The Cricket on the Hearth | Page 3

darkness like a
star. There was an indescribable little trill and tremble in it, at its
loudest, which suggested its being carried off its legs, and made to leap
again, by its own intense enthusiasm. Yet they went very well together,
the Cricket and the kettle. The burden of the song was still the same;
and louder, louder, louder still, they sang it in their emulation.
The fair little listener--for fair she was, and young: though something
of what is called the dumpling shape; but I don't myself object to
that--lighted a candle, glanced at the Haymaker on the top of the clock,
who was getting in a pretty average crop of minutes; and looked out of
the window, where she saw nothing, owing to the darkness, but her

own face imaged in the glass. And my opinion is (and so would yours
have been), that she might have looked a long way, and seen nothing
half so agreeable. When she came back, and sat down in her former
seat, the Cricket and the kettle were still keeping it up, with a perfect
fury of competition. The kettle's weak side clearly being, that he didn't
know when he was beat.
There was all the excitement of a race about it. Chirp, chirp, chirp!
Cricket a mile ahead. Hum, hum, hum--m--m! Kettle making play in
the distance, like a great top. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket round the
corner. Hum, hum, hum--m--m! Kettle sticking to him in his own way;
no idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum,
hum, hum--m--m! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket
going in to finish him. Hum, hum, hum--m--m! Kettle not to be
finished. Until at last they got so jumbled together, in the hurry-skurry,
helter-skelter, of the match, that whether the kettle chirped and the
Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the kettle hummed, or they
both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than
yours or mine to have decided with anything like certainty. But, of this,
there is no doubt: that, the kettle and the Cricket, at one and the same
moment, and by some power of amalgamation best known to
themselves, sent, each, his fireside song of comfort streaming into a ray
of the candle that shone out through the window, and a long way down
the lane. And this light, bursting on a certain person who, on the instant,
approached towards it through the gloom, expressed the whole thing to
him, literally in a twinkling, and cried, 'Welcome home, old fellow!
Welcome home, my boy!'
This end attained, the kettle, being dead beat, boiled over, and was
taken off the fire. Mrs. Peerybingle then went running to the door,
where, what with the wheels of a cart, the tramp of a horse, the voice of
a man, the tearing in and out of an excited dog, and the surprising and
mysterious appearance of a baby, there was soon the very
What's-his-name to pay.
Where the baby came from, or how Mrs. Peerybingle got hold of it in
that flash of time, I don't know. But a live baby there was, in Mrs.
Peerybingle's arms; and a pretty tolerable amount of pride she seemed
to have in it, when she was drawn gently to the fire, by a sturdy figure
of a man, much taller and much older than herself, who had to stoop a

long way down, to kiss her. But she was worth the trouble. Six foot six,
with the lumbago, might have done it.
'Oh goodness, John!' said Mrs. P. 'What a state you are in with the
weather!'
He was something the worse for it, undeniably. The thick mist hung in
clots upon his eyelashes like candied thaw; and between the fog and
fire together, there were rainbows in his very whiskers.
'Why, you see, Dot,' John made answer, slowly, as he unrolled a shawl
from about his throat; and warmed his hands; 'it--it an't exactly summer
weather. So, no wonder.'
'I wish you wouldn't call me Dot, John. I don't like it,' said Mrs.
Peerybingle: pouting in a way that clearly showed she DID like it, very
much.
'Why what else are you?' returned John, looking down upon her with a
smile, and giving her waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand and arm
could give. 'A dot and'--here he glanced at the baby--'a dot and carry--I
won't say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near a joke. I don't
know as ever I was nearer.'
He was often near to something or other very clever, by his own
account: this lumbering, slow, honest John; this John so heavy, but so
light of spirit; so rough upon the surface, but so