However, to come back to myself. Directly I returned to the kitchen, after having thrown the black brutes over the wall, I turned round to Miss Betsy, and said, “Throw that meat away, you nasty, perverse, self-willed minx; I wont have such meat cooked in _my_ house, and if I don’t make you pay for another piece for me out of your next quarter, I hope I may never know the taste of a round of beef again--that’s all.” Scarcely could I have been up stairs more than a quarter of an hour, than it struck me, that not only would it be a sad pity to waste such a beautiful piece of meat as that was when I saw it in the butcher’s shop, but I had already threatened to stop so many things out of Miss Betsy’s next quarter, that I felt convinced she could never pay for half of them. So off I trotted down stairs again, and told Betsy that, as a punishment, she and Wittals should have nothing else for their dinners but that very round of beef, until it was all gone. Just as I was going up stairs again, I happened to cast my eye on the dresser, and what should I see but a lozenge-box; so, of course, fancying I must have left it there when I was down before, I took it up, and putting it in my pocket, returned to the parlour, little thinking that it was the very one into which young Wittals had, not five minutes before, put his two beastly pet leeches. Upon my word, the chill I had taken had settled into such a dreadful cold in the head, that really when I sat down to my work again in the parlour, I couldn’t do a stitch of work for it; and though, thanks to Mr. Jupp’s lozenges, my cough was much better, still my poor head was so bad, that I couldn’t let my handkerchief remain quiet in my pocket for two moments together;--and just after Betsy had taken the milk in for tea, I was seized with a violent fit of sneezing, and I had no sooner put my pocket handkerchief to my nose than I felt a sharp twinge at the end of it, just as if some one was driving a needle right in between my nostrils. When I snatched my handkerchief away, I was as certain as possible that there was something heavy hanging at the end of it, for I could not only feel it, but when I squinted down, I could see some dark coloured thing dangling backwards and forwards; I rushed to the mirror, to learn what on earth it could be--when, augh! if there wasn’t a long black beast of a large leech sticking quite fast to my nasal organ, just like the drop to a jet ear-ring. I gave a loud scream, and put up my handkerchief to take hold of the reptile, when, oh, la! if another of the nasty filthy brutes didn’t roll right out of it on to the rug.