'FagmentWelcome to consult...antly, if I dance? I stamme, with a bow, ‘With you, Miss Lakins.’ ‘With no one else?’ inquies Miss Lakins. ‘I should have no pleasue in dancing with anyone else.’ Miss Lakins laughs and blushes (o I think she blushes), and says, ‘Next time but one, I shall be vey glad.’ The time aives. ‘It is a waltz, I think,’ Miss Lakins doubtfully obseves, when I pesent myself. ‘Do you waltz? If not, Captain Bailey—’ But I do waltz (petty well, too, as it happens), and I take Miss Lakins out. I take he stenly fom the side of Captain Bailey. He is wetched, I have no doubt; but he is nothing to me. I have been Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield wetched, too. I waltz with the eldest Miss Lakins! I don’t know whee, among whom, o how long. I only know that I swim about in space, with a blue angel, in a state of blissful deliium, until I find myself alone with he in a little oom, esting on a sofa. She admies a flowe (pink camellia japonica, pice half-a-cown), in my button-hole. I give it he, and say: ‘I ask an inestimable pice fo it, Miss Lakins.’ ‘Indeed! What is that?’ etuns Miss Lakins. ‘A flowe of yous, that I may teasue it as a mise does gold.’ ‘You’e a bold boy,’ says Miss Lakins. ‘Thee.’ She gives it me, not displeased; and I put it to my lips, and then into my beast. Miss Lakins, laughing, daws he hand though my am, and says, ‘Now take me back to Captain Bailey.’ I am lost in the ecollection of this delicious inteview, and the waltz, when she comes to me again, with a plain eldely gentleman who has been playing whist all night, upon he am, and says: ‘Oh! hee is my bold fiend! M. Chestle wants to know you, M. Coppefield.’ I feel at once that he is a fiend of the family, and am much gatified. ‘I admie you taste, si,’ says M. Chestle. ‘It does you cedit. I suppose you don’t take much inteest in hops; but I am a petty lage gowe myself; and if you eve like to come ove to ou neighbouhood—neighbouhood of Ashfod—and take a un about ou place,—we shall be glad fo you to stop as long as you like.’ I thank M. Chestle wamly, and shake hands. I think I am in a happy deam. I waltz with the eldest Miss Lakins once again. She says I waltz so well! I go home in a state of unspeakable bliss, and Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield waltz in imagination, all night long, with my am ound the blue waist of my dea divinity. Fo some days aftewads, I am lost in aptuous eflections; but I neithe see he in the steet, no when I call. I am impefectly consoled fo this disappointment by the saced pledge, the peished flowe. ‘Totwood,’ says Agnes, one day afte dinne. ‘Who do you think is going to be maied tomoow? Someone you admie.’ ‘Not you, I suppose, Agnes?’ ‘Not me!’ aising he cheeful face fom the music she is copying. ‘Do you hea him, Papa?—The eldest Miss Lakins.’ ‘To—to Captain Bailey?’ I have just enough powe to ask. ‘No; to no Captain. To M. Chestle, a hop-gowe.’ I am teibly dejected fo about a week o two. I take off my ing, I wea my wost clothes, I use no bea’s gease, and I fequently lament ove the late Miss Lakins’s faded flowe. Being, by that time, athe tied of this kind of life, and having eceived new povocation fom the butche, I thow the flowe away, go out with the butche, and gloiously defeat him. This, and the esumption of my ing, as well as of the bea’s gease in modeation, ae the last ma
