hich
he was in the act of unpacking, to the inexpressible discomfiture of
both parties, but Miss Wolfe, who, upon hearing the mixture of crash and
squall, ran to the rescue, found herself knocked down by a donkey who
had entered at the breach, and was saluted as she rose by a peal of
laughter from young Sam Tyler, Jem's eldest hope, a thorough Pickle,
who, accompanied by two or three other chaps as unlucky as himself, sat
quietly on a gate surveying and enjoying the mischief.

"I'll bring an action against the villain!" ejaculated Miss Philly, as
soon as the enemy was driven from her quarters, and her china and her
dependants set upon their feet:--"I'll take the law of him!" And in
this spirited resolution did mistress, shopman, and shopwoman, find
comfort for the losses, the scratches, and the bruises of the day.

This affray commenced on a Thursday evening towards the latter end of
March; and it so happened that we had occasion to send to Miss Philly
early the next morning for a cart-load of garden-pots for the use of my
geraniums.

Our messenger was, as it chanced, a certain lad byname Dick Barnett, who
has lived with us off and on ever since he was the height of the table,
and who originally a saucy, lively, merry boy, arch, quick-witted, and
amusing, has been indulged in giving vent to all manner of impertinences
until he has become a sort of privileged person, and takes, with high
or low, a freedom of speech that might become a lady's page or a king's
jester. Every now and then we feel that this licence, which in a child
of ten years old we found so diverting, has become inconvenient in
a youth of seventeen, and favour him and ourselves with a lecture
accordingly. But such is the force of inveterate habit that our
remonstrances upon this subject are usually so much gravity wasted upon
him and upon ourselves. He, in the course of a day or two, comes forth
with some fresh prank more amusing than before, and we (I grieve to
confess such a weakness) resume our laughter.

To do justice, however, to this modern Robin Goodfellow, there was most
commonly a fund of goodnature at the bottom of his wildest tricks or his
most egregious romances,--for in the matter of a jest he was apt to draw
pretty largely from an inventive faculty of remarkable fertility; he
was constant in his attachments, whether to man or beast, loyal to
his employers, and although idle and uncertain enough in other work,
admirable in all that relate