Ham echoed this sentiment

　　Mr. Peggotty was no less pleased than his nephew, though his modesty forbade him to claim a personal compliment so vociferously.

　　'Well, sir,'  he said,  bowing and  chuckling, and  tucking in  the ends  of his neckerchief at his breast: 'I thankee, sir, I thankee!  I do my endeavours in my line of life, sir.'

　　'The best of men can do no more, Mr. Peggotty,' said Steerforth. He had got  his name already.

　　'I'll pound it, it's wot you  do yourself, sir,' said Mr. Peggotty,  shaking his head, 'and wot you do well - right well!  I thankee, sir.  I'm obleeged to  you, sir, for  your welcoming  manner of  me. I'm  rough, sir,  but I'm ready - least ways, I hope I'm  ready, you unnerstand.  My  house ain't much for  to see, sir, but it's hearty at your service if ever you should come along with Mas'r Davy to see it.   I'm a  reg'lar Dodman,  I am,'  said Mr.  Peggotty, by  which he meant snail, and this was in allusion to his being slow to go, for he had attempted to go after every sentence, and had somehow  or other come back again; 'but I  wish you both well, and I wish you happy!'

　　Ham echoed this sentiment, and we  parted with them in the heartiest  manner.  I was almost tempted  that evening to  tell Steerforth about  pretty little Em'ly, but I was too timid of mentioning her name, and too much afraid of his  laughing at me.  I remember  that I thought a  good deal, and in  an uneasy sort of  way, about Mr. Peggotty  having said that  she was getting  on to be  a woman; but  I decided that was nonsense.

　　We  transported the  shellfish, or  the 'relish'  as Mr.  Peggotty had  modestly called it, up into  our room unobserved, and  made a great supper  that evening. But Traddles couldn't get happily out of it. He was too unfortunate even to come through a  supper like  anybody else.   He was  taken ill  in the  night - quite prostrate he was -  in consequence of Crab;  and after being drugged  with black draughts and blue pills, to an  extent which Demple (whose father was  a doctor) said was enough to undermine a  horse's constitution, received a caning and  six chapters of Greek Testament for refusing to confess.

　　The rest of the half-year is a jumble in my recollection of the daily strife and struggle of  our lives;  of the  waning summer  and the  changing season; of the frosty mornings when we were  rung out of bed, and  the cold, cold smell of  the dark nights when we  were rung into bed  again; of the evening  schoolroom dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and  the morning schoolroom which was  nothing but a  great shivering-machine;  of the  alternation of  boiled beef  with roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast  mutton; of clods of bread-and-butter,  dog's eared lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings,  rainy Sundays,  suet-puddings, and  a dirty  atmosphere of  ink, surrounding all.