42 THE HISTORY OF DAME MITCHELL

submit to all his whims and fancies; I shall give him
nothing else!”

The next day the pasty was still untouched. The but-
ler had hoped that hunger would have urged the cat to
feast upon the poisoned food, but Mowmouth knew how to
bear misfortune; so he endured abstinence, and lived upon
scraps and dry crusts, and shrunk with dismay every time
his guardian presented to him the fatal dish, which was at
last forgotten and put away in a corner of a cupboard in
the ante-chamber.

Daddy Sharpphiz waxed very wrath when he saw that
his plot had not succeeded. His wish to get rid of Mow-
mouth became quite a mania: he thought of it by day and
by night. Every letter received from Lady Greenford, in
which she inquired about the cat, and renewed her promise
of rewarding Dame Mitchell, only served to goad on the
blind fury of their enemy. He devised the most villanous
schemes to encompass the death of Mowmouth without im-
plicating himself, but none of them appeared to him to be
so sure in their effects as he wished. At length, however,
he resolved on this one :—

In Dame Mitchell’s room stood a marble
bust of the Great Duke of Marlbo-
rough, which represented him in a
Roman cuirass and a wig interwoven
with Jaurels. Behind this bust was an
oval window which gave light to a
staircase, and exactly beneath it, in
Dame Mitchell's room, lay the soft
cushion which was Mowmouth’s bed,
so that the bust would be certain to
smash. him, if the bust could only con-
trive to fall of itself.

So, one evening, Daddy Sharpphiz
stole, without making the least noise,
into Dame Mitchell’s chamber, opened the oval window,