eleven's the time, when the
cars arrives,--hot and flustered, an' not knowin' for their lives
which way to turn; an' yer talks 'em all up and down, deliberate;
an' makes 'em answer all the questions yer like, and then yer tells
'em, quite perlite, at the end, that yer don't think 'twould suit
yer expectash'ns; it's not precisely what yer was lookin' for. Yer
toss 'em over for all the world as they tosses goods on the counter.
Ah, yer can see a deal of life, that way, of a mornin'!"

Agnes feels, naturally, after this, that she makes a very paltry and
small appearance in the eyes of her friend, and betrays herself to
be very much behindhand in the ways of the world, putting up meekly,
as she is, with a new baby and no second nurse or laundress; and
forgetting the day when she thought her fortune was made and she was
a lady forever, coming from general housework in Aberdeen Street to
be nursery-maid in Harrisburg Square, she begins the usual
preliminaries of neglect, and sauciness, and staying out beyond
hours, and general defiance,--takes sides in the kitchen against the
family regime, and so helps on the evolution of things all and
particular, that at the end of another fortnight the house is empty
of servants, Mr. and Mrs. Scherman are gracefully removing their
breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke,
left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling
down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M'Cormick, the
washerwoman, arrived for the day. She, used to her own half dozen,
picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an
umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him
summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, without uttering a
syllable, she turns upon his small, bewildered, and pitifully bumped
head.

It will be always a confused and mysterious riddle to his childish
recollection,--what strange gulf he fell into that day, and how the
kitchen sink and those great, grabbing arms came to be at the end of
it.

"How happened Dukie to tumble down-stairs?" asked Mrs. Scherman, in
the way mothers do, when she had released him from Mrs. M'Cormick,
carried him to the nursery, got him on her knee in a speechful
condition, and was tenderly sopping the blue lump on his forehead
with arnica water.

"I dicher tumber," said the little Saxon, stoutly, replacing all the
consonant combinations that he couldn't skip, with the aspirated
'ch;' "I dicher tumber