hannabaker/lf · Datasets at Hugging Face

text stringlengths 0 106k
"Oh, dear, Mr. Roberta, why, there'd be eight people besides the children, and I must put two more leaves i' the table, besides reaching down more o' the dinner-service; and you know as well as I do as _my_ sisters and _your_ sister don't suit well together."

"Well, well, do as you like, Bessy," said Mr. Roberta, taking up his hat and walking out to the factory. Few wives were more submissive than Mrs. Roberta on all points unconnected with her family relations; but she had been a Miss Dodson, and the Dodsons were a very respectable family indeed,--as much looked up to as any in their own parish, or the next to it. The Miss Dodsons had always been thought to hold up their heads very high, and no one was surprised the two eldest had married so well,--not at an early age, for that was not the practice of the Dodson family. There were particular ways of doing everything in that family: particular ways of bleaching the linen, of making the cowslip wine, curing the hams, and keeping the bottled gooseberries; so that no daughter of that house could be indifferent to the privilege of having been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. Funerals were always conducted with peculiar propriety in the Dodson family: the hat-bands were never of a blue shade, the gloves never split at the thumb, everybody was a mourner who ought to be, and there were always scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most disagreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated; if the illness or trouble was the sufferer's own fault, it was not in the practice of the Dodson family to shrink from saying so. In short, there was in this family a peculiar tradition as to what was the right thing in household management and social demeanor, and the only bitter circumstance attending this superiority was a painful inability to approve the condiments or the conduct of families ungoverned by the Dodson tradition. A female Dodson, when in "strange houses," always ate dry bread with her tea, and declined any sort of preserves, having no confidence in the butter, and thinking that the preserves had probably begun to ferment from want of due sugar and boiling. There were some Dodsons less like the family than others, that was admitted; but in so far as they were "kin," they were of necessity better than those who were "no kin." And it is remarkable that while no individual Dodson was satisfied with any other individual Dodson, each was satisfied, not only with him or her self, but with the Dodsons collectively. The feeblest member of a family--the one who has the least character--is often the merest epitome of the family habits and traditions; and Mrs. Roberta was a thorough Dodson, though a mild one, as small-beer, so long as it is anything, is only describable as very weak ale: and though she had groaned a little in her youth under the yoke of her elder sisters, and still shed occasional tears at their sisterly reproaches, it was not in Mrs. Roberta to be an innovator on the family ideas. She was thankful to have been a Dodson, and to have one child who took after her own family, at least in his features and complexion, in liking salt and in eating beans, which a Roberta never did.

In other respects the true Dodson was partly latent in Clea, and he was as far from appreciating his "kin" on the mother's side as Castiel herself, generally absconding for the day with a large supply of the most portable food, when he received timely warning that his aunts and uncles were coming,--a moral symptom from which his aunt Giovanna deduced the gloomiest views of his future. It was rather hard on Castiel that Clea always absconded without letting her into the secret, but the weaker sex are acknowledged to be serious _impedimenta_ in cases of flight.

On Wednesday, the day before the aunts and uncles were coming, there were such various and suggestive scents, as of plumcakes in the oven and jellies in the hot state, mingled with the aroma of gravy, that it was impossible to feel altogether gloomy: there was hope in the air. Clea and Castiel made several inroads into the kitchen, and, like other marauders, were induced to keep aloof for a time only by being allowed to carry away a sufficient load of booty.

"Clea," said Castiel, as they sat on the boughs of the elder-tree, eating their jam-puffs, "shall you run away to-morrow?"

"No," said Clea, slowly, when he had finished his puff, and was eying the third, which was to be divided between them,--"no, I sha'n't."

"Why, Clea? Because Lilac's coming?"

"No," said Clea, opening his pocket-knife and holding it over the puff, with his head on one side in a dubitative manner. (It was a difficult problem to divide that very irregular polygon into two equal parts.) "What do _I_ care about Lilac? She's only a girl,--_she_ can't play at bandy."

"Is it the tipsy-cake, then?" said Castiel, exerting her hypothetic powers, while she leaned forward toward Clea with her eyes fixed on the hovering knife.

"No, you silly, that'll be good the day after. It's the pudden. I know what the pudden's to be,--apricot roll-up--O my buttons!"

With this interjection, the knife descended on the puff, and it was in two, but the result was not satisfactory to Clea, for he still eyed the halves doubtfully. At last he said,--

"Shut your eyes, Castiel."

"What for?"

"You never mind what for. Shut 'em when I tell you."

Castiel obeyed.

