The Cricket on the Hearth

Author : Charles Dickens
Publisher :
Release Date : 2021-02-09
ISBN :
Pages : 64 pages
Rating : 4.0/5 (64 Download)

Download Full The Cricket on the Hearth PDF by Charles Dickens Full Free and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book desc: The kettle began it! Don't tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peerybingle mayleave it on record to the end of time that she couldn't say which of them began it; but, I say thekettle did. I ought to know, I hope! The kettle began it, full five minutes by the little waxy-facedDutch 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, jerkingaway right and left with a scythe in front of a Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre ofimaginary 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 theopinion of Mrs. Peerybingle, unless I were quite sure, on any account whatever. Nothing shouldinduce me. But, this is a question of fact. And the fact is, that the kettle began it, at least fiveminutes before the Cricket gave any sign of being in existence. 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 itpossible 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 kettleand 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 ofpattens that worked innumerable rough impressions of the first proposition in Euclid all about theyard-Mrs. Peerybingle filled the kettle at the water-butt. Presently returning, less the pattens (and agood deal less, for they were tall and Mrs. Peerybingle was but short), she set the kettle on thefire. In doing which she lost her temper, or mislaid it for an instant; for, the water beinguncomfortably cold, and in that slippy, slushy, sleety sort of state wherein it seems to penetratethrough every kind of substance, patten rings included-had laid hold of Mrs. Peerybingle's toes, and even splashed her legs. And when we rather plume ourselves (with reason too) upon our legs, and keep ourselves particularly neat in point of stockings, we find this, for the moment, hard tobear.Besides, the kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn't allow itself to be adjusted on the topbar; it wouldn't hear of accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it would lean forward with adrunken air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle, on the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed andspluttered morosely at the fire. To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's fingers, first of allturned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious pertinacity deserving of a better cause, divedsideways in-down to the very bottom of the kett