unes
had reduced her to such mildness that her name became converted--as she
expressed it--in harmony with her nature. Facts having generally been
adverse to her, she found some comfort in warm affection for their
natural enemies and ever-victorious rivals--words. Any words coming with
a brave rush are able to scatter to the winds the strongest facts; but
big words--as all our great orators know--knock them at once on the head
and cremate them. But the cook was a kind-hearted woman, and liked both
little and big words, without thinking of them.

She had put down her joint, a good aitch-bone, for roasting--than which,
if well treated, are few better treats--to revolve in the distant salute
of the fire (until it should ripen for the close embrace, where the
tints of gold and chestnut vie), when it came into her provident mind
with a flash that neither horse-radish nor cauliflower had yet been
delivered by Mr. Swipes. She must run out and pull the long handle in
the yard, and remind him gently of her needs, for she stood in some awe
of his character, as a great annalist of little people's lives.

Leaving the small dog Dandolo with stern orders to keep the jack
steadily going, with a stick on the dresser to intimidate one eye, and
a sop in the dripping-pan to encourage the other, Mrs. Knuckledown ran
into the court-yard, just in time to see the last swing of the skirt of
that noble gardener's coat, as he turned the wall corner on his march
towards the tap. She longed to call him back, but remembered just in
time how fearfully cross that had made him once before, and she was
yielding with a sigh to her usual bad luck, when an eager and triumphant
cluck made her look about. The monarch and patriarch of cocks, a
magnificent old Dorking, not idly endowed with five claws for the
scratch, had discovered something great, and was calling all his wives,
and even his sons, as many as yet crowed not against him, to share this
special luck of fortune, or kind mood of Providence. In a minute or two
he had levied an army, some half-hundred strong, and all spurring the
land, to practise their liberal claws betimes for the gorgeous joy of
scattering it. Then the grand old cock, whose name was "Bill," made
them all fall in behind him, and strutting till he almost tumbled on his
head, led the march of destruction to the garden door.

But, alas, he had waited for his followers too long, eager as they were
for rapine. When he came to his por