I believed

　　Ah, what a strange feeling it was to be going home when it was not home, and  to find that every object I looked at, reminded me of the happy old home, which was like a  dream I  could never  dream again!  The days  when my  mother and  I and Peggotty were all in all  to one another, and there  was no one to come  between us, rose up before me so sorrowfully on the road, that I am not sure I was  glad to be there - not sure but that I would rather have remained away, and forgotten it in Steerforth's company.  But there I was; and soon I was at our house, where the bare  old elm-trees  wrung their  many hands  in the  bleak wintry  air, and shreds of the old rooks'-nests drifted away upon the wind.

　　The carrier put my box down at the garden-gate, and left me.  I walked along the path towards the house,  glancing at the windows,  and fearing at every  step to see  Mr. Murdstone  or Miss  Murdstone lowering  out of  one of  them.  No  face appeared, however;  and being  come to  the house,  and knowing  how to open the door, before dark, without knocking, I went in with a quiet, timid step.

　　God knows how infantine the memory may have been, that was awakened within me by the sound of my mother's voice in the old parlour, when I set foot in the  hall. She was singing in a low tone.  I think I must have lain in her arms, and  heard her singing so to me when I was but  a baby.  The strain was new to me, and  yet it was so old that it filled my heart brim-full; like a friend come back from  a long absence.

　　I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother murmured her song, that she was alone.  And I went softly into the room.  She was sitting  by the fire, suckling an  infant, whose tiny hand  she held against her  neck.  Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and  she sat singing to it.  I was so  far right, that she had no other companion.

　　I spoke to her, and  she started, and cried out.   But seeing me, she called  me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the room to meet me,  kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head down on her bosom near  the little creature that was nestling there, and put its hand to my lips.

　　I wish I had died.   I wish I had died  then, with that feeling in  my heart!  I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been since.

　　'He is your brother,'  said my mother, fondling  me.  'Davy, my pretty  boy!  My poor child!'  Then she kissed me more  and more, and clasped me round the  neck. This she was doing when Peggotty came running in, and bounced down on the ground beside us, and went mad about us both for a quarter of an hour.