bles and chairs, to avoid stepping upon the floor,
Mrs. B. obtained the desired weapon. It was then much better than a
play to behold that heroic woman defying grimalkin from her eminence,
and to listen to the changeful dialogue which ensued between herself
and that far from dumb, though inarticulately speaking animal.

"Puss, puss, pussy--poor pussy."

"Miau, miau, miau," was the linked shrillness, long drawn out, of the
feline reply.

"Poor old puss, then, was it ill? Puss, puss. Henry, the horrid beast
is going to fly at me! Whist, whist, cat."

"Ps-s-s-s. ps-s-s-s, miau; ps-s-s-s-s-s-s-s," replied the other, in a
voice like fat in the fire.

"My dear love," cried I, almost suffocated with a combination of
laughter and quinsy; "you have never opened the door; where is the
poor thing to run to?"

Mrs. B. had all this time been exciting the bewildered animal to
frenzy by her conversation and shovel, without giving it the
opportunity to escape, which, as soon as offered, it took advantage
of with an expression of savage impatience partaking very closely
indeed of the character of an oath.

This is, however, the sole instance of Mrs. B.'s having ever taken it
in hand to subdue her own alarms. It is I who, ever since her
marriage, have done the duty, and more than the duty, of an efficient
house-dog, which before that epoch, I understand, was wont to be
discharged by one of her younger sisters. Not seldom, in these
involuntary rounds of mine, I have become myself the cause of alarm
or inconvenience to others. Our little foot-page, with a courage
beyond his years, and a spirit worthy of a better cause, very nearly
transfixed me with the kitchen spit as I was trying, upon one
occasion, the door of his own pantry. Upon another nocturnal
expedition, I ran against a human body in the dark--that turned out
to be my brother-in-law's, who was also in search of robbers--with a
shock to both our nervous systems such as they have not yet recovered
from. It fell to my lot, upon a third, to discover one of the rural
police up in our attics, where, in spite of the increased powers
lately granted to the county constabulary, I could scarcely think he
was entitled to be. I once presented myself, an uninvited guest, at a
select morning entertainment--it was at 1.30 A.M.--given by our hired
London cook to nearly a dozen of her male and female friends. No
wonder that Mrs. B. had "staked her existence" that night that she
had heard