1920-12-18 — Page 7

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1920.

"The Cricket on the Hearth

chirp.

A SEASONABLE DICKENS' STORY.

MISUNDERSTANDING

CHIRP THE FIRST.

BUT A HAPPY

END.

THE CHINA MAIL."

Where the baby came from, or bow special cognisanca (though in her Mrs. Peerybingle got hold of it in that earliest teens) of this grouping; and flash of time, I don't know. But a fire stood with her mouth and eyes wide. baby there was, in Airs. Feery bingle's open, and her head thrust forward, arms; and a pretty tolerable amount taking it in as it were air. Nor of pride she seemed to have in was it less agreeable to observe how it, when she was draws gently to the John the carrier, reference being fire, by a sturdy figure of a man, made by Dot to the aforesaid baby. much taler and much older than checked his hand when on the paint herself, who had to stoop a long way of touching the Infant, as if he down to kiss her. But she was worth thought he might crack it: and the trouble. Six foot six, with the bending down, surveyed it from a safe distance, with a kind of puzzled pride, lumbago, might have done it.

such as an amiable mastiff Wight be supposed to show if he found himself, one day, the father of a young pary,

Oh, goodness, John!" said Mrs. P.." What a state you're in with the weather!""

He was something the worse for it, undeniably. The thick mise hung in clets upon his eyelashes like candied thaw; and, between the fog and fre together, there were rainbows in his very whiskers.

"Air' he beautiful, John? Don't he lock precious in his sleep?”

"Yer precious," said John. "Very much. He gen rally is asleep, ain't he

“Why; you see, Dot," John made "Lor. John! God gracious, no!

slowly. as te unrolled "Ob," sai Joh, pondering. "I answer a shawl from about his throat, and thought his eyes wis generally shut. warmed his bands; it ain't Holla!" exactly summer weather. So no

'Goodness, Jolin, how you startle one!"

It at right for him to turn 'em

never malidlin nightingale yet formed Yet they whet very well together, the cricket and the kettle. The the least idea of.

So plain, too! Bless you, you burden of the song was still the might have understood it like a book same; and louder, louder, loader still, -better than some books you and I they sang it in their emulation:

The fair little listener for fair she could name, perhaps. With its w breath gushing forth in a light cloud was, and young; through something which merrily and gracefully ascend-of what is called the dumpling shape; ed a few feet, then hung about the but I don't myself object to that chimmer-corner as its own dumestic lighted a candle, glanced at the heaven, it trolled its song with thathaymaker on the top of the clock, strong energy of cheerfulness, that who was getting in a pretty average its iron body hammed and stirred crop of minutes; and looked out of upon the fire; and the lid itself, the the window, where she saw nothing. recently rebellious lid-such is the owing to the darkness, but her own influence of a bright example face imaged in the glass. And my -performed a sort of jig, and clat-opinion is (and so would yours have tered like a deaf and dumb cymbal been). that she might have looked a that had never known the use of its long way, and seen nothing half so agreeable. When she came back, twin brother.

That this song of the kettle's was and sat down in her former seat, the the kettle were a song of invitation and welcome cricket, and to somebody out of doors to some still keeping it up, with a perfect fury body at that moment coming on, of competition. The kettle's weak side ton ards the snug and small home clearly being that he didn't know There was all the excitement of a and the crisp fire there is no doubt when he was beat. whatever. Mrs. Feerybingle knew

race about it. Chirp, chirp, chirp! wonder."

"I wish you wouldn't call me Dot, fit, perfectly, as she sat masing before

the hearth. It's a dark night, sang Cricket a mile ahead. Ham, ham the kettle, and the rotten leaves are hur! Kettle roaking play in John. I don't like it," said Mrs up in that way!" said the astonished lying by the way; and, above, all is the distance, like a great top. Chirp, Peerybingle pouring in a way that carrier, "is it? See how he wink- mist and darkness, and, below, all is chirp, chirp! Cricket round the cor-clearly showed she did like it very in with both of 'em at o el and lak his mouth! Why, he's mire and clay; and there's only one ner. Hum, Auct, ham! Kenle much.

