by the fires!"

With that unaccountable attraction of the mind to trifles, which is
often incidental to a state of doubt and confusion, the Carrier, as he
walked slowly to and fro, found himself mentally repeating even these
absurd words, many times. So many times, that he got them by heart, and
was still conning them over and over, like a lesson, when Tilly, after
administering as much friction to the little bald head with her hand as
she thought wholesome (according to the practice of nurses), had once
more tied the Baby's cap on.

"And frighten it, a precious Pets, a sitting by the fires. What
frightened Dot, I wonder?" mused the Carrier, pacing to and fro.

He scouted, from his heart, the insinuations of the toy merchant, and
yet they filled him with a vague, indefinite uneasiness. For Tackleton
was quick and sly; and he had that painful sense, himself, of being a
man of slow perception, that a broken hint was always worrying to him.
He certainly had no intention in his mind of linking anything that
Tackleton had said with the unusual conduct of his wife, but the two
subjects of reflection came into his mind together, and he could not
keep them asunder.

The bed was soon made ready; and the visitor, declining all refreshment
but a cup of tea, retired. Then, Dot--quite well again, she said, quite
well again--arranged the great chair in the chimney-corner for her
husband; filled his pipe and gave it him; and took her usual little
stool beside him on the hearth.

She always _would_ sit on that little stool. I think she must have had a
kind of notion that it was a coaxing, wheedling little stool.

She was, out and out, the very best filler of a pipe, I should say, in
the four quarters of the globe. To see her put that chubby little finger
in the bowl, and then blow down the pipe to clear the tube, and, when
she had done so, affect to think that there was really something in the
tube, and blow a dozen times, and hold it to her eye like a telescope,
with a most provoking twist in her capital little face, as she looked
down it, was quite a brilliant thing. As to the tobacco, she was perfect
mistress of the subject; and her lighting of the pipe, with a wisp of
paper, when the Carrier had it in his mouth--going so very near his
nose, and yet not scorching it--was Art, high Art.

And the Cricket and the Kettle, turning up again, acknowledged it! The
bright fire, blazing up again, acknowledged it! The little Mower on t