you please, I'm looking for the
dog."

"Dog?" says he. "What dog?"

"Isn't it a dog, sir?"

"Isn't what a dog?"

"That's to be taken care of, sir; that bites."

"No, Copperfield," says he, gravely, "that's not a dog. That's a boy. My
instructions are, Copperfield, to put this placard on your back. I am
sorry to make such a beginning with you, but I must do it."

With that, he took me down, and tied the placard, which was neatly
constructed for the purpose, on my shoulders like a knapsack; and
wherever I went, afterwards, I had the consolation of carrying it.

What I suffered from that placard, nobody can imagine. Whether it was
possible for people to see me or not, I always fancied that somebody was
reading it. It was no relief to turn round and find nobody; for wherever
my back was, there I imagined somebody always to be.

There was an old door in this playground, on which the boys had a custom
of carving their names. It was completely covered with such
inscriptions. In my dread of the end of the vacation and their coming
back, I could not read one boy's name, without inquiring in what tone
and with what emphasis _he_ would read, "Take care of him. He bites."
There was one boy--a certain J. Steerforth--who cut his name very deep
and very often, who, I conceived, would read it in a rather strong
voice, and afterwards pull my hair. There was another boy, one Tommy
Traddles, who I dreaded would make game of it, and pretend to be
dreadfully frightened of me. There was a third, George Demple, who I
fancied would sing it. I have looked, a little shrinking creature, at
that door, until the owners of all the names--there were five-and-forty
of them in the school then, Mr. Mell said--seemed to cry out, each in
his own way, "Take care of him. He bites!"

Tommy Traddles was the first boy who returned. He introduced himself by
informing me that I should find his name on the right-hand corner of the
gate, over the top bolt; upon that I said, "Traddles?" to which he
replied, "The same," and then he asked me for a full account of myself
and family.

It was fortunate for me that Traddles came back first. He enjoyed my
placard so much that he saved me from the embarrassment of either
telling about it or trying to hide it by presenting me to every other
boy who came back, great or small, immediately on his arrival, in this
form of introduction, "Look here! Here's a game!" Happily, too, the
greater part of the boys came bac