a door into a court-yard,
where a number of boys were collected, and a great noise of shrill
voices might be heard. "Go it, Turk!" says one. "Go it, barber!" says
another. "PUNCH HITH LIFE OUT!" roars another, whose voice was just
cracked, and his clothes half a yard too short for him!

Fancy our horror when, on the crowd making way, we saw Tug pummelling
away at the Honorable Master MacTurk! My dear Jemmy, who don't
understand such things, pounced upon the two at once, and, with one hand
tearing away Tug, sent him spinning back into the arms of his seconds,
while, with the other, she clawed hold of Master MacTurk's red hair,
and, as soon as she got her second hand free, banged it about his face
and ears like a good one.

"You nasty--wicked--quarrelsome--aristocratic" (each word was a
bang)--"aristocratic--oh! oh! oh!"--Here the words stopped; for what
with the agitation, maternal solicitude, and a dreadful kick on the
shins which, I am ashamed to say, Master MacTurk administered, my dear
Jemmy could bear it no longer, and sunk fainting away in my arms.

DOWN AT BEULAH.

Although there was a regular cut between the next-door people and us,
yet Tug and the Honorable Master MacTurk kept up their acquaintance
over the back-garden wall, and in the stables, where they were fighting,
making friends, and playing tricks from morning to night, during the
holidays. Indeed, it was from young Mac that we first heard of Madame
de Flicflac, of whom my Jemmy robbed Lady Kilblazes, as I before have
related. When our friend the Baron first saw Madame, a very tender
greeting passed between them; for they had, as it appeared, been old
friends abroad. "Sapristie," said the Baron, in his lingo, "que fais-tu
ici, Amenaide?" "Et toi, mon pauvre Chicot," says she, "est-ce qu'on
t'a mis a la retraite? Il parait que tu n'es plus General chez Franco--"
"CHUT!" says the Baron, putting his finger to his lips.

"What are they saying, my dear?" says my wife to Jemimarann, who had a
pretty knowledge of the language by this time.

"I don't know what 'Sapristie' means, mamma; but the Baron asked Madame
what she was doing here? and Madame said, 'And you, Chicot, you are no
more a General at Franco.'--Have I not translated rightly, Madame?"

"Oui, mon chou, mon ange. Yase, my angel, my cabbage, quite right.
Figure yourself, I have known my dear Chicot dis twenty years."

"Chicot is my name of baptism," says the Baron; "Baron Chicot de Punter