"Nous vous mettrons a couvert, Repondit le pot de fer Si quelque matiere dure Vous menace d'aventure, Entre deux je passerai, Et du coup vous sauverai. . . . . . . . . Le pot de terre en souffre!"--LA FONTAINE. ["We, replied the Iron Pot, will shield you: should any hard substance menace you with danger, I'll intervene, and save you from the shock. . . . . . . . . . The Earthen Pot was the sufferer!] "SIDNEY, come here, sir! What have you been at? you have torn your frill into tatters! How did you do this? Come sir, no lies." "Indeed, ma'am, it was not my fault. I just put my head out of the window to see the coach go by, and a nail caught me here." "Why, you little plague! you have scratched yourself--you are always in mischief. What business had you to look after the coach?" "I don't know," said Sidney, hanging his head ruefully. "La, mother!" cried the youngest of the cousins, a square-built, ruddy, coarse-featured urchin, about Sidney's age, "La, mother, he never see a coach in the street when we are at play but he runs arter it." "After, not arter," said Mr. Roger Morton, taking the pipe from his mouth. "Why do you go after the coaches, Sidney?" said Mrs. Morton; "it is very naughty; you will be run over some day." "Yes, ma'am," said Sidney, who during the whole colloquy had been trembling from bead to foot. "'Yes ma'am,' and 'no, ma'am:' you have no more manners than a cobbler's boy." "Don't tease the child, my dear; he is crying," said Mr. Morton, more authoritatively than usual. "Come here, my man!" and the worthy uncle took him in his lap and held his glass of brandy-and-water to his lips; Sidney, too frightened to refuse, sipped hurriedly, keeping his large eyes fixed on his aunt, as children do when they fear a cuff. "You spoil the boy more than do your own flesh and blood," said Mrs. Morton, greatly displeased. Here Tom, the youngest-born before described, put his mouth to his mother's ear, and whispered loud enough to be heard by all: "He runs arter the coach 'cause he thinks his ma may be in it. Who's home-sick, I should like to know? Ba! Baa!" The boy pointed his finger over his mother's shoulder, and the other children burst into a loud giggle. "Leave the room, all of you,--leave the room!" said Mr. Morton, rising angrily and stamping his foot. The children, who were in great awe of their father, huddled and hustled each other to the door; but Tom, who went last, bold in his mother's favour, popped his head through the doorway, and cried, "Good-bye, little home-sick!" A sudden slap in the face from his father changed his chuckle into a very different kind of music, and a loud indignant sob was heard without for some moments after the door was closed.