om-cat of Bill Squeers come prowling arter the birds again,
I knows. I've sworn I'll pison him some day; and, by the Lord, too, I
will, if he's bin and gone and meddled with `Ally Sloper'!"

"Aye, Thomas Bowling, just you stick to that," said mother, spurring him
on to instant vengeance, fearing that father's loudly expressed
animosity to our namesake the cat would evaporate, as it invariably did,
after the cause of the commotion had made off. "The nasty beast nearly
frightened one of Jenny's canaries to death the other day; but I gave
him one with my broom-handle which made him scoot, I can tell you, the
brute not having come back into the garden again, as I knows of, till
to-day!"

So saying, mother disappeared, with her potent broomstick, behind the
hedge of evergreens that shut off the backyard from our garden, in the
wake of father and Jenny, who, being more speedy in their movements,
were already out of sight.

Mick looked at me, and I looked at Mick; and then the two of us burst
into a roar of laughter as we followed up the chase to see the end of
it.

We arrived just in time.

Jocko, who, as may be supposed, was the originator of all the row, had
got up into the mulberry-tree, the cockatoo's own especial domain, and,
chattering and making faces at the bird, had clutched hold of one of his
legs in his hand-like paw, trying to pull him from his perch.

This `Ally Sloper' resisted with all his might and main, hanging from a
branch of the tree with the claw that was free, while he pecked and bit
the monkey with his nut-cracker beak, making Jocko wince and snarl and
pull all the harder to get him into his clutches, the cockatoo screaming
like mad, as I have said, all the while!

"Lor'!" exclaimed mother, holding up her hands at this sight, just as we
came up, "it ain't Squeers's cat after all! How ever did that there
monkey get here?"

"It must have broken loose from some place near," said Jenny. "The
milkman told me this morning that Smith, the fancier, had one the other
day which crammed a lot of cinders down the baby's throat and nearly
killed it, and that Mr Smith was obliged to get rid of it."

"Then, this can't be that chap," said father, sitting down in his old
armchair under the tree and looking up at Jocko, who had released `Ally
Sloper' on our approach and gone up aloft in one of the topmost
branches. "I'd bet 'arf-a-crown now, Sarah, as how them two youngsters
here could tell us summat o' t