family in which Tilly's lot was
cast. Honest John Peerybingle, Carrier; his pretty little wife, whom he
called Dot; the very remarkable doll of a baby; the dog Boxer; and the
Cricket on the Hearth, whose cheerful chirp, chirp, chirp, was a
continual family blessing and good-omen;--were collectively and
severally the objects of Tilly's unbounded admiration.

If ever a person or thing alarmed Tilly, she would hastily seek
protection near the skirts of her pretty little mistress; or, failing
that, would make a charge or butt at the object of her fright with the
only offensive instrument within her reach--which usually happened to be
the baby. Tilly's bump of good fortune being extraordinarily well
developed, the baby usually managed to come out from the siege unharmed,
to be soothed and comforted in Tilly's own peculiar fashion; her most
common method of amusement being to reproduce for its entertainment
scraps of conversation current in the house, with all the sense left out
of them, and all the nouns changed to the plural number, as--"Did its
mothers make it up a beds then! And did its hair grow brown and curly
when its cap was lifted off, and frighten it, a precious Pets, a-sitting
by the fire!"

It was a notable and exciting event to Miss Slowboy when she set out one
day in the Carrier's cart, with her little mistress and the remarkable
baby, to have dinner with Caleb Plummer's blind daughter, Bertha, who
was Mrs. Dot's devoted friend.

In consequence of the departure, there was a pretty sharp commotion at
John Peerybingle's, for to get the baby under weigh took time. Not that
there was much of the baby, speaking of it as a thing of weight and
measure, but there was a vast deal to do about it, and all had to be
done by easy stages. When the baby was got, by hook and by crook, to a
certain point of dressing, and you might have supposed that another
touch or two would finish him off, he was unexpectedly extinguished, and
hustled off to bed; where he simmered (so to speak) between two blankets
for the best part of an hour, while Mrs. Peerybingle took advantage of
the interval to make herself smart for the trip, and during the same
short truce, Miss Slowboy insinuated herself into a spencer, of a
fashion so surprising and ingenious, that it had no connection with
herself, or anything else in the universe, but was a shrunken,
dog's-eared, independent fact, pursuing its lonely course without the
least regard to anybody. B