ing the
remarkable family phenomenon that whenever any of the children strayed
near Mrs. Pocket in their play, they always tripped themselves up and
tumbled over her,--always very much to her momentary astonishment, and
their own more enduring lamentation. I was at a loss to account for
this surprising circumstance, and could not help giving my mind to
speculations about it, until by and by Millers came down with the baby,
which baby was handed to Flopson, which Flopson was handing it to Mrs.
Pocket, when she too went fairly head foremost over Mrs. Pocket, baby
and all, and was caught by Herbert and myself.

"Gracious me, Flopson!" said Mrs. Pocket, looking off her book for a
moment, "everybody's tumbling!"

"Gracious you, indeed, Mum!" returned Flopson, very red in the face;
"what have you got there?"

"I got here, Flopson?" asked Mrs. Pocket.

"Why, if it ain't your footstool!" cried Flopson. "And if you keep it
under your skirts like that, who's to help tumbling? Here! Take the
baby, Mum, and give me your book."

Mrs. Pocket acted on the advice, and inexpertly danced the infant a
little in her lap, while the other children played about it. This had
lasted but a very short time, when Mrs. Pocket issued summary orders
that they were all to be taken into the house for a nap. Thus I made the
second discovery on that first occasion, that the nurture of the little
Pockets consisted of alternately tumbling up and lying down.

Under these circumstances, when Flopson and Millers had got the children
into the house, like a little flock of sheep, and Mr. Pocket came out
of it to make my acquaintance, I was not much surprised to find that Mr.
Pocket was a gentleman with a rather perplexed expression of face, and
with his very gray hair disordered on his head, as if he didn't quite
see his way to putting anything straight.

Chapter XXIII

Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I was not sorry to
see him. "For, I really am not," he added, with his son's smile,
"an alarming personage." He was a young-looking man, in spite of
his perplexities and his very gray hair, and his manner seemed quite
natural. I use the word natural, in the sense of its being unaffected;
there was something comic in his distraught way, as though it would have
been downright ludicrous but for his own perception that it was very
near being so. When he had talked with me a little, he said to Mrs.
Pocket, with a rather anxious contr