y infectious joy, old and young get up and join the
whirling throng. Suddenly Caleb Plummer clutches Tilly Slowboy by both
hands and goes off at score, Miss Slowboy firm in the belief that diving
hotly in among the couples, and effecting any number of concussions with
them, is your only principle of footing it, and ecstatically glad to
abandon herself to the delights of the occasion, so long as she sees joy
written again on the pretty face of her beloved little mistress, and
feels that happiness has been restored to honest John Peerybingle and
his family.

Hark! How the Cricket on the Hearth joins in the music, with its Chirp,
Chirp, Chirp, and how the kettle hums!

AGNES WICKFIELD

[Illustration: AGNES WICKFIELD]

AGNES WICKFIELD

When I became the adopted son of my aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood, my new
clothes were marked Trotwood Copperfield, instead of the old familiar
David of my childhood; and I began my new life, not only in the new
name, but with everything new about me, and felt for many days like one
in a dream, until I had proved the happy reality to be a fact.

My aunt's first desire was to place me in a good school at Canterbury,
and, lack of education having been my chief source of anxiety, this
resolve gave me unbounded delight. So it was with a flutter of joyful
anticipation that I accompanied her to Canterbury to call upon her agent
and friend Mr. Wickfield, and to confer with him upon the all-important
subject of schools and boarding places.

Arriving at Canterbury, we stopped before a very old house, bulging out
over the road, with long low latticed windows bulging out still further,
and beams with carved heads on the ends bulging out too; so that I
fancied the whole house was leaning forward, trying to see who was
passing on the pavement below. It was quite spotless in its cleanliness.
The old-fashioned brass knocker on the low arched door, ornamented with
carved garlands of fruit and flowers, twinkled like a star; the two
stone steps descending to the door were as white as if they had been
covered with fair linen, and all the angles, and corners, and carvings,
and mouldings, and quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little
windows, were as pure as any snow that ever fell upon the hills.

When the pony chaise stopped at the door, we alighted and had a long
conference with Mr. Wickfield, an elderly gentleman with grey hair and
black eyebrows. He approved of my aunt's selection of