46 THE LOVE-CHILD. 



Llewellyn's throat and stomach ; it was gnawn into net-work, but 

 still hung together, displaying the most pitiable wreck of finery 

 imagination can conceive. I wept at the sight of it, and being 

 noticed, frankly explained. The horrid goat, seeing me erect, in- 

 stantly made at me, and my endeavours to escape his assaults pro- 

 duced such prodigious laughter, that Lavolta at once decided on 

 attiring me as " the monkey," a character which Master Nicholas 

 Green, the boy with the bandaged head, had sustained with great 

 eclat, previously to his fall from the pole. When the monkey 

 raiment was brought to me, my antipathy towards Llewellyn be- 

 came mortal. Thirty times a day I had to exhibit my agility on 

 the platform, in avoiding his terrible punches, and I was not always 

 successful. I detested I loathed him I only wished that I was Sir 

 Simon ! 



Master Nicholas Green, perceiving I was unhappy, vouchsafed me 

 his friendship we made common cause against the goat, and con- 

 spired to destroy him. Both of us were enjoined to practise standing 

 on our heads, and thus we were often placed at his mercy. He 

 would suddenly appear from some dark corner, and knock the brace 

 of us down like a couple of nine pins. He had no objection to our 

 sitting, lying, or crawling in his august presence, but a perpendicular 

 position, natural or reversed, excited his ire, and he felled us. No 

 one liked him but Lavolta, for he took the wall of every body. The 

 huge blear-eyed wretch had in his youthful days been Mrs. Lavolta's 

 pet kid, her zone had often graced his neck, and she had left a fare- 

 well billet for her husband on the animal's budding horn when she 

 eloped with his friend the fire-eater. Mint, the head carpenter, 

 whispered that Lavolta kept the ugly revolting brute not so much on 

 account of his services on the platform, as by way of a memorandum 

 or memento not to commit matrimony again, Mrs. Lavolta having 

 long since, in a fit of infuriate jealousy, swallowed a bowl of boiling 

 lead, in which her paramour, to the wonderment of a bumpkin public, 

 had just washed his hands. Mint was the mildest of human beings, 

 but he abhorred the goat, because, as the Merry Andrew protested, 

 the creature had been presented to Mrs. Lavolta by the Fire-eater, 

 instead of whom he himself would have run away with the beautiful 

 rope-dancer, if she would have let him ; but Mint was far from per- 

 sonable. Though standing only five feet two, he cast a broader 

 shadow than any other man in the troop. There were objectionable 

 peculiarities too, touching his attire. Nothing could induce him to 

 put on a coat, or to wear pantaloons of any material thicker than 

 nankeen at Christmas. Lavolta called him his comet, and jocosely 

 recommended him to insure himself, no matter at how high a pre- 

 mium, against personal damage from spontaneous combustion. 

 Master Nicholas Green had conceived a plot against the goat which 

 could not be carried into effect without the loan of Mint's glue-pot; but 

 over every thing appertaining to himself, or his vocation, the roseate 

 little carpenter kept so sharp an eye, that to purloin it was impossible. 

 The position in which we were placed was delicate, and Master 

 Nicholas and I held numerous consultations as to the modus in quo 

 we could effect our darling object. It was clear that Mint, who prided 



