You understand! I couldn't do it!' 'I quite understand,' said Steerforth.
'I know you do, sir,' returned Mr.Peggotty, 'and thankee again.

Mas'r Davy, he can remember what she was; you may judge for your own self what she is; but neither of you can't fully know what she has been, is, and will be, to my loving art.

I am rough, sir,' said Mr.Peggotty, 'I am as rough as a Sea Porkypine; but no one, unless, mayhap, it is a woman, can know, I think, what our little Em'ly is to me.

And betwixt ourselves,' sinking his voice lower yet, 'that woman's name ain't Missis Gummidge neither, though she has a world of merits.' Mr.Peggotty ruffled his hair again, with both hands, as a further preparation for what he was going to say, and went on, with a hand upon each of his knees: 'There was a certain person as had know'd our Em'ly, from the time when her father was drownded; as had seen her constant; when a babby, when a young gal, when a woman.

Not much of a person to look at, he warn't,' said Mr.Peggotty, 'something o' my own build--rough--a good deal o' the sou'-wester in him--wery salt--but, on the whole, a honest sort of a chap, with his art in the right place.' I thought I had never seen Ham grin to anything like the extent to which he sat grinning at us now.
'What does this here blessed tarpaulin go and do,' said Mr.Peggotty, with his face one high noon of enjoyment, 'but he loses that there art of his to our little Em'ly.