“Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days! So it was you , you little rapscallions, that’s been making all this trouble, and turned everybody’s wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. I’ve as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out o’ you this very minute. To think, here I’ve been, night after night, a⁠— you just get well once, you young scamp, and I lay I’ll tan the Old Harry out o’ both o’ ye!”

But Tom, he was so proud and joyful, he just couldn’t hold in, and his tongue just went it⁠—she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all along, and both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and she says: