They looked at the little creature with a wonder that did not diminish, and the schoolmaster said: “I am sorry your fine ladies are so inconsiderate.” “It’s the way with them,” said the person of the house, shrugging her shoulders again. “And they take no care of their clothes, and they never keep to the same fashions a month. I work for a doll with three daughters. Bless you, she’s enough to ruin her husband!” The person of the house gave a weird little laugh here, and gave them another look out of the corners of her eyes. She had an elfin chin that was capable of great expression; and whenever she gave this look, she hitched this chin up. As if her eyes and her chin worked together on the same wires. “Are you always as busy as you are now?” “Busier. I’m slack just now. I finished a large mourning order the day before yesterday. Doll I work for lost a canary-bird.” The person of the house gave another little laugh, and then nodded her head several times, as who should moralize, “Oh this world, this world!” “Are you alone all day?” asked Bradley Headstone. “Don’t any of the neighboring children----?” “Ah, lud!” cried the person of the house, with a little scream, as if the word had pricked her. “Don’t talk of children. I can’t bear children. _I_ know their tricks and their manners.” She said this with an angry little shake of her right fist close before her eyes. Perhaps it scarcely required the teacher-habit to perceive that the doll’s dressmaker was inclined to be bitter on the difference between herself and other children. But both master and pupil understood it so. “Always running about and screeching, always playing and fighting, always skip-skip-skipping on the pavement and chalking it for their games! Oh! _I_ know their tricks and their manners!” Shaking the little fist as before. “And that’s not all. Ever so often calling names in through a person’s keyhole, and imitating a person’s back and legs. Oh! _I_ know their tricks and their manners. And I’ll tell you what I’d do to punish ’em. There’s doors under the church in the Square--black doors, leading into black vaults. Well! I’d open one of those doors, and I’d cram ’em all in, and then I’d lock the door and through the keyhole I’d blow in pepper.” “What would be the good of blowing in pepper?” asked Charley Hexam. “To set ’em sneezing,” said the person of the house, “and make their eyes water. And when they were all sneezing and inflamed, I’d mock ’em through the keyhole. Just as they, with their tricks and their manners, mock a person through a person’s keyhole!” An uncommonly emphatic shake of her little fist close before her eyes seemed to ease the mind of the person of the house; for she added with recovered composure, “No, no, no. No children for me. Give me grown-ups.” LITTLE NELL XIV LITTLE NELL