wards
Billy, who grasped his mother round her ample waist, and pulled her down
upon his knee!

"You're so big and strong an' handsome," said Mrs Gaff, running her
fingers through her son's voluminous locks, while a few tears tumbled
over her cheeks.

"Mother," said Billy with a gleeful look, "give me a slap on the face;
do, there's a good old woman; I want to feel what it's like now, to see
if I remember it!"

"There!" cried Mrs Gaff, giving him a slap, and no light one--a slap
that would have floored him in days of yore; "you deserve it for calling
me an old woman."

Mrs Gaff followed up the slap with a hug that almost choked her son.

"Make less noise, won't you?" cried Tottie. "Don't you see that daddy's
going to begin his story?"

Silence being with difficulty obtained, Gaff did begin his story,
intending to run over a few of the leading facts regarding his life
since he disappeared, but, having begun, he found it impossible to stop,
all the more so that no one wanted to stop him. He became so excited,
too, that he forgot to take note of time, and his audience were so
interested that they paid no attention whatever to the Dutch clock with
the horrified countenance, which, by the way, looked if possible more
horrified than it used to do in the Bu'ster's early days. Its
preliminary hissing and frequent ringings were unheeded; so were the
more dignified admonitions of the new clock; so was the tea-kettle,
which hissed with the utmost fury at being boiled so long, but hissed in
vain, for it was allowed to hiss its entire contents into thin air, and
then to burn its bottom red hot! In like manner the large pot of
potatoes evaporated its water, red-heated its bottom, and burned its
contents to charcoal.

This last event it was that aroused Mrs Gaff.

"Lauks! the taties is done for."

She sprang up and tore the pot off the fire. Tottie did the same to the
kettle, while Gaff and Billy looked on and laughed.

"Never mind, here's another kettle; fill it, Tot, fro' the pitcher,"
said Mrs Gaff; "it'll bile in a few minutes, an' we can do without
taties for one night."

On examination, however, it was found that a sufficient quantity of
eatable potatoes remained in the heart of the burned mass, so the
misfortune did not prove to be so great as at first sight it appeared to
be.

"But now, Jess, let me pump _you_ a bit. How comes it that ye've made
such a 'xtraornary affair o' the cottage?"

Mrs Gaff, inst