at overhung it. When
asleep Martin's face was the perfection of gentle innocence. But the
instant he opened his dark-brown eyes, a thousand dimples and wrinkles
played over his visage, chiefly at the corners of his mouth and round
his eyes; as if the spirit of fun and the spirit of mischief had got
entire possession of the boy, and were determined to make the most of
him. When deeply interested in anything, Martin was as grave and
serious as a philosopher.

Aunt Dorothy Grumbit had a turned-up nose,--a very much turned-up nose;
so much so, indeed, that it presented a front view of the nostrils! It
was an aggravating nose, too, for the old lady's spectacles refused to
rest on any part of it except the extreme point. Mrs Grumbit
invariably placed them on the right part of her nose, and they as
invariably slid down the curved slope until they were brought up by the
little hillock at the end. There they condescended to repose in peace.

Mrs Grumbit was mild, and gentle, and little, and thin, and old,--
perhaps seventy-five; but no one knew her age for certain, not even
herself. She wore an old-fashioned, high-crowned cap, and a gown of
bed-curtain chintz, with flowers on it the size of a saucer. It was a
curious gown, and very cheap, for Mrs Grumbit was poor. No one knew
the extent of her poverty, any more than they did her age; but she
herself knew it, and felt it deeply,--never so deeply, perhaps, as when
her orphan nephew Martin grew old enough to be put to school, and she
had not wherewithal to send him. But love is quick-witted and resolute.
A residence of six years in Germany had taught her to knit stockings at
a rate that cannot be described, neither conceived unless seen. She
knitted two dozen pairs. The vicar took one dozen, the doctor took the
other. The fact soon became known. Shops were not numerous in the
village in those days; and the wares they supplied were only second
rate. Orders came pouring in, Mrs Grumbit's knitting wires clicked,
and her little old hands wagged with incomprehensible rapidity and
unflagging regularity,--and Martin Rattler was sent to school.

While occupied with her knitting, she sat in a high-backed chair in a
very small deep window, through which the sun streamed nearly the whole
day; and out of which there was the most charming imaginable view of the
gardens and orchards of the villagers, with a little dancing brook in
the midst, and the green fields of the farmers b