Why, what else are you?" regasping like a gold and silve. "th!" relief in all the sad and murky air; sticking to him in his own way: no to the

and I don't know that it is one, for idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp turned John, looking down upon her You don't deserve to be a father. it's nothing but a glare of deep and Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, bum with a smile, and giving her waist as you don't," said Det, with all the "A dot and "— "But how should you know angry criasson, where the sun and hu Kettle slow and steady tight a squeeze as his huge band and dignity of an experienced matron. wind together set a brand upon the Chirp chirp, chirp! Cricket going in arm could give.

widest and the

open Kettle not to be Enished. Until and carry--I won't say it, for fear I troubled with, John! You wouldn't clouds for being guilty of such to finish him. Bu, hum, humm here he glanced at the baby a dor what little complaints children are weather;

long dull streak at last, they got so jumbled together, should spoil it; but I was very near so much as know their names, you country is of black; and there's hoar-frost in the bony skutry, belter-skelter, of a joke. I don't know as ever I was stupid fellow. And when she hid

thaw the match, that whether the kettle nearer."

turned the baby over on her left arm, the finger-past, and

He was often near to something ur and had slapped its back as a restora- upon, the track; and the ice chirped and the cricket hammed, or it is

the water, and

water the cricket chirped and the kettle other very clever, by his own account, tive, she pinched her husband's eir, isn't free; and you couldn't say that hummed, or they both chirped" and this lumbering slow, honest John; laughing. anything is what it ought to be; but both hummed, it would have taken a this John so heavy, but so light of he's coming, coming, coming-

clearer head that yours or mine to sprit; so rough upon the surface. And here, if you like, the cricket have decided with anything kebut so gentle a: the core; so dull did chime in, with a chirrup, chirrup. certainty. Bat of this, there is no chirre of such magnitude, by way I doubt that the kettle and the cricket, at one and the same moment, and by of choras; with with a voice so astoundingly disproportionate to its some power of amalgamation best size, as compared with the kettle known to themselves, sent, each, his (sizel you couldn't see it!). that if it fireside song of comfort streaming had then and there burst itself like into a ray of the candle that shone out through the window, and along way down the lane. And this light, bursting on a certain person who, on the instant, approached towards it through the gloom, expressed the whole, thing to him, literally in a Welcome twinkling, and cried. home, old fellow! Welcome home, my boy!"

position in Euclid all about the little hands against each other, and Peerybingle filled sat dawn before the kettle, laughing. yard - Mrs. the kettle at the water butt. Presently Meantime, the jolly blaze uprose The kettle began it! Don't tell returning, less the pattens (and aand fell, fashing and gleaming en me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. good deal less, for they were tall and the little baymaker at the top of the know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may Mrs. Peerybingle was but short), she Dutch clock, until one might have leave it on record to the end of time set the kettle on the fire. In doing thought he stood still before, the that she couldn't say which of them which she lost her temper, or mislaid Moorish palace, and nothing was in began it; but I say the kettle did it for an instant; for the water being motion but the fame. ought to know, I hope? The kettle uncomfortably cold, and in that He was on the more, however: began it. full five minutes by the shippy, slushy, sirety sort of state and had his spasms, two little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the wherein it seems to penetrate second, all right and regular. But corner, before the cricket uttered a through every kind of substance, his sufferings when the clock was patien rings included, had laid hold going to strike were frightful to be As if the clock hadn't finished of Mrs. Peerybingle's toes, and even hold; and, when a cuckoo looked out striking, and the convulsive little splashed her legs. And when we of a trapdoor in the palace, and haymaker at the top of it, jerking rather plume ourselves (with reason: gave out six times, it shook him, away right and left with a scythe in too) upon our legs, and keep ourselves each time, like a spectral voice-or front of a Moorish palace, hadn't particularly neat in point of stockings, e a something wiry, plucking at mowed down half an acre of we find this, for the moment, hard to his legs.

It was not until a viclent commo- imaginary grass before the cricket bear. joined in at all!

Besides, the kettle was aggravating tion and a whirring noise among the Why, I am not naturally positive and obstinate. Ia wouldn't allow weights and ropes below him subsided, that this Every one knows that I wouldn't itself to be adjusted on the top bar had quite set my own opinion against the it wouldn't hear of accommodating terrified baymaker became him. opinion of Mrs. Pearybingle, un-itself kindly to the knobs of coal; itself again. Nor was he startled less I were quite sure, on any would lean forward with a drunken without reason; for these rattling, account whatever. Nothing should air, and dribble, a very idiot of a bony skeletons of clocks are very induce me. But this is a question kettle, on the hearth. It was quarrel- disconcerting in their operation, and of fact. And the fact is, that the some, and hissed and spluttered I kettle began it, at least five minutes morosely at the fire. To sum up all, before the cricket gave any sign of the lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's being in existence. Contradict me, fingers, first of all turned topsy-turvy, and I'll say text.

and then, with an ingenious pertina

Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have proceeded to do so, in my very first word, but for this plain consideration-if I am to tell a story I must begin at the beginning; and how is it possible to begin at the beginning, without beginning at the kettle?

