Carry on

Finished the McGuiness translation on the bus last night, and now only have 250 or so pages to go in Copperfield until I'm caught up to where I left off last year.

A couple months later, from where we last left off, David is called out from class into the Headmaster's home.  He is expecting gifts for his birthday.  Instead he is informed that his mother has died (also the baby.)  He is to leave the next day, not knowing that he will never return.  Traddles offers him his pillow and later gives him a sheet of paper with skeletons drawn all over it (how Traddles comforts himself after his daily beatings.)  He wanted to offer comfort and that's what he had.  Horrific circumstances either softening or hardening your heart, with Traddles, compassion wins.  (It was true for Clara as well, she loved the Murdstones, in spite of their cruelty, because it was in her nature to love, not because they deserved it.)

Everyone on the journey back home treats him with kindness, but he must return to Blunderstone.  The Murdstones give Peggotty notice, and David leaves with her to Yarmouth for a month.  During that time, E'mly is coy, barely hiding her interest in Steerforth, Peggotty and Barkis get married, and then David returns home alone.  He comments that during this period he would rather have been in the harshest of schools than here, if it meant continued learning.  As it is, the abuse and neglect are constant, as if they wish he would disappear, they continue to feed and clothe him, they do not beat him, 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. - Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter 10

After some time, he is offered a job in London, working in the warehouse of Murdstone's business ventures, and set up in a house with the Micawbers.  A wretched outlook for his future, at ten.  Seeing all hope of a better, more learned life, closing down before him.