Charlie, on two or three occasions finding a window open, made stealthy
descents upon the premises without first having duly observed these
quarantine regulations; whereupon he was attacked by Caddy, who, with the
assistance of the minions under her command, so shook and pummelled him as
to cause his precipitate retreat through the same opening by which he had
entered, and that, too, in so short a space of time as to make the whole
manoeuvre appear to him in the light of a well-executed but involuntary
feat of ground and lofty tumbling. One afternoon he started with his
sister's dinner, consisting of a dish of which she was particularly fond,
and its arrival was therefore looked for with unusual anxiety. Charlie,
having gorged himself to an almost alarming extent, did not make the haste
that the case evidently demanded; and as he several times stopped to act as
umpire in disputed games of marbles (in the rules of which he was regarded
as an authority), he necessarily consumed a great deal of time on the way.
Caddy's patience was severely tried by the long delay, and her temper, at
no time the most amiable, gathered bitterness from the unprecedented length
of her fast. Therefore, when he at length appeared, walking leisurely up
Winter-street, swinging the kettle about in the most reckless manner, and
setting it down on the pavement to play leap-frog over the fire-plugs, her
wrath reached a point that boded no good to the young trifler.
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