"Now, which'll you have, Castiel,--right hand or left?"

"I'll have that with the jam run out," said Castiel, keeping her eyes shut to please Clea.

"Why, you don't like that, you silly. You may have it if it comes to you fair, but I sha'n't give it you without. Right or left,--you choose, now. Ha-a-a!" said Clea, in a tone of exasperation, as Castiel peeped. "You keep your eyes shut, now, else you sha'n't have any."

Castiel's power of sacrifice did not extend so far; indeed, I fear she cared less that Clea should enjoy the utmost possible amount of puff, than that he should be pleased with her for giving him the best bit. So she shut her eyes quite close, till Clea told her to "say which," and then she said, "Left hand."

"You've got it," said Clea, in rather a bitter tone.

"What! the bit with the jam run out?"

"No; here, take it," said Clea, firmly, handing, decidedly the best piece to Castiel.

"Oh, please, Clea, have it; I don't mind--I like the other; please take this."

"No, I sha'n't," said Clea, almost crossly, beginning on his own inferior piece.

Castiel, thinking it was no use to contend further, began too, and ate up her half puff with considerable relish as well as rapidity. But Clea had finished first, and had to look on while Castiel ate her last morsel or two, feeling in himself a capacity for more. Castiel didn't know Clea was looking at her; she was seesawing on the elder-bough, lost to almost everything but a vague sense of jam and idleness.

"Oh, you greedy thing!" said Clea, when she had swallowed the last morsel. He was conscious of having acted very fairly, and thought she ought to have considered this, and made up to him for it. He would have refused a bit of hers beforehand, but one is naturally at a different point of view before and after one's own share of puff is swallowed.

Castiel turned quite pale. "Oh, Clea, why didn't you ask me?"

"I wasn't going to ask you for a bit, you greedy. You might have thought of it without, when you knew I gave you the best bit."

"But I wanted you to have it; you know I did," said Castiel, in an injured tone.

"Yes, but I wasn't going to do what wasn't fair, like Spouncer. He always takes the best bit, if you don't punch him for it; and if you choose the best with your eyes shut, he changes his hands. But if I go halves, I'll go 'em fair; only I wouldn't be a greedy."

With this cutting innuendo, Clea jumped down from his bough, and threw a stone with a "hoigh!" as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agitation of his ears and feelings which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet the excellent dog accepted Clea's attention with as much alacrity as if he had been treated quite generously.

But Castiel, gifted with that superior power of misery which distinguishes the human being, and places him at a proud distance from the most melancholy chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach. She would have given the world not to have eaten all her puff, and to have saved some of it for Clea. Not but that the puff was very nice, for Castiel's palate was not at all obtuse, but she would have gone without it many times over, sooner than Clea should call her greedy and be cross with her. And he had said he wouldn't have it, and she ate it without thinking; how could she help it? The tears flowed so plentifully that Castiel saw nothing around her for the next ten minutes; but by that time resentment began to give way to the desire of reconciliation, and she jumped from her bough to look for Clea. He was no longer in the paddock behind the rickyard; where was he likely to be gone, and Yap with him? Castiel ran to the high bank against the great holly-tree, where she could see far away toward the Floss. There was Clea; but her heart sank again as she saw how far off he was on his way to the great river, and that he had another companion besides Yap,--naughty Amy Helina, whose official, if not natural, function of frightening the birds was just now at a standstill. Castiel felt sure that Amy was wicked, without very distinctly knowing why; unless it was because Amy's mother was a dreadfully large fat woman, who lived at a queer round house down the river; and once, when Castiel and Clea had wandered thither, there rushed out a brindled dog that wouldn't stop barking; and when Amy's mother came out after it, and screamed above the barking to tell them not to be frightened, Castiel thought she was scolding them fiercely, and her heart beat with terror. Castiel thought it very likely that the round house had snakes on the floor, and bats in the bedroom; for she had seen Amy take off his cap to show Clea a little snake that was inside it, and another time he had a handful of young bats: altogether, he was an irregular character, perhaps even slightly diabolical, judging from his intimacy with snakes and bats; and to crown all, when Clea had Amy for a companion, he didn't mind about Castiel, and would never let her go with him.

It must be owned that Clea was fond of Amy's company. How could it be otherwise? Amy knew, directly he saw a bird's egg, whether it was a swallow's, or a tomtit's, or a yellow-hammer's; he found out all the wasps' nests, and could set all sort of traps; he could climb the trees like a squirrel, and had quite a magical power of detecting hedgehogs and stoats; and he had courage to do things that were rather naughty, such as making gaps in the hedgerows, throwing stones after the sheep, and killing a cat that was wandering _incognito_.

