lid all about the yard--Mrs.
Peerybingle filled the kettle at the water-butt. Presently returning,
less the pattens (and a good deal less, for they were tall, and Mrs.
Peerybingle was but short), she set the kettle on the fire. In doing
which she lost her temper, or mislaid it for an instant; for, the water
being uncomfortably cold, and in that slippy, slushy, sleety sort of
state wherein it seems to penetrate through every kind of substance,
patten rings included--had laid hold of Mrs. Peerybingle's toes, and
even splashed her legs. And when we rather plume ourselves (with reason
too) upon our legs, and keep ourselves particularly neat in point of
stockings, we find this, for the moment, hard to bear.

Besides, the kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn't allow
itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn't hear of accommodating
itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it _would_ lean forward with a
drunken air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle, on the hearth. It
was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered morosely at the fire. To sum
up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's fingers, first of all
turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious pertinacity deserving of
a better cause, dived sideways in--down to the very bottom of the
kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has never made half the
monstrous resistance to coming out of the water which the lid of that
kettle employed against Mrs. Peerybingle before she got it up again.

It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even then; carrying its handle
with an air of defiance, and cocking its spout pertly and mockingly at
Mrs. Peerybingle, as if it said, "I won't boil. Nothing shall induce
me!"

But, Mrs. Peerybingle, with restored good-humour, dusted her chubby
little hands against each other, and sat down before the kettle
laughing. Meantime, the jolly blaze uprose and fell, flashing and
gleaming on the little Hay-maker at the top of the Dutch clock, until
one might have thought he stood stock-still before the Moorish Palace,
and nothing was in motion but the flame.

He was on the move, however; and had his spasms, two to the second, all
right and regular. But his sufferings when the clock was going to strike
were frightful to behold; and when a Cuckoo looked out of a trap-door in
the Palace, and gave note six times, it shook him, each time, like a
spectral voice--or like a something wiry plucking at his legs.

It was not until a violent commoti