For a while Jack played quietly enough, and Jarley was just about dozing off into that delicious forty winks prior to getting up when shrieks from the second Jarley boy came from the nursery. This time Mrs. Jarley, with one or two expressions of natural impatience, deemed it her duty to interfere. Jarley, she reasoned, had a perfect right to spoil Jack if he pleased, but he had no right to permit Jack to do bodily injury to Tommy; and as Tommy was making the house echo and re-echo with his wails, she deemed it her duty to take a hand. Jarley meanwhile pretended to sleep. He was as wide awake as he ever was; but the atmosphere was not full of warmth, and upon this occasion, as well as upon many others, his conscience permitted him to overlook the shortcomings of his elder son, and to assume a somnolence which, while it was not real, certainly did conduce to the maintenance of his personal comfort. Mrs. Jarley, therefore, rose up in her wrath. It was merely a motherly wrath, however, and those of us who have had mothers will at once realize what that wrath amounted to. She repaired immediately to the nursery, and without knowing anything of the technical terms of the noble game of football, instinctively realized that Jack and Tommy were having a "scrimmage." That is to say, she was confronted with a structure made up as follows: basement, the ball; first story, Tommy, with his small and tender stomach placed directly over the ball; second story and roof, Jack, lying stomach upward and wiggling, his back accurately registered on Tommy's back, to the detriment and pain of Tommy. "Get _up_, Jack!" Mrs. Jarley cried. "What on earth are you trying to do to Tommy? Do you want to kill him?" "Nome," Jack replied, innocently. "He wanted to play football, and I'm letting him. He's Harvard and I'm Yale." A smothered laugh from the adjoining room showed that Jarley was not so soundly sleeping that he could not hear what was going on. Tommy meanwhile continued to wail. "Well, get up,--right away!" cried Mrs. Jarley. "I sha'n't have you abusing Tommy this way." "Ain't abusin' him," retorted Jack, rising. "I was 'commodatin' him. He wanted to play. When I don't let him play I get scolded, and when I do let him I'm scolded. 'Pears to me you don't want me to do anything." Thus Thanksgiving Day began, not altogether well, but equanimity was soon restored all around, and everything might have run smoothly from that time on had not a cold drizzling rain set in about breakfast-time. It was clearly to be an in-door day. And what a day it was! At ten o'clock the football came into play again. At eleven the score stood: one clock knocked off the mantel-piece in the library; three chandelier globes broken to bits; one plaster Barye bear destroyed by a low kick from the parlor floor; Tommy with his nose very nearly out of joint, thanks to a flying wedge represented by Jack; Mrs. Jarley's amiability in peril, and Jarley's irritability well developed.