APTER 14 MY AUNT MAKES UP HER MIND ABOUT ME

　　Besides which, all  that I could  have said of  the Story to  any purpose, I had endeavoured to say in it.

　　It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how sorrowfully the pen  is laid down at the close of a two-years' imaginative task; or how an Author  feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when  a crowd of the  creatures of his  brain are going  from him for  ever.  Yet, I had nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which might be of  less moment still), that no one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I believed it in the writing.

　　So true  are these  avowals at  the present  day, that  I can  now only take the reader into one  confidence more.  Of  all my books,  I like this  the best.  It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy,  and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them.  But, like  many fond parents, I have in my heart  of hearts a favourite child.  And his  name is DAVID COPPERFIELD. 1869

　　APTER 14 MY AUNT MAKES UP HER MIND ABOUT ME

　　On going  down in  the morning,  I found  my aunt  musing so profoundly over the breakfast table, with her  elbow on the tray,  that the contents of  the urn had overflowed the teapot and were laying the whole table-cloth under water, when my entrance put her meditations to flight.  I felt sure that I had been the subject of  her reflections,  and was  more than  ever anxious  to know  her  intentions towards  me.  Yet  I dared  not express  my anxiety,  lest it  should give   her offence.

　　My eyes, however, not being so  much under control as my tongue,  were attracted towards my aunt very  often during breakfast.  I  never could look at  her for a few moments  together but  I found  her looking  at me  - in  an odd  thoughtful manner, as if I were an immense way  off, instead of being on the other side  of the  small round  table.  When  she had  finished her  breakfast, my  aunt  very deliberately leaned back in her chair,  knitted her brows, folded her arms,  and contemplated me at her  leisure, with such a  fixedness of attention that  I was quite  overpowered  by  embarrassment.   Not  having  as  yet  finished  my  own breakfast, I attempted to hide my confusion by proceeding with it; but my  knife tumbled over my  fork, my fork  tripped up my  knife, I chipped  bits of bacon a surprising height into the  air instead of cutting  them for my own  eating, and choked myself with my tea, which persisted in going the wrong way instead of the right one, until I  gave in altogether, and  sat blushing under my  aunt's close scrutiny.