naughty boy such a life, if he don’t make you go. I shall make myself so disagreeable—and so will Jip! You’ll wish you had gone, like a good thing, for ever and ever so long, if you don’t go. Besides,” said Dora, putting back her hair, and looking wonderingly at my aunt and me, “why shouldn’t you both go? I am not very ill indeed. Am I?”
“Why, what a question!” cried my aunt.
“What a fancy!” said I.
“Yes! I know I am a silly little thing!” said Dora, slowly looking from one of us to the other, and then putting up her pretty lips to kiss us as she lay upon her couch. “Well, then, you must both go, or I shall not believe you; and then I shall cry!”
I saw, in my aunt’s face, that she began to give way now, and Dora brightened again, as she saw it too.
“You’ll come back with so much to tell me, that it’ll take at least a week to make me understand!” said Dora. “Because I know I shan’t understand, for a length of time, if there’s any business in it. And there’s sure to be some business in it! If there’s anything to add up, besides, I don’t know when I shall make it out; and my bad boy will look so miserable all the time. There! Now you’ll go, won’t you? You’ll only be gone one night, and Jip will take care of me while you are gone. Doady will carry me upstairs before you go, and I won’t come down again till you come back; and you shall take Agnes a dreadfully scolding letter from me, because she has never been to see us!”
We agreed, without any more consultation, that we would both go, and that Dora was a little impostor, who feigned to be rather unwell, because she liked to be petted. She was greatly pleased, and very merry; and we four, that is to say, my aunt, Mr. Dick, Traddles, and I, went down to Canterbury by the Dover mail that night.