"Is she?"
"Yes, Pip," said Joe; "and what's worse, she's got Tickler with her."
At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled frame.
"She sot down," said Joe, "and she got up, and she made a grab at Tickler, and she Rampaged out. That's what she did," said Joe, slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and looking at it; "she Rampaged out, Pip."
"Has she been gone long, Joe?" I always treated him as no more than my equal.
"Well," said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, "she's been on the Rampage, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's a coming! Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel betwixt you."
I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open, and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause, and applied Tickler to its farther investigation.
"Where have you been?" she demanded, between tickles.
"I have only been to the churchyard," said I, crying and rubbing myself.
"Churchyard!" repeated my sister. "If it warn't for me you'd been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there! Who brought you up by hand?"