It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial of skill, you must understand, between the kettle and the cricket. And this is what led to it, and how it came about.

on

2

wonder very much how any set of mer, but most of all how Dutchmen can have had a liking to invent them. For there is a popular belief that an overcharged gun, if it had fallen Dutchmen love broad eases and much a victim on the spot, and chirruped city deserving of a better cause, dived clothing for their own lower selves:its ttle body into fifty pieces, it the very and they might know better than to would have seemed a natural and sideways in-down to bottom of the kettle. And the bull leave their clocks so very lank and inevitable consequence, for which it

bad expressy laboured. of the Royal George has never made unprotected, surely. half the monstrous resistance to coming out of the water, which the lid of that kettle employed agamat Mrs. Peerybingle, before she got it up again.

Now it was, you observe, that the kettle began to spend the evening. Now it was, that the kettle, growing mellow and musical, began to have irrepressible gurglings in its throat,

The kettle had had the last of its solo "performance. It persevered with undiminished ardour; but the

This end attained, the kettle, being cricket took first fddle and kept it Good Heavens, how it chirped! dead beat, boiled over, and was taken shril sharp. piercing off the fire. Mrs. Peerybingle then It looked sullen and pig-headed and to indulge in short vocal snorts, Its..

resounded through thewert running to the door, where, enough, even then; carrying its which it checked in the bad, as if it voice

what with the wheels of a cart, the handle with an air of defiance, and hadn't quite made up its mind yet, house, and seemed to twinkle in

star. tramp of a horse, the voice of a man, cocking its spout pertly and mocking to be good company. Now it was, the oater darkness like, a Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into y at Mrs. Peerybingie, as if it said, that after two or three sech vain There was an indescribable little the tearing in and out of an excited the raw twilight, and clicking over "I won't boil. Nothing shall induce attempts to stifle its convivial senti-thrill and tremble in it, at its dog, and the surprising and mysteri- ments, it threw of all moroseness, foudest, which suggested its being ous appearance of a baby, there was the wet stones in a pair of pattens me!" that

But M.3. Feerybingle, with restored all reserve, and burst into a stream carried of its legs, made to leap soon the very what's his name to worked innumerable rough i impressions of the first pro- good-humour, dusted her chubby of song so cosy, and hilarious, as again, by its own intense enthusiasm pay.

without, so quick within; so stolid, but so good! Mother Nature give thy children the true poetry of heart that hid itself in this poor

carrier's breast-be was but a carrier

by the way and we can bear to have them talking prose, and leading prose: and bear to bless lives

thee for their company!

No, said John, palling off his outer coat. "It's very true, Dat. I don't know much about it. I only know that I've been fighting pretty stiffly with the wind to-night. It's been blowing north-east, straight into the cart, the whole way home."

"Poor old man, so it has!" cried

*Here! Take the Mrs. Peerybingle, instantly becoming very active. precious darling, Tilly, while I make myself of some use. Bless it, I could It was pleasant to see Dot, with smother it with kissing it, I could! her little figure and her baby in her Hie then, good dog! Hie, Barer, arms a very doll of a baby-gian boy! Only let me make the tea first, cing with a coquettish thoughtfulness John and then I'll help you with at the fire, and inclining her delicate the parcels, like a busy bee. How let it rest in an odd, half-natural, it, you know. John. Did you ever little head just enough on one side to doth the little and all the rest of half-affected, wholly nestling and learn how doth the little' when you agreeable manner, on the great rug went to school, John?".

It was "Not to quite know it," John ged figure of the carrier.

"I was very near it pleasant to see him, with his tender returned

But I should only have awkwardness, endeavouring to adapt his rude support to her slight need, spoiled it, I dare say.” and make his barly middle-age a leaningstaff not inappropriate to her blooming youth. If was pleasant to

in the background for the baby, took observe how Tilly Slowboy, waiting

once.

"Ha, ta," laughed Dot. She bad the blithest little laugh you ever heard. "What a dear old darling of a dunce you are, John, to be sure !"

(Continued on Page 3)"

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