“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.