"Once upon a time, there was a great wrangle in a certain street," the story-teller began. "Five little boys and girls were quarreling, and two dogs were barking. The neighbors put their heads out their windows, and the policeman stopped. Mrs. Blake put her two forefingers in her two ears, for the noise was near her step, and the five boys and girls were all telling her together what the matter was, and whose fault it was. Then the mothers called their children home, and two went into Mrs. Blake's, for they were hers. This was the story she drew from them: Anne Blake had said a cross word to one of the others, that other had made a face at the next, the third had slapped the fourth, and it went round the circle. So it seemed that Anne started the whole by speaking a cross word. "'Since you are sorry, I will talk no more to you about it,' her mother said. 'But I wish you to go up to your chamber and sit alone a little while, and think over a Chinese proverb which is written on this slip of paper. You are ten years old, and must begin to think.' "Anne went slowly up-stairs to her chamber, shut the door after her, and sat down in a little cushioned chair by the window to read her proverb. Its being Chinese did not prevent it from being good. This is what she read: 'A word once spoken, a coach and six cannot bring it back again.' "The day was warm, and the curtain at the window swung with a lulling motion, giving glimpses of blue sky with white clouds sailing over, and, below, of the top of a grape-vine full of leaves and small green grapes. "Anne gazed at the sky till it made her feel sleepy--gazing at bright things does make one sleepy--then she gazed at the grape-vine. Presently, she saw something in this vine that looked like a tiny ladder, hidden among the leaves. It looked so much like a ladder that she leaned forward and pulled the curtain aside, to see more plainly. Sure enough! It was the loveliest ladder, or stairway, winding down and down. Its steps were dark, like vine branches, and there was a railing at each side of twigs and tendrils, and it wound down and down, in sight and out of sight. And, more wonderful still, it was no longer a yard, with the city about, she saw, but a great vine covering all the window, and glimpses of a moonlighted forest down below. "'I must go down,' says Anne; and so down she went on the beautiful stairs.