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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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couldn't bear her? What could I do, but kiss away her tears, and tell her how I doted on her, after that! 'I am sure I am very affectionate,' said Dora; 'you oughtn't to be cruel to me, Doady!' 'Cruel, my precious love! As if I would - or could - be cruel to you, for the world!' 'Then don't find fault with me,' said Dora, making a rosebud of her mouth; 'and I'll be good.' I was charmed by her presently asking me, of her own accord, to give her that cookery-book I had once spoken of, and to show her how to keep accounts as I had once promised I would. I brought the volume with me on my next visit (I got it prettily bound, first, to make it look less dry and more inviting); and as we strolled about the Common, I showed her an old housekeeping-book of my aunt's, and gave her a set of tablets, and a pretty little pencil-case and box of leads, to practise housekeeping with. But the cookery-book made Dora's head ache, and the figures made her cry. They wouldn't add up, she said. So she rubbed them out, and drew little nosegays and likenesses of me and Jip, all over the tablets. Then I playfully tried verbal instruction in domestic matters, as we walked about on a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes, for example, when we passed a butcher's shop, I would say: 'Now suppose, my pet, that we were married, and you were going to buy a shoulder of mutton for dinner, would you know how to buy it?' My pretty little Dora's face would fall, and she would make her mouth into a bud again, as if she would very much prefer to shut mine with a kiss. 'Would you know how to buy it, my darling?' I would repeat, perhaps, if I were very inflexible. Dora would think a little, and then reply, perhaps, with great triumph: |