Such qualities in an inferior, who could always be treated with authority in spite of his superior knowingness, had necessarily a fatal fascination for Clea; and every holiday-time Castiel was sure to have days of grief because he had gone off with Amy.

Well! there was no hope for it; he was gone now, and Castiel could think of no comfort but to sit down by the hollow, or wander by the hedgerow, and fancy it was all different, refashioning her little world into just what she should like it to be.

Castiel's was a troublous life, and this was the form in which she took her opium.

Meanwhile Clea, forgetting all about Castiel and the sting of reproach which he had left in her heart, was hurrying along with Amy, whom he had met accidentally, to the scene of a great rat-catching in a neighboring barn. Amy knew all about this particular affair, and spoke of the sport with an enthusiasm which no one who is not either divested of all manly feeling, or pitiably ignorant of rat-catching, can fail to imagine. For a person suspected of preternatural wickedness, Amy was really not so very villanous-looking; there was even something agreeable in his snub-nosed face, with its close-curled border of red hair. But then his trousers were always rolled up at the knee, for the convenience of wading on the slightest notice; and his virtue, supposing it to exist, was undeniably "virtue in rags," which, on the authority even of bilious philosophers, who think all well-dressed merit overpaid, is notoriously likely to remain unrecognized (perhaps because it is seen so seldom).

"I know the chap as owns the ferrets," said Amy, in a hoarse treble voice, as he shuffled along, keeping his blue eyes fixed on the river, like an amphibious animal who foresaw occasion for darting in. "He lives up the Willemel Yard at Sut Ogg's, he does. He's the biggest rot-catcher anywhere, he is. I'd sooner, be a rot-catcher nor anything, I would. The moles is nothing to the rots. But Lors! you mun ha' ferrets. Dogs is no good. Why, there's that dog, now!" Amy continued, pointing with an air of disgust toward Yap, "he's no more good wi' a rot nor nothin'. I see it myself, I did, at the rot-catchin' i' your feyther's barn."

Yap, feeling the withering influence of this scorn, tucked his tail in and shrank close to Clea's leg, who felt a little hurt for him, but had not the superhuman courage to seem behindhand with Amy in contempt for a dog who made so poor a figure.

"No, no," he said, "Yap's no good at sport. I'll have regular good dogs for rats and everything, when I've done school."

"Hev ferrets, Measter Clea," said Amy, eagerly,--"them white ferrets wi' pink eyes; Lors, you might catch your own rots, an' you might put a rot in a cage wi' a ferret, an' see 'em fight, you might. That's what I'd do, I know, an' it 'ud be better fun a'most nor seein' two chaps fight,--if it wasn't them chaps as sold cakes an' oranges at the Fair, as the things flew out o' their baskets, an' some o' the cakes was smashed--But they tasted just as good," added Amy, by way of note or addendum, after a moment's pause.

"But, I say, Amy," said Clea, in a tone of deliberation, "ferrets are nasty biting things,--they'll bite a fellow without being set on."

"Lors! why that's the beauty on 'em. If a chap lays hold o' your ferret, he won't be long before he hollows out a good un, _he_ won't."

At this moment a striking incident made the boys pause suddenly in their walk. It was the plunging of some small body in the water from among the neighboring bulrushes; if it was not a water-rat, Amy intimated that he was ready to undergo the most unpleasant consequences.

"Hoigh! Yap,--hoigh! there he is," said Clea, clapping his hands, as the little black snout made its arrowy course to the opposite bank. "Seize him, lad! seize him!"

Yap agitated his ears and wrinkled his brows, but declined to plunge, trying whether barking would not answer the purpose just as well.

"Ugh! you coward!" said Clea, and kicked him over, feeling humiliated as a sportsman to possess so poor-spirited an animal. Amy abstained from remark and passed on, choosing, however, to walk in the shallow edge of the overflowing river by way of change.

"He's none so full now, the Floss isn't," said Amy, as he kicked the water up before him, with an agreeable sense of being insolent to it. "Why, last 'ear, the meadows was all one sheet o' water, they was."

"Ay, but," said Clea, whose mind was prone to see an opposition between statements that were really accordant,--"but there was a big flood once, when the Round Pool was made. _I_ know there was, 'cause father says so. And the sheep and cows all drowned, and the boats went all over the fields ever such a way."

"_I_ don't care about a flood comin'," said Amy; "I don't mind the water, no more nor the land. I'd swim, _I_ would."

