“I should have no pleasure in dancing with any one else.”
Miss Larkins laughs and blushes (or I think she blushes), and says, “Next time but one, I shall be very glad.”
The time arrives. “It is a waltz, I think,” Miss Larkins doubtfully observes, when I present myself. “Do you waltz? If not, Captain Bailey——”
But I do waltz (pretty well, too, as it happens), and I take Miss Larkins out. I take her sternly from the side of Captain Bailey. He is wretched, I have no doubt; but he is nothing to me. I have been wretched too. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins! I don’t know where, among whom, or how long. I only know that I swim about in space, with a blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until I find myself alone with her in a little room, resting on a sofa. She admires a flower (pink camellia japonica, price half-a-crown) in my button-hole. I give it her, and say—
“I ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins.”
“Indeed! What is that?” returns Miss Larkins.
“A flower of yours, that I may treasure it as a miser does gold.”
“You’re a bold boy,” says Miss Larkins. “There.”
She gives it me, not displeased; and I put it to my lips, and then into my breast. Miss Larkins, laughing, draws her hand through my arm, and says, “Now take me back to Captain Bailey.”
I am lost in the recollection of this delicious interview, and the waltz, when she comes to me again, with a plain elderly gentleman, who has been playing whist all night, upon her arm, and says—
“Oh! here is my bold friend! Mr. Chestle wants to know you, Mr. Copperfield.”
I feel at once that he is a friend of the family, and am much gratified.
“I admire your taste, Sir,” says Mr. Chestle. “It does you credit. I suppose you don’t take much interest in hops, but I am a pretty large grower myself, and if you ever like to come over to our neighbourhood—neighbourhood of Ashford—and take a run about our place, we shall be glad for you to stop as long as you like.”
I thank Mr. Chestle warmly, and shake hands. I think I am in a happy dream. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins once again—she says I waltz so well! I go home in a state of unspeakable bliss, and waltz in imagination, all night long, with my arm round the blue waist of my dear divinity. For some days afterwards I am lost in rapturous reflections; but I neither see her in the street, nor when I call. I am imperfectly consoled for this disappointment by the sacred pledge, the perished flower.
“Trotwood,” says Agnes, one day after dinner, “who do you think is going to be married to-morrow? Some one you admire.”
“Not you, I suppose, Agnes?”
“Not me!” raising her cheerful face from the music she is copying. “Do you hear him, papa?—The eldest Miss Larkins.”
“To—to Captain Bailey?” I have just enough power to ask.
“No; to no captain. To Mr. Chestle, a hop-grower.”