"Never go into the company of a Punch any more," said Mrs. Jarley, "after this." "I never saw any wax-work, ma’am," said Nell. "Is it funnier than Punch?" "Funnier!" said Mrs. Jarley in a shrill voice. "It is not funny at all." "Oh!" said Nell very humbly. "It isn’t funny at all," repeated Mrs. Jarley. "It’s calm and—classical. No low beatings and knockings about, no jokings and squeakings, like your precious Punches, but always the same, and so like life that if wax-work only spoke and walked about, you’d hardly know the difference. I won’t go so far as to say that, as it is, I’ve seen wax-work quite like life, but I’ve certainly seen some life that was exactly like wax-work." "Is it here, ma’am?" asked Nell. "Is what here, child?" "The wax-work, ma’am." "Why, bless you, child, what are you thinking of? How could it be here, where you see everything except the inside of one little cupboard and a few boxes? It’s gone on in the other vans to the next town, and there it’ll be shown the day after to-morrow. You are going to the same town, and you’ll see it, I dare say. I suppose you couldn’t stop away if you was to try ever so much." "I shall not be in the town, I think, ma’am," said the child. "Not there!" cried Mrs. Jarley. "Then where will you be?" "I—I—don’t quite know. I am not certain." "You don’t mean to say that you don’t know where you’re going to!" said the lady of the caravan. "What line are you in? You looked to me at the races, child, as if you were quite out of your place." "We were there quite by accident," returned Nell; "we are poor people, ma’am, and are only wandering about. We have nothing to do; I wish we had." "You amaze me more and more," said Mrs. Jarley after a while. "Why, what do you call yourselves? Not beggars?" "Indeed, ma’am, I don’t know what else we are," returned the child. "Lord bless me!" said the lady of the caravan. "I never heard of such a thing. Who’d have thought it?" She remained so long silent after this that Nell feared she was vexed. At length she said,— "And yet you can read. And write too, I shouldn’t wonder?" "Yes, ma’am," said the child timidly. "Well, and what a thing _that_ is!" returned Mrs. Jarley. "_I_ can’t." Nell said, "Indeed!" in a tone of surprise and doubt. Mrs. Jarley said no more, and after a while Nell withdrew to the other window and sat down near her grandfather, who was now awake. After a while the lady of the caravan roused herself, and calling the driver to come under the window at which she was seated, spoke to him in a low tone of voice, as if she were asking his advice. This talk at length ended, she drew in her head again, and bade Nell come near. "And the old gentleman too," said Mrs. Jarley; "for I want to have a word with him.—Do you want a good place for your grandchild, master? If you do, I can put her in a way of getting one. What do you say?" "I can’t leave her," answered the old man. "What would become of me without her?"