As I couldn’t manage any cabbages I thought I’d try and raise a small crop of peas; but, bless you! then I was nearly driven out of my mind by those impudent vagabonds of birds, the London sparrows--and catch _them_ letting any peas come up (even if they would) within five miles of the General Post-office. As for frightening them away, I declare they were as bold as brass, for if they don’t care for those mischievous monkeys of boys in the street, was it likely that they were to be intimidated by a respectable married woman like myself? Positively, I put up an old bonnet of mine on the end of a stick, which I should have thought would have scared even a philosopher off the premises--but, bless your heart! they only came and perched right on the crown of it, and chirped away as if they were comfortably at home in their nests in Red Lion-square. And just when my lovely peas were beginning to break ground and poke their nice little green heads up out of the earth, I have often gone out into the garden and found a hundred of the young feathered ogres hard at my beautiful Prussian blues, picking away, and making noise enough for an infant school; and though I’d go down to them, sh--sh--sh--, sh--ing away, and shaking my apron as hard as I could, I declare, it wasn’t until I got within arm’s-length of them, that the brazen-faced little chits would condescend to take the least notice of me, and then they’d only just hop up on the top of the wall, where they would stand, with their heads cocked on one side, and looking out at the corners of their eyes at me, and chirping away just as if they were saying, “Peas, peas, peas”--drat ’em!