DOLLY'S PRESENTIMENTS. 375 



Well, Mr. Caligraph was certainly sorry or compunctious 

 for having maimed,, perhaps killed, the cricket, and so shared 

 in a measure the discomfiture he had brought upon us all. 

 He gave us no more of his copy-book moralities, and as soon 

 as tea (that tea all ruined by the cold water of the evening's 

 catastrophe) had come to a premature and untimely end, he 

 muttered something about something else he had to see to, 

 and left the kitchen. 



We were glad when he was gone ; the monster ! the ogre ! 

 that had killed, if not the cricket fairy, because perhaps it had 

 a charmed life, but certainly all the pleasure of our evening. 

 That was dead past recovery. In vain did our gentle Dove 

 strive bravely to flutter off her burden of forebodement. When 

 she tried to relate to Lucy, for the hundredth time, the story 

 of Little Red Ridinghood, the wolf seemed to her glaring in, 

 with hungry eyes, at her own kitchen casement. When she 

 took out from the drawer of their year's repose her yellow 

 pack of cards, and attempted a game at " beat my neighbour," 

 strange thoughts would come across her mind that we, some 

 day, might be driven " out of doors ;" and even when we all 

 tried against each other to build card-houses, not one would 

 stand a single moment, any more, thought Dolly, than a house 

 of brick or stone when good luck, or the crickets, have been 

 driven from its hearth. Even the supper-cake (for it was not 

 cut at tea) proved a failure, heavy as the evening which saw 

 'us in bed (Lucy and I) an hour at least before the usual one 



