lty Court, requiring a rather accurate knowledge of the whole
science of navigation, in which (as we couldn't be expected to know
much about those matters in the Commons) the judge had entreated two old
Trinity Masters, for charity's sake, to come and help him out. Dora was
at the breakfast-table to make the tea again, however; and I had the
melancholy pleasure of taking off my hat to her in the phaeton, as she
stood on the door-step with Jip in her arms.

What the Admiralty was to me that day; what nonsense I made of our case
in my mind, as I listened to it; how I saw 'DORA' engraved upon the
blade of the silver oar which they lay upon the table, as the emblem
of that high jurisdiction; and how I felt when Mr. Spenlow went home
without me (I had had an insane hope that he might take me back again),
as if I were a mariner myself, and the ship to which I belonged had
sailed away and left me on a desert island; I shall make no fruitless
effort to describe. If that sleepy old court could rouse itself, and
present in any visible form the daydreams I have had in it about Dora,
it would reveal my truth.

I don't mean the dreams that I dreamed on that day alone, but day after
day, from week to week, and term to term. I went there, not to attend to
what was going on, but to think about Dora. If ever I bestowed a thought
upon the cases, as they dragged their slow length before me, it was only
to wonder, in the matrimonial cases (remembering Dora), how it was
that married people could ever be otherwise than happy; and, in the
Prerogative cases, to consider, if the money in question had been left
to me, what were the foremost steps I should immediately have taken
in regard to Dora. Within the first week of my passion, I bought four
sumptuous waistcoats--not for myself; I had no pride in them; for
Dora--and took to wearing straw-coloured kid gloves in the streets, and
laid the foundations of all the corns I have ever had. If the boots I
wore at that period could only be produced and compared with the natural
size of my feet, they would show what the state of my heart was, in a
most affecting manner.

And yet, wretched cripple as I made myself by this act of homage to
Dora, I walked miles upon miles daily in the hope of seeing her. Not
only was I soon as well known on the Norwood Road as the postmen on that
beat, but I pervaded London likewise. I walked about the streets where
the best shops for ladies were, I haunted the Bazaar l