This loss of the mutton annoyed me very much, for Edward had set his mind upon having the remains of it with pickles for dinner that day. So I was obliged to send Mrs. Burgess out to get a pair of nice soles, and a pound and a quarter of tender beef-steaks, so that I might stew them, (meaning, of course, the steaks, and not the soles.) In the middle of the day one of Mrs. Burgess’s little boys came to see her, and I was surprised to find what a nice, clean, sharp, intelligent lad he was for his station in life; for his mother said that, young as he was, he could turn his hand to anything. And he couldn’t have left the house above half-an hour, when up Mrs. Burgess came, apparently quite out of breath, and told me that while she was throwing up the cinders on the kitchen fire, that plaguy Tom had jumped on the dresser and galloped off with a whole sole and a large piece of the beef-steak--and that though she ran after him as quick as she could, that he had scampered up the kitchen stairs, and she only got to the garden in time to see him leap right over the wall with the things in his mouth. After a few moments’ deliberation I went to the bedroom closet, and getting Mr. Sk--n--st--n’s little gold headed cane, determined to pay master Tom out well for his sly tricks, (I can’t bear deceit, whether in cats or human beings;) and hiding the stick behind my back, I went out into the garden, and called Puss! Puss! Puss! in my sweetest voice, as if I had got something nice to give him; when lo! and behold, my gentleman, who had found his way back, came marching up from the kitchen as coolly, I declare, as if he had been doing nothing at all, (as indeed I verily believe now the poor thing had not.) When he came within arm’s length of me I gave him one or two such good smacks as he wouldn’t forget in a hurry--though it hurt me a good deal more than it did him, to lay my hands upon _the_ poor dumb animal. When Edward found it all out, of course he flew into a passion, as usual, and went on in such a way that I was obliged to tell him, even though he was my husband, that he was no man; and he vowed that the animal shouldn’t pass another night under his roof, and that Mother Burgess (as he would call her) should take the brute and drown it that very night. Then he had her up and told her as much; and the poor woman, with tears in her eyes, consented to do so; for, as she very truly said, it was so dreadful to have a thief in the house, that if Tom wasn’t made away with, she was afraid we might get to suspect _her_--and that after what we had lost, much as it might go against her, she would do as Mr. Sk--n--st--n desired, and see the creature safe at the bottom of the R--g--nt’s C--n--l before she went to bed that night.