ried Matty pettishly; "don't you see
that I'm exceedingly busy?"

"Come away, Nelly," said Lubin; "leave her to her fine Miss Folly; let
her furnish her head, if she likes it, with fairies, furbelows, and
flounces!"

Off went the brother and sister, but they had proceeded some way from
the door before they got beyond reach of the sound of Miss Folly's
chattering tongue.

Down hill Puzzle, across brook Bother, along Trouble lane, fat little
Lubin and Nelly went very sociably together.

"I don't think that you're as lame as you were," said the boy.

"The way seems shorter than it did," observed Nelly; "but one feels the
hill most when coming back."

As the children passed Mr. Reading's fine shop, little Alphabet peeped
through the grating, to the no small annoyance of Lubin.

"Ha, ha! my brave fellow!" cried the dwarf, "have you mounted the ladder
of Spelling, and have you now come to jump over my head?"

Lubin did not answer, but quickened his pace. He and his sister soon
found themselves at the bottom of Multiplication stairs.

"I wonder how we shall ever get up to the top?" thought lame Nelly, as,
with rather a disconsolate air, she glanced up the twelve flights of
steps.

CHAPTER XII.

A VISIT TO ARITHMETIC.

"It's a dreadful pull up this staircase!" exclaimed Lubin, as panting
and puffing he stopped half-way, his fat round face flushed with fatigue
till it looked almost the colour of a cock's comb.

"It is dreadfully tiring!" sighed Nelly, pausing a moment to take
breath.

"It is worse than the ladder of Spelling!" cried Lubin. "I vote that we
go back at once."

"Oh no, dear Lubin!" said his sister, immediately starting again on her
weary ascent--"perseverance, you know, conquers difficulties;" and as
she uttered the words, the lame girl stumbled at that step _seven times
eight_.

"You'll never succeed," observed Lubin.

"I'll try again," said the patient Nelly; and slowly but steadily she
mounted.

Her example encouraged her brother to follow.

"I say, Nelly," observed Lubin, "what a plague all this education
furnishing is! What lucky dogs those savages are who live in caves that
want no fittings, and who have never heard of Reading papers, or ladders
of Spelling, or this horrible Multiplication!"

Nelly could not help laughing.

"The very same thought was passing through my head," said she; "but I
tried to drive it away, for it seemed to be only fit for Miss Folly."

"Perhaps