'Heaps, my dear,' she complacently replied; 'there are nineteen of us altogether--eleven boys and eight girls, and all straight made, with the exception of me. I'm crooked. My legs are wrong. But I've been on the stage too. I played an old witch for an entire season, and got great applause. People in the house wondered how I could keep doubled up almost for such a long time together; I was on in one scene for twenty minutes; they didn't know I was doubled up naturally.' In proof of her words Miss West rose, and hobbled to the end of the kitchen as if in search of something, and hobbled back, the most genial and good-humoured of old witches. She was barely four feet in height, and was a queer little figure indeed, but her face was bright, and her eyes were bright I could not help liking the little woman, and I told her so. 'That's right, Master Christopher. We'll be friends, you and me. Well, but to come back.' (This was evidently one of her favourite figures of speech.) got two pound five a week for playing the old witch; it lasted for twenty-two weeks, and it was almost the death of me. I had to do it though.' 'Why?' Her voice grew quieter and she spoke in subdued tones, so that the little misses should not hear. 'Mother and father died within a month of each other, and there were the doctor's bills and the funeral expenses to be provided for. Then there's a large family of us, Master Christopher, and taking us altogether in a lump, we're no joke. The boys wouldn't hear of my going on the stage again, and I don't see myself how I could do it regularly, for there's a deal of business to look after indoors, letting alone the household affairs. Though I like it! If anybody--that is, anybody who's somebody--would write me a strong one-part piece, I could make a big hit with my figure. 'Tisn't every day you see such a figure as mine; it's worth a mint of money on the stage if it was properly worked. They're all on the stage but me; little Sophy there--she's the youngest, four years--spoke two lines in the pantomime last year to rounds of applause. The people love to see a clever child on the stage, though the papers write against it. But what are the papers? as Turk says, with a glare.' 'Of course,' I repeated, with a foolish air of wisdom, 'what are the papers?' 'Turk says, if they were what they ought to be, somebody that he knows (that's himself, my dear) would be at the top of the tree.' 'Turk is very clever, then?' He's the best murderer to slow music that _I've_ ever seen. But Gus is the genius of the family. In the matter of that, we're all geniuses. But blighted, my dear, blighted!' She gave me the merriest look, as little like a blighted being as can well be imagined. 'We're all of us very conceited, my dear, and very vain. What was that thing in the fable that tried to blow itself out, and came to grief?' 'The frog.'