David, I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years!' 'My dear Steerforth, what is the matter ?' 'I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!' he exclaimed.

'I wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!' There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed me.

He was more unlike himself than I could have supposed possible.
'It would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of a nephew,' he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, with his face towards the fire, 'than to be myself, twenty times richer and twenty times wiser, and be the torment to myself that I have been, in this Devil's bark of a boat, within the last half-hour!' I was so confounded by the alteration in him, that at first I could only observe him in silence, as he stood leaning his head upon his hand, and looking gloomily down at the fire.

At length I begged him, with all the earnestness I felt, to tell me what had occurred to cross him so unusually, and to let me sympathize with him, if I could not hope to advise him.

Before I had well concluded, he began to laugh--fretfully at first, but soon with returning gaiety.
'Tut, it's nothing, Daisy! nothing!' he replied.