, with great triumph:
    »Why, the butcher would know how to sell it, and what need I know? Oh, you
silly Boy!«
    So, when I once asked Dora, with an eye to the cookery-book, what she would
do, if we were married, and I were to say I should like a nice Irish stew, she
replied that she would tell the servant to make it; and then clapped her little
hands together across my arm, and laughed in such a charming manner that she was
more delightful than ever.
    Consequently, the principal use to which the cookery-book was devoted, was
being put down in the corner for Jip to stand upon. But Dora was so pleased,
when she had trained him to stand upon it without offering to come off, and at
the same time to hold the pencil-case in his mouth, that I was very glad I had
bought it.
    And we fell back on the guitar-case, and the flower-painting, and the songs
about never leaving off dancing, Ta ra la! and were as happy as the week was
long. I occasionally wished I could venture to hint to Miss Lavinia, that she
treated the darling of my heart a little too much like a plaything; and I
sometimes awoke, as it were, wondering to find that I had fallen into the
general fault, and treated her like a plaything too - but not often.
 

                                  Chapter XLII

                                   Mischief.

I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this manuscript is
intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked at that tremendous shorthand,
and all improvement appertaining to it, in my sense of responsibility to Dora
and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have already written of my
perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy
which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong part
of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I
find the source of my success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters;
many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never
could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and
diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a
time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I
then formed. Heaven knows I write this, in no spirit of self-laudation. The man
