prepense; she
constructed a head and torso with her usual care; but just then her
attention was distracted, and she left the rest to chance; the result
was a human wedge, an inverted cone. He might justly have taken her to
task in the terms of Horace,

"Amphora coepit
Institui; currente rota cur urceus exit?"

His centre was anything but his centre of gravity. Bisected, upper Giles
would have outweighed three lower Giles. But this very disproportion
enabled him to do feats that would have baffled Milo. His brawny arms
had no weight to draw after them; so he could go up a vertical pole like
a squirrel, and hang for hours from a bough by one hand like a cherry by
its stalk. If he could have made a vacuum with his hands, as the lizard
is said to do with its feet, he would have gone along a ceiling. Now,
this pocket-athlete was insanely fond of gripping the dinner-table with
both hands, and so swinging; and then--climax of delight! he would seize
it with his teeth, and, taking off his hands, hold on like grim death by
his huge ivories.

But all our joys, however elevating, suffer interruption. Little Kate
caught Sampsonet in this posture, and stood aghast. She was her mother's
daughter, and her heart was with the furniture, not with the 12mo
gymnast.

"Oh, Giles! how can you? Mother is at hand. It dents the table."

"Go and tell her, little tale-bearer," snarled Giles. "You are the one
for making mischief."

"Am I?" inquired Kate calmly; "that is news to me."

"The biggest in Tergou," growled Giles, fastening on again.

"Oh, indeed!" said Kate drily.

This piece of unwonted satire launched, and Giles not visibly blasted,
she sat down quietly and cried.

Her mother came in almost at that moment, and Giles hurled himself under
the table, and there glared.

"What is to do now?" said the dame sharply. Then turning her experienced
eyes from Kate to Giles, and observing the position he had taken up, and
a sheepish expression, she hinted at cuffing of ears.

"Nay, mother," said the girl; "it was but a foolish word Giles spoke.
I had not noticed it at another time; but I was tired and in care for
Gerard, you know."

"Let no one be in care for me," said a faint voice at the door, and in
tottered Gerard, pale, dusty, and worn out; and amidst uplifted hands
and cries of delight, curiosity, and anxiety mingled, dropped exhausted
into the nearest chair.

Beating Rotterdam, like a covert, for Margaret, and t