wn
on my knees; I plucked at my hair; I implored her forgiveness; I
besought her to look up; I ravaged Miss Mills's work-box for a
smelling-bottle, and in my agony of mind, applied an ivory needle-case
instead, and dropped all the needles over Dora.

At last I got Dora to look at me, with a horrified expression which I
gradually soothed until it was only loving, and her soft, pretty cheek
was lying against mine.

"Is your heart mine still, dear Dora?"

"O yes! O yes! it's all yours, oh, don't be dreadful."

"My dearest love, the crust well earned--"

"O yes; but I don't want to hear any more about crusts. And after we are
married, Jip must have a mutton chop every day at twelve, or he'll die."

I was charmed with her childish, winning way, and I fondly explained to
her that Jip should have his mutton chop with his accustomed regularity.

When we had been engaged some half-year or so, Dora delighted me by
asking me to give her that cookery-book I had once spoken of, and to
show her how to keep accounts, as I had once promised I would. I brought
the volume with me on my next visit (I got it prettily bound, first, to
make it look less dry and more inviting), and showed her an old
housekeeping book of my aunt's, and gave her a set of tablets, and a
pretty little pencil-case, and a box of leads, to practice housekeeping
with.

But the cookery-book made Dora's head ache, and the figures made her
cry. They wouldn't add up, she said. So she rubbed them out, and drew
little nosegays, and likenesses of me and Jip, all over the tablets.

Time went on, and at last, here in this hand of mine, I held the wedding
license. There were the two names in the sweet old visionary
connection,--David Copperfield and Dora Spenlow; and there in the corner
was that parental institution, the Stamp Office, looking down upon our
union; and there, in the printed form of words, was the Archbishop of
Canterbury, invoking a blessing on us and doing it as cheap as could
possibly be expected.

I doubt whether two young birds could have known less about keeping
house than I and my pretty Dora did. We had a servant, of course. She
kept house for us. We had an awful time of it with Mary Anne. She was
the cause of our first little quarrel.

"My dearest life," I said one day to Dora, "do you think Mary Anne has
any idea of time?"

"Why, Doady?"

"My love, because it's five, and we were to have dined at four."

My little wife came and sat upon