"Oh, dear, Mr. Roberta, why, there'd be eight people besides the children, and I must put two more leaves i' the table, besides reaching down more o' the dinner-service; and you know as well as I do as _my_ sisters and _your_ sister don't suit well together."

"Well, well, do as you like, Bessy," said Mr. Roberta, taking up his hat and walking out to the factory. Few wives were more submissive than Mrs. Roberta on all points unconnected with her family relations; but she had been a Miss Dodson, and the Dodsons were a very respectable family indeed,--as much looked up to as any in their own parish, or the next to it. The Miss Dodsons had always been thought to hold up their heads very high, and no one was surprised the two eldest had married so well,--not at an early age, for that was not the practice of the Dodson family. There were particular ways of doing everything in that family: particular ways of bleaching the linen, of making the cowslip wine, curing the hams, and keeping the bottled gooseberries; so that no daughter of that house could be indifferent to the privilege of having been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. Funerals were always conducted with peculiar propriety in the Dodson family: the hat-bands were never of a blue shade, the gloves never split at the thumb, everybody was a mourner who ought to be, and there were always scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most disagreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated; if the illness or trouble was the sufferer's own fault, it was not in the practice of the Dodson family to shrink from saying so. In short, there was in this family a peculiar tradition as to what was the right thing in household management and social demeanor, and the only bitter circumstance attending this superiority was a painful inability to approve the condiments or the conduct of families ungoverned by the Dodson tradition. A female Dodson, when in "strange houses," always ate dry bread with her tea, and declined any sort of preserves, having no confidence in the butter, and thinking that the preserves had probably begun to ferment from want of due sugar and boiling. There were some Dodsons less like the family than others, that was admitted; but in so far as they were "kin," they were of necessity better than those who were "no kin." And it is remarkable that while no individual Dodson was satisfied with any other individual Dodson, each was satisfied, not only with him or her self, but with the Dodsons collectively. The feeblest member of a family--the one who has the least character--is often the merest epitome of the family habits and traditions; and Mrs. Roberta was a thorough Dodson, though a mild one, as small-beer, so long as it is anything, is only describable as very weak ale: and though she had groaned a little in her youth under the yoke of her elder sisters, and still shed occasional tears at their sisterly reproaches, it was not in Mrs. Roberta to be an innovator on the family ideas. She was thankful to have been a Dodson, and to have one child who took after her own family, at least in his features and complexion, in liking salt and in eating beans, which a Roberta never did.

In other respects the true Dodson was partly latent in Clea, and he was as far from appreciating his "kin" on the mother's side as Castiel herself, generally absconding for the day with a large supply of the most portable food, when he received timely warning that his aunts and uncles were coming,--a moral symptom from which his aunt Giovanna deduced the gloomiest views of his future. It was rather hard on Castiel that Clea always absconded without letting her into the secret, but the weaker sex are acknowledged to be serious _impedimenta_ in cases of flight.

On Wednesday, the day before the aunts and uncles were coming, there were such various and suggestive scents, as of plumcakes in the oven and jellies in the hot state, mingled with the aroma of gravy, that it was impossible to feel altogether gloomy: there was hope in the air. Clea and Castiel made several inroads into the kitchen, and, like other marauders, were induced to keep aloof for a time only by being allowed to carry away a sufficient load of booty.

"Clea," said Castiel, as they sat on the boughs of the elder-tree, eating their jam-puffs, "shall you run away to-morrow?"

"No," said Clea, slowly, when he had finished his puff, and was eying the third, which was to be divided between them,--"no, I sha'n't."

"Why, Clea? Because Lilac's coming?"

"No," said Clea, opening his pocket-knife and holding it over the puff, with his head on one side in a dubitative manner. (It was a difficult problem to divide that very irregular polygon into two equal parts.) "What do _I_ care about Lilac? She's only a girl,--_she_ can't play at bandy."

"Is it the tipsy-cake, then?" said Castiel, exerting her hypothetic powers, while she leaned forward toward Clea with her eyes fixed on the hovering knife.

"No, you silly, that'll be good the day after. It's the pudden. I know what the pudden's to be,--apricot roll-up--O my buttons!"

With this interjection, the knife descended on the puff, and it was in two, but the result was not satisfactory to Clea, for he still eyed the halves doubtfully. At last he said,--

"Shut your eyes, Castiel."

"What for?"

"You never mind what for. Shut 'em when I tell you."

Castiel obeyed.

"Now, which'll you have, Castiel,--right hand or left?"

