Page 637 - bleak-house

CHAPTER XXXI

Nurse and Patient

I had not been at home again many days when one eve-
ning I went upstairs into my own room to take a peep over
Charley’s shoulder and see how she was getting on with her
copy-book. Writing was a trying business to Charley, who
seemed to have no natural power over a pen, but in whose
hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated,
and to go wrong and crooked, and to stop, and splash, and
sidle into corners like a saddle-donkey. It was very odd to
see what old letters Charley’s young hand had made, they
so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and tottering, it so plump and
round. Yet Charley was uncommonly expert at other things
and had as nimble little fingers as I ever watched.
‘Well, Charley,’ said I, looking over a copy of the let-
ter O in which it was represented as square, triangular,
pear-shaped, and collapsed in all kinds of ways, ‘we are im-
proving. If we only get to make it round, we shall be perfect,
Charley.’
Then I made one, and Charley made one, and the pen
wouldn’t join Charley’s neatly, but twisted it up into a knot.
‘Never mind, Charley. We shall do it in time.’

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