Poor dear respected mother--who up to this moment had been very prudent, and never left the garden-steps--the very minute she saw that fat Duffy a-top of me, and that “wicked mutton” jumping with all its might a-top of Duffy, rushed down to our rescue, shaking her handkerchief, like a stupid old thing as she is--for she ought, at _her_ time of life, to have known that it would only have made the infuriated brute wilder than ever. And so to her cost it did; for no sooner did the animal see her, than at her it ran, and, just as she got close to our beautiful large variegated holly-bush, it gave such a poke at her busk, that back the dear respected old soul went, right into the middle of the horrid prickly shrub, and there the nasty brute stood, butting away at her, and pushing her further and further into the bush, until, what with the agony of the sharp prickles at her back, and the fear of the furious animal’s horns in front, I declare the poor dear old thing screamed in such a way, that it cut me to the quick to be obliged--when I’d kicked and tumbled that mountain of a Duffy off my back--to fly for my own life, and turn a deaf ear, not only to her heart-rending cries, but also to her pathetic entreaties to bring either the kitchen poker or the spit, and drive the mad beast from her. And well can I understand her screaming now, for when that monkey of a Wittals came in again, and he’d got my dear respected mother out of the holly-bush, upon my word, if the poor old soul’s back wasn’t pierced all over with the fine-pointed prickly things, and as full of little holes as a captain’s biscuit!--and no wonder; for, as luck would have it, she’d got on my thin fine Swiss cambric dress, which, having been quite spoilt, drat it! at the washing, I had kindly made her a present of on her last birth-day.