years, I thought that I might trust to her
understanding it when she should come to read it as put down by my own
hand. Then I thought I would try a joke with her and watch how it took,
by which of itself I might fully judge of her understanding it. We had
first discovered the mistake we had dropped into, through her having
asked me to prescribe for her when she had supposed me to be a Doctor in
a medical point of view; so thinks I, "Now, if I give this book the name
of my Prescriptions, and if she catches the idea that my only
Prescriptions are for her amusement and interest,--to make her laugh in a
pleasant way, or to make her cry in a pleasant way,--it will be a
delightful proof to both of us that we have got over our difficulty." It
fell out to absolute perfection. For when she saw the book, as I had it
got up,--the printed and pressed book,--lying on her desk in her cart,
and saw the title, DOCTOR MARIGOLD'S PRESCRIPTIONS, she looked at me for
a moment with astonishment, then fluttered the leaves, then broke out a
laughing in the charmingest way, then felt her pulse and shook her head,
then turned the pages pretending to read them most attentive, then kissed
the book to me, and put it to her bosom with both her hands. I never was
better pleased in all my life!

But let me not anticipate. (I take that expression out of a lot of
romances I bought for her. I never opened a single one of 'em--and I
have opened many--but I found the romancer saying "let me not
anticipate." Which being so, I wonder why he did anticipate, or who
asked him to it.) Let me not, I say, anticipate. This same book took up
all my spare time. It was no play to get the other articles together in
the general miscellaneous lot, but when it come to my own article! There!
I couldn't have believed the blotting, nor yet the buckling to at it, nor
the patience over it. Which again is like the footboard. The public
have no idea.

At last it was done, and the two years' time was gone after all the other
time before it, and where it's all gone to, who knows? The new cart was
finished,--yellow outside, relieved with wermilion and brass
fittings,--the old horse was put in it, a new 'un and a boy being laid on
for the Cheap Jack cart,--and I cleaned myself up to go and fetch her.
Bright cold weather it was, cart-chimneys smoking, carts pitched private
on a piece of waste ground over at Wandsworth, where you may see 'em from
the Sou'western Rail