CHAPTER XII.
THE MISHAP OF THE SKIPPING-ROPE.
tory," said the Skipping-rope, "to be sure you shall have it, and a very queer one it is, quite the oddest of the lot, I rather think. But I shall be very happy to begin it at once, if the Kite will be so good as to disentangle his tail."
"Pshaw," growled the Kite, "why, I was obliged to tell mine while you were tugging at me all the while. Two or three times, when I had something very particular to say, you pulled my tail, suddenly, and I lost the thread of my discourse. So tit for tat, my friend, do you unwind your yarn, and I won't serve you any worse than you did me."
The Skipping-rope, finding she could not gain her point, gave herself a spiteful wriggle, which nearly tore off the grand tassel at the end of the Kite's tail, and set off full gallop in her recital, leaving him no breathing time to complain:—
"I began life," said she, "as a mere length of rope, although I only form now a small portion of the coil to which I belonged. I was the property of a poor fisherman, who lived in a hut belonging to a cluster of storm-beaten cots, called by great courtesy, the 'village' of Rocksand, in Devonshire. All the people who lived there were very poor, and gained a precarious living by fishing, while their wives occupied the spare time left after "keeping house, and minding the childer," by cultivating the very small bits of garden ground that belonged to them, and which were situated on the top of a very lofty cliff, some height above the nestling cottages which were huddled under its shelter on the shore, not so very far above the high tide line. Indeed, in stormy weather, the rough seas which churned up the restless pebbles on the beach, sent their waves in very adverse weather, and during winds that set dead in shore, into somewhat disagreeable nearness to the doorsteps! And as for the spray, well! in storms it put out the fires, by falling down the low wide chimneys, but in ordinary weather people never minded it.