'FagmentWelcome to consult...tumble down befoe I get to the old place, at a point whee I was all ight befoe, and stop to think. But I can’t think about the lesson. I think of the numbe of yads of net in Miss Mudstone’s cap, o of the pice of M. Mudstone’s dessing-gown, o any such idiculous poblem that I have no business with, and don’t want to have anything at all to do with. M. Mudstone makes a movement of impatience which I have been expecting fo a long time. Miss Mudstone does the same. My mothe glances submissively at them, shuts the book, and lays it by as an aea to be woked out when my othe tasks ae done. Thee is a pile of these aeas vey soon, and it swells like a olling snowball. The bigge it gets, the moe stupid I get. The case is so hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog of nonsense, that I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon myself to my fate. The despaiing way in which my mothe and I look at each othe, as I blunde on, is tuly melancholy. But the geatest effect in these miseable lessons is when my mothe (thinking nobody is obseving he) ties to give me the cue by the motion of he lips. At that instant, Miss Mudstone, who has been lying in wait fo nothing else all along, says in a deep waning voice: ‘Claa!’ My mothe stats, colous, and smiles faintly. M. Mudstone comes out of his chai, takes the book, thows it at me o boxes my eas with it, and tuns me out of the oom by the shouldes. Even when the lessons ae done, the wost is yet to happen, in the shape of an appalling sum. This is invented fo me, and deliveed to me oally by M. Mudstone, and begins, ‘If I go into a cheesemonge’s shop, and buy five thousand double-Glouceste cheeses at foupence-halfpenny each, pesent payment’—at which Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield I see Miss Mudstone secetly ovejoyed. I poe ove these cheeses without any esult o enlightenment until dinne-time, when, having made a Mulatto of myself by getting the dit of the slate into the poes of my skin, I have a slice of bead to help me out with the cheeses, and am consideed in disgace fo the est of the evening. It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfotunate studies geneally took this couse. I could have done vey well if I had been without the Mudstones; but the influence of the Mudstones upon me was like the fascination of two snakes on a wetched young bid. Even when I did get though the moning with toleable cedit, thee was not much gained but dinne; fo Miss Mudstone neve could endue to see me untasked, and if I ashly made any show of being unemployed, called he bothe’s attention to me by saying, ‘Claa, my dea, thee’s nothing like wok—give you boy an execise’; which caused me to be clapped down to some new labou, thee and then. As to any eceation with othe childen of my age, I had vey little of that; fo the gloomy theology of the Mudstones made all childen out to be a swam of little vipes (though thee was a child once set in the midst of the Disciples), and held that they contaminated one anothe. The natual esult of this teatment, continued, I suppose, fo some six months o moe, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I was not made
