We used to play at all kinds of things—­concerts, circuses, theatricals, and sometimes conjuring.  Uncle Patrick had not been to see us for a long time, when one day we heard that he was coming, and I made up my mind at once that I would have a perfectly new entertainment for him.

We like having entertainments for Uncle Patrick, because he is such a very good audience.  He laughs, and cries, and claps, and thumps with his crutch, and if things go badly, he amuses the rest.

Ever since I can remember anything, I remember an old print, called “The Happy Family,” over our nursery fire-place, and how I used to wonder at that immovable cat, with sparrows on her back, sitting between an owl and a magpie.  And it was when I saw Edward sitting with Benjamin the cat, and two sparrows he had brought up by hand, struggling and laughing because Cocky would push itself, crest first, under his waistcoat, and come out at the top to kiss him—­that an idea struck me; and I resolved to have a Happy Family for Uncle Patrick, and to act Showman myself.

Edward can do anything with beasts.  He was absolutely necessary as confederate, but it was possible Lettice might want to show off with Cocky, and I did not want a girl on the stage, so I said very little to her.  But I told Edward to have in the yard-dog, and practise him in being happy with the rest of the family pets.  Fred, the farm-boy, promised to look out for an owl.  Benjamin, the cat, could have got mice enough; but he would have eaten them before Edward had had time to teach him better, so I set a trap.  I knew a village-boy with a magpie, ready tamed.

Bernard, the yard-dog, is a lumbering old fellow, with no tricks.  We have tried.  We took him out once, into a snow-drift, with a lantern round his neck, but he rescued nothing, and lost the lantern—­and then he lost himself, for it was dark.

But he is very handsome and good, and I knew, if I put him in the middle, he would let anything sit upon him.  He would not feel it, or mind if he did.  He takes no notice of Cocky.

Benjamin never quarrels with Cocky, but he dare not forget that Cocky is there.  And Cocky sometimes looks at Benjamin’s yellow eyes as if it were thinking how very easily they would come out.  But they are quite sufficiently happy together for a Happy Family.

The mice gave more trouble than all the rest, so I settled that Lettice should wind up the mechanical mouse, and run that on as the curtain rose.

CHAPTER III.

     “Memor esto majorum.”

OLD MOTTO.

    " . . . .

    All my fears are laid aside,
    If I but remember only
    Such as these have lived and died!”

LONGFELLOW.

Do you wish to avoid vexations?  Then never have a Happy Family!  Mine were countless.