"The Cricket on the Hearth",
by Charles Dickens.

[obi/Charles.Dickens/cricket.on.hearth.txt]

           THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH

                CHIRP THE FIRST

  The kettle began it! Don't tell me what Mrs.
Peerybingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peery-
bingle may leave it on record to the end of time
that she couldn't say which of them began it; but,
I say the kettle did. I ought to know, I hope! The
kettle began it, full five minutes by the little waxy-
faced Dutch clock in the corner, before the Cricket
uttered a chirp.

  As if the clock hadn't finished striking, and the
convulsive little Haymaker at the top of it, jerking
away right and left with a scythe in front of a
Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre of
imaginary grass before the Cricket joined in at all!

  Why, I am not naturally positive. Every one
knows that. I wouldn't set my own opinion against
the opinion of Mrs. Peerybingle, unless I were quite
sure, on any account whatever. Nothing should in-
duce me. But, this is a question of fact. And the
fact is, that the kettle began it, at least five minutes
before the Cricket gave any sign of being in exist-
ence. Contradict me, and I'll say ten.

  Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should
have proceeded to do so in my very first word, but
for this plain consideration -- if I am to tell a story
I must begin at the beginning; and how is it pos-
sible to begin at the beginning, without beginning
at the kettle?

  It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or
trial of skill, you must understand, between the kettle
and the Cricket. And this is what led to it, and
how it came about.

  Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight,
and clicking over the wet stones in a pair of pattens
that worked innumerable rough impressions of the
first proposition in Euclid all about the yard -- Mrs,
Peerybingle filled the kettle at the water-butt. Pres-
ently returning, less the pattens (and a good deal
less, for they were tall and Mrs. Peerybingle was
but short), she set the kettle on the fire. In doing
which she lost her temper, or mislaid it for an instant;
for, the water being uncomfortably cold, and in that
slippy, slushy, sleety sort of state wherein it seems
to penetrate through every kind of substance, pat-
ten rings included -- had laid hold of Mrs. Peery-
bingle's toes, and even splashed her legs. And when
we rather plume ourselves (with reason too) upon
oue legs, and keep ourselves particularly neat in point
of stockings, we find this for the moment, hard to
bear.

  Besides, the kettle was aggravating and obstinate.
It wouldn't allow itself to be adjusted on the top
bar; it wouldn't hear of accommodating itself kindly
to the knobs of coal; it would lean forward with a
drunken air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle,
on the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed and
spluttered morosely at the fire. To sum up all, the
lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's fingers, first of all
turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious per-
tinacity deserving of a better cause, dived sideways
in -- down to the very bottom of the kettle. And
the hull of the Royal George has never made half the
monstrous resistance to coming out of the water,
which the lid of that kettle employed against Mrs.
Peerybingle, before she got it up again.

  It looked sullen and pig-headed enough; even then;
carrying its handle with an air of defiance. and cock-
ing its spout pertly and mockingly at Mrs. Peery-
bingle, as if it said, 'I won't boil. Nothing shall
induce me!'

  But Mrs. Peerybingle, with restored good humour,
dusted her chubby little hands aginst each other,
and sat down before the kettle, laughing. Mean-
time, the jolly blaze uprose and fell, flashing and
gleaming on the little Haymaker at the top of the
Dutch clock, until one might have thought he stood
stock still before the Moorish Palace, and nothing
was in motion but the flame.

   He was on the move, however; and had his spasms,
two to the second, all right and regular. But, his
sufferings when the clock was going to strike, were
frightful to behold; and, when a Cuckoo looked out
of a trap-door in the Palace, and gave note six times,