ay
any trick which she dared not do herself, employed me as her agent; so
that I obtained the whole credit for what were her inventions, and I may
safely add, underwent the whole blame and punishment; but that I cared
nothing for; her caresses, cakes, and sugar-plums, added to my natural
propensity, more than repaid me for the occasional severe rebukes of my
mother, and the vindictive blows I received from the long fingers of my
worthy grandmother. Moreover, the officers took much notice of me, and
it must be admitted, that, although I positively refused to learn my
letters, I was a very forward child. My great patron was a Captain
Bridgeman, a very thin, elegantly-made man, who was continually
performing feats of address and activity; occasionally I would escape
with him and go down to the mess, remain at dinner, drink toasts, and,
standing on the mess-table, sing two or three comic songs which he had
taught me. I sometimes returned a little merry with the bumpers, which
made my mother very angry, my old grandmother to hold up her hands, and
look at the ceiling through her spectacles, and my aunt Milly as merry
as myself. Before I was eight years old, I had become so notorious,
that any prank played in the town, any trick undiscovered, was
invariably laid to my account; and many were the applications made to my
mother for indemnification for broken windows and other damage done, too
often, I grant, with good reason, but very often when I had been
perfectly innocent of the misdemeanour. At last I was voted a common
nuisance, and every one, except my mother and my aunt Milly, declared
that it was high time that I went to school.

One evening the whole of the family were seated at tea in the back
parlour. I was sitting very quietly and demurely in a corner, a sure
sign that I was in mischief, and so indeed I was (for I was putting a
little gunpowder into my grandmother's snuff-box, which I had purloined,
just that she might "smell powder," as they say at sea, without danger
of life or limb), when the old woman addressed my mother--

"Bella, is that boy never going to school? it will be the ruin of him."

"What will be the ruin of him, mother?" rejoined my aunt Milly; "going
to school?"

"Hold your nonsense, child: you are as bad as the boy himself," replied
granny. "Boys are never ruined by education; girls sometimes are."

Whether my mother thought that this was an innuendo reflecting upon any
portion of her