facetious mood.

Opening the door with a disdainful push, compounded partly of her
contempt for the place and partly of the irritation occasioned by the
events that had brought her to the degradation of calling there, Liza
cried out, as well as she could in her present breathless condition,--

"Robbie, come your ways out of this."

The gentleman addressed was at the moment lying in a somewhat
undignified position on the floor. Half sprawling, half resting on one
knee, Robbie was surprised in the midst of an amusement of which the
perky little body whom he claimed as his sweetheart had previously
expressed her high disdain. This consisted of a hopeless endeavor to
make a lame dog dance. The animal in question was no other than 'Becca
Rudd's Dash, a piece of nomenclature which can only be described as
the wildest and most satirical misnomer. Liza had not been too severe
on Dash's physical infirmities when she described him as lame on one
of his hind legs, for both those members were so effectually out of
joint as to render locomotion of the simplest kind a difficulty
attended by violent oscillation. This was probably the circumstance
that had recommended Dash as the object of Robbie's half-drunken
pastime; and after a fruitless half-hour's exercise the tractable
little creature, with a woeful expression of face, was at length
poised on its hindmost parts just as Liza pushed open the door and
called to its instructor.

The new arrival interrupted the course of tuition, and Dash availed
himself of his opportunity to resume the normal functions of his front
paws. At this the reclining tutor looked up from his place on the
floor with a countenance more of sorrow than of anger, and said, in a
tone that told how deeply he was grieved, "_There_, lass, see how
you've spoilt it!"

"Get up, you daft-head! Whatever are you mufflin' about, you silly
one, lying down there with the dogs and the fleas?"

Liza still stood in the doorway with an august severity of pose that
would have befitted Cassandra at the porch. Her unsparing tirade had
provoked an outburst of laughter, but not from Robbie. There were two
other occupants of the parlor--Reuben Thwaite, who had never been
numbered among the regenerate, and had always spent his Sunday
mornings in this place and fashion; and little Monsey Laman, whose
duty as schoolmaster usually embraced that of sexton, bell-ringer, and
pew-opener combined, but who had escaped his clerical offic