Australian Tales - Setis

Angry and hungry boys and girls are in general prone to disagree, so it
was not wonderful under the circumstances that Billy and his sister
should begin to quarrel. They soon began to fight too, and Mary Ann,
who inherited her mother's spirit, being aroused by her rude brother
pulling her round the kitchen by her back ringlets, pushed him over a
chair with his head in the bread-pan, which was broken to pieces by the
collision.
The noise of the affray reached the dining-room, when out rushed Mrs.
Tiddle — glad of a chance to vent off her wrath upon some one — and
gave her daughter a “good-dressing” with the handle of the hearthbroom.
Mary Ann thereupon set up a squall equal in volume and effect to
the strains of some amateur singers, while Billy dodged his mother round
the kitchen to evade his just share of the broomstick. Stimulated by the
sight of the broken bread-pan, Mrs. Tiddle resolutely vowed she would
skin him when she caught him. But in order to catch nimble Billy to skin
him it was necessary for her to put her best foot foremost; in doing so she
put it into a hole in the oilcloth, and down she went in the narrow dark
passage with a thud like a falling tower. Out flew Mr. Tiddle to see what
all the noise was about, when he innocently tumbled over his prostrate
wife, kicking the crown of her head with the toe of his boot, and grinding
the tip off his own nose on the rough stone step of the kitchen.
In the meantime Mr. Grubb, who had finished his dinner, rose up and
departed, lest he should be called upon to arbitrate upon the complicated
quarrel, and he dreaded family brawls worse than cold dinners. Two of
the young Tiddle brats, who were left at the table, began to wrangle for
the possession of a backbone which they had filched from their father's
plate, while little Teddy, the infant, seized the favourable opportunity for
helping himself to a red pepper pod from the mixed pickle bottle; but
before he had finished eating it, he began to raise his voice in the horrible
belief that his head was on fire.
Never was heard a greater hubbub in any quiet tailor's house in this
colony or elsewhere; but I must leave my readers to imagine the
confusion and to put things to rights again according to their own
fancies, while I admit that my fancy has helped me to colour the
foregoing picture from every day life.
I venture to think that few, if any, of my old friendly readers will
mistake my meaning in the brief comments. I am about to make on the
foregoing little episode in domestic life. Not one of them, I hope, will
believe that I would grudge a meal to a friend let him drop in when he
would, or that I would commend such a niggardly spirit in any one. It is
those strong-nosed, systematic spongers that I dread at all times, men,
who — as Mrs. Tiddle remarked — always smell when there is a good
dinner on the table, and slide themselves in uninvited for the mere sake
of “getting a good feed” as they vulgarly call it. Men with blarneying