I, little David Copperfield, lived with my mother in a pretty house in the village of Blunderstone in Suffolk. I had never known my father, who died before I could remember anything, and I had neither brothers nor sisters. I was fondly loved by my pretty young mother, and our kind, good servant, Peggotty, and was a very happy little fellow. We had very few friends, and the only relation my mother talked about was an aunt of my father's, a tall and rather terrible old lady, from all accounts, who had once been to see us when I was quite a tiny baby, and had been so angry to find I was not a little girl that she had left the house quite offended, and had never been heard of since. One visitor, a tall dark gentleman, I did not like at all, and was rather inclined to be jealous that my mother should be so friendly with the stranger. Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlor fire, alone. I had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I was tired of reading, and dead sleepy; but having leave, as a high treat, to sit up until my mother came home from spending the evening at a neighbor's, I would rather have died upon my post (of course) than have gone to bed. I had reached that stage of sleepiness when Peggotty seemed to swell and grow immensely large. I propped my eyelids open with my two forefingers, and looked perseveringly at her as she sat at work; at the little house with a thatched roof, where she kept her yard-measure; at her work-box with a sliding-lid, with a view of St. Paul's Cathedral (with a pink dome) painted on the top; at the brass thimble on her finger; at herself, whom I thought lovely. I felt so sleepy that I knew if I lost sight of anything, for a moment, I was gone. "Peggotty," says I, suddenly, "were you ever married?" "Lord, Master Davy!" replied Peggotty. "What's put marriage in your head?" She answered with such a start that it quite awoke me. And then she stopped in her work and looked at me, with her needle drawn out to its thread's length. "But _were_ you ever married, Peggotty?" says I. "You are a very handsome woman, ain't you?" "Me handsome, Davy!" said Peggotty. "Lawk, no, my dear! But what put marriage in your head?" "I don't know! You mustn't marry more than one person at a time, may you, Peggotty?" "Certainly not," says Peggotty, with the promptest decision. "But if you marry a person, and the person dies, why then you may marry another person, mayn't you, Peggotty?" "You MAY," says Peggotty, "if you choose, my dear. That's a matter of opinion." "But what is your opinion, Peggotty?" said I. I asked her and looked curiously at her, because she looked so curiously at me. "My opinion is," said Peggotty, taking her eyes from me, after waiting a little, and going on with her work, "that I never was married myself, Master Davy, and that I don't expect to be. That's all I know about the subject." "You ain't cross, I suppose, Peggotty, are you?" said I, after sitting quiet for a minute.