skill, you must understand, between the kettle and the cricket.
And this is what led to it, and how it came about.

2. The kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn't allow
itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn't hear of
accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it would lean
forward with a drunken air, and dribble--a very idiot of a kettle
--on the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed and sputtered
morosely at the fire.

3. To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's fingers,
first of all turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious
pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived sideways in, down
to the very bottom of the kettle; and the hull of the Royal George
has never made half of the monstrous resistance in coming out of
the water which the lid of the kettle employed against Mrs.
Peerybingle before she got it up again.

4. It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even then, carrying its
handle with an air of defiance, and cocking its spout pertly and
mockingly at Mrs. Peerybingle, as if it said, "i won't boil.
Nothing shall induce me!"

5. But Mrs. Peerybingle, with restored good-humor, dusted her
chubby little hands against each other, and sat down before the
kettle laughing. Meantime the jolly blaze uprose and fell,
flashing and gleaming on the little haymaker at the top of the
Dutch clock, until one might have thought he stood stock still
before the Moorish palace, and nothing was in motion but the
flame.