XI. DARING EXPLOITS.

My mother, naturally extremely timid, scarcely ever dared to differ from my father; but still she bravely took my part when he would attack me too severely on the unfortunate subject of my cowardice. My father would always be softened by her in the end. But as a last protest he would shrug his shoulders and say:—“Very well, my dear; but pray dress him, then, like a little girl, and set him to work to hem handkerchiefs.”

Hem handkerchiefs! In his eyes this was the most dire insult that could be offered to a coward. But I, who had but little pride in me, I should have been more than contented to be turned into a girl, and sit and hem handkerchiefs. I should in that case never have to leave my mother, and I should not have the disagreeable prospect of college looming in the future.

I had a great love of dolls; my mother and I used to make up the most delightful rag dolls together. I used generally to hide them most carefully away when I had finished playing with them. Sometimes, though, I had the misfortune to leave one about: my father, then finding it, would turn and twist it with the end of his cane; wearing on his face, the while, an expression of the greatest contempt. Then—with a dexterity which I should have admired if it had not been exercised at the expense of my poor doll—he would toss it up into the air and send it flying, with a twist of his cane, right out of the window.

My paternal love for my outraged child would then seem to give me some courage—for I had to brave more than one danger to recover my dolly. If the doll fell in the street I would fly downstairs, and opening the hall-door a little way, put my head out to reconnoitre, and—after being quite sure that there were no carriages in sight to drive over me and crush me, nor curs to run after me and bite me, nor boys about to pelt me with peas out of their popguns—I risked it, and recovering my treasure from the street, would retreat, breathless and excited, at the idea of dangers which I might have met with.

If the doll happened to fall into the garden, I would first go and look out of the kitchen window—for from there I could see the goings and comings of a certain little bantam-cock belonging to us. This funny little fowl, which was no bigger than my two fists, was of a most quarrelsome disposition. Directly he saw me coming he would run up as fast as he could, and then standing right in front of me, firmly planted on his two horrid little feet, he would stare at me, turning his head from side to side, first with the right eye and then with the left, twitching his little comb about with rapid jerks. Why did he come? What did he want with me? I had never done anything to him! Had he only then discovered, like others, that I was a coward, and merely amused himself (being a facetious sort of fowl) by making me afraid of him?

When he was at the bottom of the garden, occupied with his own affairs in some corner, I would seize the opportunity, and gliding softly, softly to where my dolly lay, I would carry it off in triumph before he had time to follow me. Sometimes though, he would only pretend to be pre-occupied, and in reality watch me out of the corner of his wicked little eyes, and suddenly shoot out from his corner right up to the door, when I, scarcely outside as yet, would make a rapid and ignominious retreat inside the house again. Sometimes I have made as many as ten ineffectual attempts to get out at the door, without counting the various stratagems which I was obliged to have recourse to when once outside before I could recover my lost property.