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David Copperfield
Mills to ask her, whether, for Dora’s sake, if she had any
opportunity of luring her attention to such preparations for an
earnest life, she would avail herself of it? Miss Mills replied in the
affirmative so readily, that I further asked her if she would take
charge of the Cookery Book; and, if she ever could insinuate it
upon Dora’s acceptance, without frightening her, undertake to do
me that crowning service. Miss Mills accepted this trust, too; but
was not sanguine.
And Dora returned, looking such a lovely little creature, that I
really doubted whether she ought to be troubled with anything so
ordinary. And she loved me so much, and was so captivating
(particularly when she made Jip stand on his hind legs for toast,
and when she pretended to hold that nose of his against the hot
teapot for punishment because he wouldn’t), that I felt like a sort
of Monster who had got into a Fairy’s bower, when I thought of
having frightened her, and made her cry.
After tea we had the guitar; and Dora sang those same dear old
French songs about the impossibility of ever on any account
leaving off dancing, La ra la, La ra la, until I felt a much greater
Monster than before.
We had only one check to our pleasure, and that happened a
little while before I took my leave, when, Miss Mills chancing to
make some allusion to tomorrow morning, I unluckily let out that,
being obliged to exert myself now, I got up at five o’clock. Whether
Dora had any idea that I was a Private Watchman, I am unable to
say; but it made a great impression on her, and she neither played
nor sang any more.
It was still on her mind when I bade her adieu; and she said to
me, in her pretty coaxing way—as if I were a doll, I used to think:
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
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David Copperfield
‘Now don’t get up at five o’clock, you naughty boy. It’s so
nonsensical!’
‘My love,’ said I, ‘I have work to do.’
‘But don’t do it!’ returned Dora. ‘Why should you?’
It was impossible to say to that sweet little surprised face,
otherwise than lightly and playfully, that we must work to live.
‘Oh! How ridiculous!’ cried Dora.
‘How shall we live without, Dora?’ said I.
‘How? Any how!’ said Dora.
She seemed to think she had quite settled the question, and
gave me such a triumphant little kiss, direct from her innocent
heart, that I would hardly have put her out of conceit with her
answer, for a fortune.
Well! I loved her, and I went on loving her, most absorbingly,
entirely, and completely. But going on, too, working pretty hard,
and busily keeping red-hot all the irons I now had in the fire, I
would sit sometimes of a night, opposite my aunt, thinking how I
had frightened Dora that time, and how I could best make my way
with a guitar-case through the forest of difficulty, until I used to
fancy that my head was turning quite grey.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
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David Copperfield
Chapter 38
A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP
Idid not allow my resolution, with respect to the Parliamentary
Debates, to cool. It was one of the irons I began to heat
immediately, and one of the irons I kept hot, and hammered
at, with a perseverance I may honestly admire. I bought an
approved scheme of the noble art and mystery of stenography
(which cost me ten and sixpence); and plunged into a sea of
perplexity that brought me, in a few weeks, to the confines of
distraction. The changes that were rung upon dots, which in such
a position meant such a thing, and in such another position
something else, entirely different; the wonderful vagaries that
were played by circles; the unaccountable consequences that
resulted from marks like flies’ legs; the tremendous effects of a
curve in a wrong place; not only troubled my waking hours, but
reappeared before me in my sleep. When I had groped my way,
blindly, through these difficulties, and had mastered the alphabet,
wh
