 regards and similar entreaties? In any
        case, he will have the benevolence to consider this communication
        strictly private, and on no account whatever to be alluded to, however
        distantly, in the presence of Mr. Micawber. If Mr. T. should ever reply
        to it (which I cannot but feel to be most improbable), a letter
        addressed to M. E., Post Office, Canterbury, will be fraught with less
        painful consequences than any addressed immediately to one, who
        subscribes herself, in extreme distress,
            Mr. Thomas Traddles's respectful friend and suppliant,
                                                                 EMMA MICAWBER.«
 
»What do you think of that letter?« said Traddles, casting his eyes upon me,
when I had read it twice.
    »What do you think of the other?« said I. For he was still reading it with
knitted brows.
    »I think that the two together, Copperfield,« replied Traddles, »mean more
than Mr. and Mrs. Micawber usually mean in their correspondence - but I don't
know what. They are both written in good faith, I have no doubt, and without any
collusion. Poor thing!« he was now alluding to Mrs. Micawber's letter, and we
were standing side by side comparing the two; »it will be a charity to write to
her, at all events, and tell her that we will not fail to see Mr. Micawber.«
    I acceded to this, the more readily, because I now reproached myself with
having treated her former letter rather lightly. It had set me thinking a good
deal at the time, as I have mentioned in its place; but my absorption in my own
affairs, my experience of the family, and my hearing nothing more, had gradually
ended in my dismissing the subject. I had often thought of the Micawbers, but
chiefly to wonder what pecuniary liabilities they were establishing in
Canterbury, and to recall how shy Mr. Micawber was of me when he became clerk to
Uriah Heep.
    However, I now wrote a comforting letter to Mrs. Micawber, in our joint
names, and we both signed it. As we walked into town to post it, Traddles and I
held a long conference, and launched into a number of speculations, which I need
not repeat. We took my aunt into our counsels in the afternoon; but our only
decided conclusion was, that we would be very punctual in keeping Mr. Micawber's
appointment.
    Although we appeared at the stipulated place a quarter of an hour before the
time, we found Mr. Micawber already there
