Page 722 - david-copperfield

morseful state. I was debating whether I should pretend
that I was not well, and fly - I don’t know where - upon my
gallant grey, when Dora and Miss Mills met me.
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Miss Mills, ‘you are dull.’
I begged her pardon. Not at all.
‘And Dora,’ said Miss Mills, ‘YOU are dull.’
Oh dear no! Not in the least.
‘Mr. Copperfield and Dora,’ said Miss Mills, with an al-
most venerable air. ‘Enough of this. Do not allow a trivial
misunderstanding to wither the blossoms of spring, which,
once put forth and blighted, cannot be renewed. I speak,’
said Miss Mills, ‘from experience of the past - the remote,
irrevocable past. The gushing fountains which sparkle in
the sun, must not be stopped in mere caprice; the oasis in
the desert of Sahara must not be plucked up idly.’
I hardly knew what I did, I was burning all over to that
extraordinary extent; but I took Dora’s little hand and
kissed it - and she let me! I kissed Miss Mills’s hand; and
we all seemed, to my thinking, to go straight up to the sev-
enth heaven. We did not come down again. We stayed up
there all the evening. At first we strayed to and fro among
the trees: I with Dora’s shy arm drawn through mine: and
Heaven knows, folly as it all was, it would have been a happy
fate to have been struck immortal with those foolish feel-
ings, and have stayed among the trees for ever!
But, much too soon, we heard the others laughing and
talking, and calling ‘where’s Dora?’ So we went back, and
they wanted Dora to sing. Red Whisker would have got the
guitar-case out of the carriage, but Dora told him nobody

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