 dawned
upon me. They disliked me; and they sullenly, sternly, steadily, overlooked me.
I think Mr. Murdstone's means were straitened at about this time; but it is
little to the purpose. He could not bear me; and in putting me from him, he
tried, as I believe, to put away the notion that I had any claim upon him - and
succeeded.
    I was not actively ill-used. I was not beaten, or starved; but the wrong
that was done to me had no intervals of relenting, and was done in a systematic,
passionless manner. Day after day, week after week, month after month, I was
coldly neglected. I wonder sometimes, when I think of it, what they would have
done if I had been taken with an illness; whether I should have lain down in my
lonely room, and languished through it in my usual solitary way, or whether
anybody would have helped me out.
    When Mr. and Miss Murdstone were at home, I took my meals with them; in
their absence, I ate and drank by myself. At all times I lounged about the house
and neighbourhood quite disregarded, except that they were jealous of my making
any friends: thinking, perhaps, that if I did, I might complain to some one. For
this reason, though Mr. Chillip often asked me to go and see him (he was a
widower, having, some years before that, lost a little small light-haired wife,
whom I can just remember connecting in my own thoughts with a pale
tortoise-shell cat), it was but seldom that I enjoyed the happiness of passing
an afternoon in his closet of a surgery; reading some book that was new to me,
with the smell of the whole pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding
something in a mortar under his mild directions.
    For the same reason, added no doubt to the old dislike of her, I was seldom
allowed to visit Peggotty. Faithful to her promise, she either came to see me,
or met me somewhere near, once every week, and never empty-handed; but many and
bitter were the disappointments I had, in being refused permission to pay a
visit to her at her house. Some few times, however, at long intervals, I was
allowed to go there! and then I found out that Mr. Barkis was something of a
miser, or, as Peggotty dutifully expressed it, was a little near, and kept a
heap of money in a box under his bed, which
