The time arrives. "It is a waltz, I think," MissLarkins 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 camelia 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 power enough to ask.
"No; to no Captain. To Mr. Chestle, a hop-grower."
I am terribly dejected for about a week or two. I take off my ring, I wear my worst clothes, I use no bear's grease, and I frequently lament over the late Miss Larkins's faded flower. Being, by that time, rather tired of this kind of life, and having received new provocation from the butcher, I throw the flower away, go out with the butcher, and gloriously defeat him.
This, and the resumption of my ring, as well as of the bear's grease in moderation, are the last marks I can discern, now, in my progress to seventeen.
