I finished a large mourning order the day
before yesterday. Doll I work for lost a canary bird."
"Are you alone all day?" asked Bradley Headstone. "Don't any of the
neighboring children--?"
"Ah," 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, adding:
"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 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 emphatic shake of her little fist, seemed to ease the mind of the
person of the house; for she added with recovered composure, "No, no,
no.
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