r, I am lonely in the dark. I want my eyes, my patient,
willing eyes."_ 103

_"A dot and--" here he glanced at the baby--"A dot and carry--I
won't say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near
a joke."_ 108

_Tilly Slowboy_ 112

_"That's the way I found him, sitting by the roadside! Upright as
a milestone."_ 118

_When suddenly, the struggling fire illuminated the whole chimney
with a glow of light; and the Cricket on the Hearth began
to chirp!_ 166

[Illustration]

THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH

A FAIRY TALE OF HOME

CHIRP THE FIRST

The kettle began it! Don't tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I know
better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of time that
she couldn't say which of them began it; but I say the kettle did. I
ought to know, I hope? The kettle began it, full five minutes by the
little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the corner, before the Cricket uttered
a chirp.

As if the clock hadn't finished striking, and the convulsive little
Hay-maker at the top of it, jerking away right and left with a scythe in
front of a Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre of imaginary
grass before the Cricket joined in at all!

Why, I am not naturally positive. Every one knows that I wouldn't set my
own opinion against the opinion of Mrs. Peerybingle, unless I were quite
sure, on any account whatever. Nothing should induce me. But, this is a
question of fact. And the fact is, that the kettle began it at least
five minutes before the Cricket gave any sign of being in existence.
Contradict me, and I'll say ten.

Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have proceeded to do
so, in my very first word, but for this plain consideration--if I am to
tell a story I must begin at the beginning; and how is it possible to
begin at the beginning without beginning at the kettle?

It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial of skill, you
must understand, between the kettle and the Cricket. And this is what
led to it, and how it came about.

Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight, and clicking over the
wet stones in a pair of pattens that worked innumerable rough
impressions of the first proposition in Euc