Or, if she were in a very sedate and serious state of mind, she would sit down with the tablets, and a little basket of bills and other documents, which looked more like curl-papers than anything else, and endeavour to get some result out of them. After severely comparing one with another, and making entries on the tablets, and blotting them out, and counting all the fingers of her left hand over and over again, backwards and forwards, she would be so vexed and discouraged, and would look so unhappy, that it gave me pain to see her bright face clouded⁠—and for me!⁠—and I would go softly to her, and say:

“What’s the matter, Dora?”

Dora would look up hopelessly, and reply, “They won’t come right. They make my head ache so. And they won’t do anything I want!”

Then I would say, “Now let us try together. Let me show you, Dora.”