sent home, when my dear mistress saw me put up on a high shelf among
valuable things not often used, but always well cared for. As I said
before, she seemed really to love me, and often said, as she looked
at me, "I hope no harm will come to, my precious old tea-kettle."

Now I come to the painful part of my story, of which, even now, I
hate to think. With all this love and consideration for me, my
mistress made one fatal mistake. She allowed those same boys, who
used the curling tongs to get a bone out of the pig's throat, to
take me with them when they went into the woods to pass a day and
night, and have a frolic, as they called it.

The boys made a huge fire, and put me on it, and I boiled some water
for them, and did my duty well. But, after they had satisfied their
thirst with the good tea I had enabled them to make, they forgot
your humble servant, and left me on the coals.

The water all evaporated, and I was left to the fury of the fire; my
pleasant song turned into a groan, a scream, in fact; my nose could
not stand the fire; it dropped into the ashes; and here I am, the
wreck of what I was, with this ghastly hole in me which you see.

To be sure, the boys were sorry enough for their carelessness; but
that did not mend my nose. I am kept here by my mistress for the
same reason that she keeps the old pitcher and other useless things,
as memorials of happy days past and gone."

The tea-kettle was silent. Without any preface, the spinning wheel
began to whirl and whiz, and whiz and whirl, and grumble and rumble,
and buzz and buzz, and made altogether such a sleepy sound, as she