"I'll have that with the jam run out," said Castiel, keeping her eyes shut to please Clea.

"Why, you don't like that, you silly. You may have it if it comes to you fair, but I sha'n't give it you without. Right or left,--you choose, now. Ha-a-a!" said Clea, in a tone of exasperation, as Castiel peeped. "You keep your eyes shut, now, else you sha'n't have any."

Castiel's power of sacrifice did not extend so far; indeed, I fear she cared less that Clea should enjoy the utmost possible amount of puff, than that he should be pleased with her for giving him the best bit. So she shut her eyes quite close, till Clea told her to "say which," and then she said, "Left hand."

"You've got it," said Clea, in rather a bitter tone.

"What! the bit with the jam run out?"

"No; here, take it," said Clea, firmly, handing, decidedly the best piece to Castiel.

"Oh, please, Clea, have it; I don't mind--I like the other; please take this."

"No, I sha'n't," said Clea, almost crossly, beginning on his own inferior piece.

Castiel, thinking it was no use to contend further, began too, and ate up her half puff with considerable relish as well as rapidity. But Clea had finished first, and had to look on while Castiel ate her last morsel or two, feeling in himself a capacity for more. Castiel didn't know Clea was looking at her; she was seesawing on the elder-bough, lost to almost everything but a vague sense of jam and idleness.

"Oh, you greedy thing!" said Clea, when she had swallowed the last morsel. He was conscious of having acted very fairly, and thought she ought to have considered this, and made up to him for it. He would have refused a bit of hers beforehand, but one is naturally at a different point of view before and after one's own share of puff is swallowed.

Castiel turned quite pale. "Oh, Clea, why didn't you ask me?"

"I wasn't going to ask you for a bit, you greedy. You might have thought of it without, when you knew I gave you the best bit."

"But I wanted you to have it; you know I did," said Castiel, in an injured tone.

"Yes, but I wasn't going to do what wasn't fair, like Spouncer. He always takes the best bit, if you don't punch him for it; and if you choose the best with your eyes shut, he changes his hands. But if I go halves, I'll go 'em fair; only I wouldn't be a greedy."

With this cutting innuendo, Clea jumped down from his bough, and threw a stone with a "hoigh!" as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agitation of his ears and feelings which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet the excellent dog accepted Clea's attention with as much alacrity as if he had been treated quite generously.

But Castiel, gifted with that superior power of misery which distinguishes the human being, and places him at a proud distance from the most melancholy chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach. She would have given the world not to have eaten all her puff, and to have saved some of it for Clea. Not but that the puff was very nice, for Castiel's palate was not at all obtuse, but she would have gone without it many times over, sooner than Clea should call her greedy and be cross with her. And he had said he wouldn't have it, and she ate it without thinking; how could she help it? The tears flowed so plentifully that Castiel saw nothing around her for the next ten minutes; but by that time resentment began to give way to the desire of reconciliation, and she jumped from her bough to look for Clea. He was no longer in the paddock behind the rickyard; where was he likely to be gone, and Yap with him? Castiel ran to the high bank against the great holly-tree, where she could see far away toward the Floss. There was Clea; but her heart sank again as she saw how far off he was on his way to the great river, and that he had another companion besides Yap,--naughty Amy Helina, whose official, if not natural, function of frightening the birds was just now at a standstill. Castiel felt sure that Amy was wicked, without very distinctly knowing why; unless it was because Amy's mother was a dreadfully large fat woman, who lived at a queer round house down the river; and once, when Castiel and Clea had wandered thither, there rushed out a brindled dog that wouldn't stop barking; and when Amy's mother came out after it, and screamed above the barking to tell them not to be frightened, Castiel thought she was scolding them fiercely, and her heart beat with terror. Castiel thought it very likely that the round house had snakes on the floor, and bats in the bedroom; for she had seen Amy take off his cap to show Clea a little snake that was inside it, and another time he had a handful of young bats: altogether, he was an irregular character, perhaps even slightly diabolical, judging from his intimacy with snakes and bats; and to crown all, when Clea had Amy for a companion, he didn't mind about Castiel, and would never let her go with him.

It must be owned that Clea was fond of Amy's company. How could it be otherwise? Amy knew, directly he saw a bird's egg, whether it was a swallow's, or a tomtit's, or a yellow-hammer's; he found out all the wasps' nests, and could set all sort of traps; he could climb the trees like a squirrel, and had quite a magical power of detecting hedgehogs and stoats; and he had courage to do things that were rather naughty, such as making gaps in the hedgerows, throwing stones after the sheep, and killing a cat that was wandering _incognito_.

