“We set everything by that little bird, Bartholomew!  We wouldn’t have it touched for all the world!  Don’t—­you—­never—­go—­near it!  Do you hear?”

Bartholomew heard.  Miss Bree could not see his tail, fairly lashing now, behind her back, nor the fierce eyes, glowing like green fire.  She stroked his head, and went on preaching.

“The little bird sings, Bartholomew!  You can hear it, mornings, while you eat your breakfast.  And you shall have CHEESE for breakfast as long as you’re good, and don’t—­touch—­the bird!”

“O, Aunt Blin!  He will!  He means to!  Don’t show it to him any more!  Let me hang it way up high, where he can’t!”

“Don’t you be afraid.  He understands now, that we’re precious of it.  Don’t you, Bartholomew?  I want him to get used to it.”

And Aunt Blin actually set the cat down, and turned round to take up her shawl again.

Bartholomew was quiet enough for a minute; he must have his cat-pleasure of crouching and creeping; he must wait till nobody looked.  He knew very well what he was about.  But the tail trembled still; the green eyes were still wild and eager.

“The kindlings are in the left-hand closet, you know,” said Aunt Blin, with a big pin in her mouth, and settling her shoulders into her shawl.  “You’ll want to get the fire going as quick as you can.”

Poor Bel turned away with a fearful misgiving; not for that very minute, exactly; she hardly supposed Bartholomew would go straight from the sermon to sin; but for the resistance of evil enticements hereafter, under Miss Bree’s trustful system,—­though he walked off now like a deacon after a benediction,—­she trembled in her poor little heart, and was sorely afraid she could not ever come to love Aunt Blin’s great gray pet as she supposed she ought.

Aunt Blin had not fairly reached the passage-way, Bel had just emerged from the closet with her hands full of kindlings, and pushed the door to behind her with her foot, when—­crash! bang!—­what had happened?

A Boston earthquake?  The room was full of a great noise and scramble.  It seemed ever so long before Bel could comprehend and turn her face toward the centre of it; a second of time has infinitesimal divisions, all of which one feels and measures in such a crisis.  Then she and Aunt Blin came together at a sharp angle of incidence in the middle of the room, the kindlings scattered about the carpet; and there was the corollary to the exhortation.  The overturned cage,—­the dragged-off table-cloth,—­the clumsy Bartholomew, big and gray, bewildered, yet tenacious, clinging to the wires and sprawling all over them on one side with his fearful bulk, and the tiny green and golden canary flattened out against the other side within, absolutely plane and prone with the mere smite of terror.

“You awful wild beast!  I knew you didn’t mind!” shrieked Bel, snatching at the little cage from which Bartholomew dropped discomfited, and chirping to Cheepsie with a vehemence meant to be reassuring, but failing of its tender intent through frantic indignation.  It is impossible to scold and chirp at once, however much one may want to do it.