Accordingly, as soon as my little angel of a Kate was fast asleep, I put on my bonnet, and stepped out. To make sure that neither of the girls could be up to any of their tricks in my absence, I took the key of the street-door, and locked them both in. I couldn’t have been gone above half an hour, and when I got home again, I opened the door with as little noise as I could, in the hopes of seeing what the minxes had been doing in my absence. I had scarcely got half way down the passage, before--goodness gracious me!--if I didn’t see “_La Petite Saqui_,” as the young monkey called itself, out in the garden, with my longest clothes-pole in her hand, figuring on a tight-rope, which she had made by tying my clothes line from the railings to the garden-seat. Yes, there she was, now springing up in the air, and now coming down, and sitting on the rope for a minute, and then bounding up again, just like an Indian-rubber ball, and then coming down again, and balancing herself on one leg, whilst she held the other out for a few seconds; and then running along the line towards the house as quick as she could put one foot over the other, and stopping suddenly, with a graceful curtsy, in the first position, just as I made my appearance at the back door. And when I went out into the garden, bless us and save us! if the place wasn’t just like a fair, with all the servants round about stretching their necks out of the windows or poking their noses over the garden walls, and that fool of a maid-of-all-work of an Emma of mine, standing by looking on, with a ball of whiting in her hand, and her mouth wide open with wonder. They no sooner saw me, than down jumped that fat lump of goods, “_La Petite Saqui_,” and off she scampered, and I after her, all round the garden, with my parasol, trying to give it her well, amidst roars of laughter from all the servants looking on. As for my tight-rope dancer, I wasn’t long in getting her out of the house, for directly I caught her, I took her by the scruff of the neck, and, bundling her into the street, threw her bonnet out after her. Then I went down-stairs, and told that stupid thing of an Emma, that if ever I caught her idling her time away, instead of minding her work--which, I was sure, was quite enough for her to do, and if it wasn’t, I could easily find her some more--I’d serve her just in the same way, and not give her a character into the bargain. For I felt that if a stop were not put to such goings-on, at their very commencement, that really there would be no saying to what lengths such a simpleton as Emma might not go.