One Thursday morning, when I was about to walk with Mr. Dick from the hotel to the coach office before going back to school (for we had an hour’s school before breakfast), I met Uriah in the street, who reminded me of the promise I had made to take tea with himself and his mother: adding, with a writhe, “But I didn’t expect you to keep it, Master Copperfield, we’re so very umble.”

I really had not yet been able to make up my mind whether I liked Uriah or detested him; and I was very doubtful about it still, as I stood looking him in the face in the street. But I felt it quite an affront to be supposed proud, and said I only wanted to be asked.

“Oh, if that’s all, Master Copperfield,” said Uriah, “and it really isn’t our umbleness that prevents you, will you come this evening? But if it is our umbleness, I hope you won’t mind owning to it, Master Copperfield; for we are well aware of our condition.”

I said I would mention it to Mr. Wickfield, and if he approved, as I had no doubt he would, I would come with pleasure. So, at six o’clock that evening, which was one of the early office evenings, I announced myself as ready, to Uriah.

“Mother will be proud, indeed,” he said, as we walked away together. “Or she would be proud, if it wasn’t sinful, Master Copperfield.”

“Yet you didn’t mind supposing I was proud this morning,” I returned.

“Oh dear, no, Master Copperfield!” returned Uriah. “Oh, believe me, no! Such a thought never came into my head! I shouldn’t have deemed it at all proud if you had thought us too umble for you. Because we are so very umble.”

“Have you been studying much law lately?” I asked, to change the subject.

“Oh, Master Copperfield,” he said, with an air of self-denial, “my reading is hardly to be called study. I have passed an hour or two in the evening, sometimes, with Mr. Tidd.”

“Rather hard, I suppose?” said I. (…)

“There are expressions, you see, Master Copperfield – Latin words and terms – in Mr. Tidd, that are trying to a reader of my umble attainments.”

“Would you like to be taught Latin?” I said briskly. “I will teach it you with pleasure, as I learn it.”

“Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,” he answered, shaking his head. “I am sure it’s very kind of you to make the offer, but I am much too umble to accept it.”

“What nonsense, Uriah!”

“Oh, indeed you must excuse me, Master Copperfield! I am greatly obliged, and I should like it of all things, I assure you; but I am far too umble. There are people enough to tread upon me in my lowly state, without my doing outrage to their feelings by possessing learning. Learning ain’t for me. (…) I won’t provoke my betters with knowledge, thank you. I’m much too umble. Here is my umble dwelling, Master Copperfield!”

We entered a low, old-fashioned room, walked straight into from the street, and found there Mrs. Heep, who was the dead image of Uriah, only short. She received me with the utmost humility, and apologized to me for giving her son a kiss, observing that, lowly as they were, they had their natural affections, which they hoped would give no offence to anyone. (…)

It was perhaps a part of Mrs. Heep’s humility, that she still wore weeds. Notwithstanding the lapse of time that had occurred since Mr. Heep’s decease, she still wore weeds. I think there was some compromise in the cap; but otherwise she was as weedy as in the early days of her mourning.

“This is a day to be remembered, my Uriah, I am sure,” said Mrs. Heep, making the tea, “when Master Copperfield pays us a visit.”

“I said you’d think so, mother,” said Uriah.

“If I could have wished father to remain among us for any reason,” said Mrs. Heep, “it would have been, that he might have known his company this afternoon.”

I felt embarrassed by these compliments; but I was sensible, too, of being entertained as an honoured guest, and I thought Mrs. Heep an agreeable woman.

“My Uriah,” said Mrs. Heep, “has looked forward to this, sir, a long while. He had his fears that our umbleness stood in the way, and I joined in them myself. Umble we are, umble we have been, umble we shall ever be,” said Mrs. Heep. (…) “We know our station and are thankful in it.”

I found that Mrs. Heep gradually got nearer to me, and that Uriah gradually got opposite to me, and that they respectfully plied me with the choicest of the eatables on the table. (…) Presently they began to talk about aunts, and then I told them about mine; and about fathers and mothers, and then I told them about mine; and then Mrs. Heep began to talk about fathers-in-law, and then I began to tell her about mine – but stopped, because my aunt had advised me to observe a silence on that subject. A tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance against a pair of corkscrews (...) than I had against Uriah and Mrs. Heep. They did just what they liked with me; and wormed things out of me that I had no desire to tell, with a certainty I blush to think of, the more especially, as in my juvenile frankness, I took some credit to myself for being so confidential and felt that I was quite the patron of my two respectful entertainers. (…)

When there was nothing more to be got out of me about myself (…), they began about Mr. Wickfield and Agnes. Uriah threw the ball to Mrs. Heep, Mrs. Heep caught it and threw it back to Uriah, Uriah kept it up a little while, then sent it back to Mrs. Heep, and so they went on tossing it about until I had no idea who had got it, and was quite bewildered. The ball itself was always changing too. Now it was Mr. Wickfield, now Agnes, now the excellence of Mr. Wickfield, now my admiration of Agnes; now the extent of Mr. Wickfield’s business and resources, now our domestic life after dinner; now, the wine that Mr. Wickfield took, the reason why he took it, and the pity that it was he took so much; now one thing, now another, then everything at once; and all the time, without appearing to speak very often, or to do anything but sometimes encourage them a little, for fear they should be overcome by their humility and the honour of my company, I found myself perpetually letting out something or other that I had no business to let out and seeing the effect of it in the twinkling of Uriah’s dinted nostrils.

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