One Moment in Time

¡¡¡¡Here Peggotty stopped, and softly beat upon my hand a little while. ¡¡¡¡'The last time that I saw her like her own old self, was the night when you came home, my dear. The day you went away, she said to me, "I never shall see my pretty darling again. Something tells me so, that tells the truth, I know." ¡¡¡¡'She tried to hold up after that; and many a time, when they told her she was thoughtless and light-hearted, made believe to be so;
it was all a bygone then. She never told her husband what she had told me - she was afraid of saying it to anybody else - till one night, a little more than a week before it happened, when she said to him: "My dear, I think I am dying." ¡¡¡¡'"It's off my mind now, Peggotty," she told me, when I laid her in her bed that night. "He will believe it more and more, poor fellow, every day for a few days to come; and then it will be past. I am very tired. If this is sleep, sit by me while I sleep: don't leave me. God bless both my children! God protect and keep my fatherless boy!"