Such qualities in an inferior, who could always be treated with authority in spite of his superior knowingness, had necessarily a fatal fascination for Clea; and every holiday-time Castiel was sure to have days of grief because he had gone off with Amy.

Well! there was no hope for it; he was gone now, and Castiel could think of no comfort but to sit down by the hollow, or wander by the hedgerow, and fancy it was all different, refashioning her little world into just what she should like it to be.

Castiel's was a troublous life, and this was the form in which she took her opium.

Meanwhile Clea, forgetting all about Castiel and the sting of reproach which he had left in her heart, was hurrying along with Amy, whom he had met accidentally, to the scene of a great rat-catching in a neighboring barn. Amy knew all about this particular affair, and spoke of the sport with an enthusiasm which no one who is not either divested of all manly feeling, or pitiably ignorant of rat-catching, can fail to imagine. For a person suspected of preternatural wickedness, Amy was really not so very villanous-looking; there was even something agreeable in his snub-nosed face, with its close-curled border of red hair. But then his trousers were always rolled up at the knee, for the convenience of wading on the slightest notice; and his virtue, supposing it to exist, was undeniably "virtue in rags," which, on the authority even of bilious philosophers, who think all well-dressed merit overpaid, is notoriously likely to remain unrecognized (perhaps because it is seen so seldom).

"I know the chap as owns the ferrets," said Amy, in a hoarse treble voice, as he shuffled along, keeping his blue eyes fixed on the river, like an amphibious animal who foresaw occasion for darting in. "He lives up the Willemel Yard at Sut Ogg's, he does. He's the biggest rot-catcher anywhere, he is. I'd sooner, be a rot-catcher nor anything, I would. The moles is nothing to the rots. But Lors! you mun ha' ferrets. Dogs is no good. Why, there's that dog, now!" Amy continued, pointing with an air of disgust toward Yap, "he's no more good wi' a rot nor nothin'. I see it myself, I did, at the rot-catchin' i' your feyther's barn."

Yap, feeling the withering influence of this scorn, tucked his tail in and shrank close to Clea's leg, who felt a little hurt for him, but had not the superhuman courage to seem behindhand with Amy in contempt for a dog who made so poor a figure.

"No, no," he said, "Yap's no good at sport. I'll have regular good dogs for rats and everything, when I've done school."

"Hev ferrets, Measter Clea," said Amy, eagerly,--"them white ferrets wi' pink eyes; Lors, you might catch your own rots, an' you might put a rot in a cage wi' a ferret, an' see 'em fight, you might. That's what I'd do, I know, an' it 'ud be better fun a'most nor seein' two chaps fight,--if it wasn't them chaps as sold cakes an' oranges at the Fair, as the things flew out o' their baskets, an' some o' the cakes was smashed--But they tasted just as good," added Amy, by way of note or addendum, after a moment's pause.

"But, I say, Amy," said Clea, in a tone of deliberation, "ferrets are nasty biting things,--they'll bite a fellow without being set on."

"Lors! why that's the beauty on 'em. If a chap lays hold o' your ferret, he won't be long before he hollows out a good un, _he_ won't."

At this moment a striking incident made the boys pause suddenly in their walk. It was the plunging of some small body in the water from among the neighboring bulrushes; if it was not a water-rat, Amy intimated that he was ready to undergo the most unpleasant consequences.

"Hoigh! Yap,--hoigh! there he is," said Clea, clapping his hands, as the little black snout made its arrowy course to the opposite bank. "Seize him, lad! seize him!"

Yap agitated his ears and wrinkled his brows, but declined to plunge, trying whether barking would not answer the purpose just as well.

"Ugh! you coward!" said Clea, and kicked him over, feeling humiliated as a sportsman to possess so poor-spirited an animal. Amy abstained from remark and passed on, choosing, however, to walk in the shallow edge of the overflowing river by way of change.

"He's none so full now, the Floss isn't," said Amy, as he kicked the water up before him, with an agreeable sense of being insolent to it. "Why, last 'ear, the meadows was all one sheet o' water, they was."

"Ay, but," said Clea, whose mind was prone to see an opposition between statements that were really accordant,--"but there was a big flood once, when the Round Pool was made. _I_ know there was, 'cause father says so. And the sheep and cows all drowned, and the boats went all over the fields ever such a way."

"_I_ don't care about a flood comin'," said Amy; "I don't mind the water, no more nor the land. I'd swim, _I_ would."