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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com-David Copperfield by Charles Dickens


finger, and a long-tailed coat; and I use a great deal of bear's
grease - which, taken in conjunction with the ring, looks bad. Am
I in love again? I am. I worship the eldest Miss Larkins.

The eldest Miss Larkins is not a little girl. She is a tall, dark,
black-eyed, fine figure of a woman. The eldest Miss Larkins is not
a chicken; for the youngest Miss Larkins is not that, and the
eldest must be three or four years older. Perhaps the eldest Miss
Larkins may be about thirty. My passion for her is beyond all
bounds.

The eldest Miss Larkins knows officers. It is an awful thing to
bear. I see them speaking to her in the street. I see them cross
the way to meet her, when her bonnet (she has a bright taste in
bonnets) is seen coming down the pavement, accompanied by her
sister's bonnet. She laughs and talks, and seems to like it. I
spend a good deal of my own spare time in walking up and down to
meet her. If I can bow to her once in the day (I know her to bow
to, knowing Mr. Larkins), I am happier. I deserve a bow now and
then. The raging agonies I suffer on the night of the Race Ball,
where I know the eldest Miss Larkins will be dancing with the
military, ought to have some compensation, if there be even-handed
justice in the world.

My passion takes away my appetite, and makes me wear my newest silk
neckerchief continually. I have no relief but in putting on my
best clothes, and having my boots cleaned over and over again. I
seem, then, to be worthier of the eldest Miss Larkins. Everything
that belongs to her, or is connected with her, is precious to me.

Mr. Larkins (a gruff old gentleman with a double chin, and one of
his eyes immovable in his head) is fraught with interest to me.
When I can't meet his daughter, I go where I am likely to meet him.
To say 'How do you do, Mr. Larkins? Are the young ladies and all
the family quite well?' seems so pointed, that I blush.

I think continually about my age. Say I am seventeen, and say that
seventeen is young for the eldest Miss Larkins, what of that?
Besides, I shall be one-and-twenty in no time almost. I regularly
take walks outside Mr. Larkins's house in the evening, though it
cuts me to the heart to see the officers go in, or to hear them up
in the drawing-room, where the eldest Miss Larkins plays the harp.
I even walk, on two or three occasions, in a sickly, spoony manner,
round and round the house after the family are gone to bed,
wondering which is the eldest Miss Larkins's chamber (and pitching,
I dare say now, on Mr. Larkins's instead); wishing that a fire
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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com-David Copperfield by Charles Dickens



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