--how to ask me what she wanted explained,--and
then she was (or I thought she was; what does it signify?) so like my
child with those years added to her, that I half-believed it was herself,
trying to tell me where she had been to up in the skies, and what she had
seen since that unhappy night when she flied away. She had a pretty
face, and now that there was no one to drag at her bright dark hair, and
it was all in order, there was a something touching in her looks that
made the cart most peaceful and most quiet, though not at all melancholy.
[N.B. In the Cheap Jack patter, we generally sound it lemonjolly, and it
gets a laugh.]
The way she learnt to understand any look of mine was truly surprising.
When I sold of a night, she would sit in the cart unseen by them outside,
and would give a eager look into my eyes when I looked in, and would hand
me straight the precise article or articles I wanted. And then she would
clap her hands, and laugh for joy. And as for me, seeing her so bright,
and remembering what she was when I first lighted on her, starved and
beaten and ragged, leaning asleep against the muddy cart-wheel, it give
me such heart that I gained a greater heighth of reputation than ever,
and I put Pickleson down (by the name of Mim's Travelling Giant otherwise
Pickleson) for a fypunnote in my will.
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