“No, I don’t think it’s the breed, my dear,” returned Pa. “I rather think it is because they are not done.”

“They ought to be,” said Bella.

“Yes, I am aware they ought to be, my dear,” rejoined her father, “but they⁠—ain’t.”

So, the gridiron was put in requisition, and the good-tempered cherub, who was often as un-cherubically employed in his own family as if he had been in the employment of some of the Old Masters, undertook to grill the fowls. Indeed, except in respect of staring about him (a branch of the public service to which the pictorial cherub is much addicted), this domestic cherub discharged as many odd functions as his prototype; with the difference, say, that he performed with a blacking-brush on the family’s boots, instead of performing on enormous wind instruments and double-basses, and that he conducted himself with cheerful alacrity to much useful purpose, instead of foreshortening himself in the air with the vaguest intentions.