“It is an appointment, you impudent ——!  Hand it here.”

“Not as you know of!” laughed Jacko, tauntingly shaking it over her head.

He made a rush to catch it.

She sprang nimbly away, and clapped the paper into her mouth.

He overtook and caught her by the arm, and shaking her roughly, exclaimed, under his breath: 

“Where is it?  What have you done with it?  You exasperating, unprincipled little wretch, where is it?”

“‘Echo anfers fere?’” mumbled the imp, chewing up the paper, and keeping her lips tight.

“Give it me! give it me! or I’ll be the death of you, you diabolical little ——!” he exclaimed, hoarsely, shaking her as if he would have shaken her breath out.

But Jacko had finished chewing up the paper, and she swallowed the pulp with an effort that nearly choked her, and then opening her mouth, and inflating her chest, gave voice in a succession of piercing shrieks, that brought the whole family rushing into the room, and obliged the professor to relax his hold, and stand like a detected culprit.

For there was the commodore roused up from his sleep, with his gray hair and beard standing out all ways, like the picture of the sun in an almanac.  And there was Mrs. Waugh, with the great-tooth comb in her hand.  And Mary L’Osieau, with the pantry keys.  And the maid, Maria, with the wooden tray of flour on her head.  And Festus, with a bag of meal in his hands.  And all with their eyes and ears and mouths agape with amazement and inquiry.

“In the fiend’s name, what’s the matter?  What the d——­l’s broke loose?  Is the house on fire again?” vociferated the commodore, seeing that no one else spoke; “what’s all this about, Nace Grimshaw?”

“Ask your pretty niece, sir!” said the professor, sternly, turning away.

“Oh, it’s you, is it, you little termagant you?  Oh, you’re a honey-cooler.  What have you been doing now, Imp?” cried the old man, turning fiercely to Jacquelina.  “Answer me, you little vixen!—­what does all this mean?”

“Better ask ‘the gentlemanly professor’ why he seized and nearly shook the head off my shoulders and the breath out of my bosom!” said Jacquelina, half-crying, half-laughing.

The commodore turned furiously toward Grim.  Shaking a woman’s head off her shoulders, and breath out of her body, in his house, did not suit his ideas of gallantry at all, rough as he was.

“By heaven! are you mad, sir?  What have you been doing?  I never laid the weight of my hand on Jacquelina in all my life, wild as she has driven me at times.  Explain your brutality, sir.”

“It was to force from her hand a paper which she has swallowed,” said Dr. Grimshaw, with stern coldness regarding the group.