lking 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. No children for me. Give me grown-ups."

It was difficult to guess the age of this strange creature, for her poor
figure furnished no clue to it, and her face was at once so young and so
old. Twelve, or at the most thirteen, might be near the mark.

"I always did like grown-ups," she went on, "and always kept company
with them. So sensible. Sit so quiet. Don't go prancing and capering
about! And I mean always to keep among none but grown-ups till I marry.
I suppose I must make up my mind to marry, one of these days!"

At that moment Lizzie Hexam entered, and the visitors after saying
farewell to the dolls' dressmaker, took Lizzie out with them for a
short walk.

The person of the house, dolls' dressmaker, and manufacturer of
ornamental pincushions and penwipers, sat in her quaint little low
arm-chair, singing in the dark, until Lizzie came back.

"Well, Lizzie--Mizzie--Wizzie," said she, breaking off in her song.
"What's the news out of doors?"

"What's the news indoors?" returned Lizzie playfully, smoothing the
bright long fair hair, which grew very luxuriant and beautiful on the
head of the dolls' dressmaker. It being Lizzie's regular occupation when
they were alone of an evening to brush out and smooth the long fair
hair, she unfastened a ribbon that kept it back while the little
creature was at work, and it fell in a beautiful shower over the poor
shoulders that were much in need of such adorning rain.

Lizzie then lighted a