‘Done what, my dear?’ For she made no effort to proceed.

‘Nothing!’ said Dora.

‘Nothing?’ I repeated.

She put her arms round my neck, and laughed, and called herself by her favourite name of a goose, and hid her face on my shoulder in such a profusion of curls that it was quite a task to clear them away and see it.

‘Don’t I think it would have been better to have done nothing, than to have tried to form my little wife’s mind?’ said I, laughing at myself. ‘Is that the question?

Yes, indeed, I do.’

‘Is that what you have been trying?’ cried Dora. ‘Oh what a shocking boy!’