when she pretended to be vitally interested in the friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and fork-tongued; and when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop (who said very little to her), or upon Drummle (who said less), I rather envied them for being on the opposite side of the table.

After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs Coiler made admiring comments on their eyes, noses, and legs - a sagacious way of improving their minds. There were four little girls, and two little boys, besides the baby who might have been either, and the baby's next successor who was as yet neither. They were brought in by Flopson and Millers, much as though those two noncommissioned officers had been recruiting somewhere for children and had enlisted these: while Mrs Pocket looked at the young Nobles that ought to have been, as if she rather thought she had had the pleasure of inspecting them before, but didn't quite know what to make of them.

`Here! Give me your fork, Mum, and take the baby,' said Flopson. `Don't take it that way, or you'll get its head under the table.'

Thus advised, Mrs Pocket took it the other way, and got its head upon the table; which was announced to all present by a prodigious concussion.

`Dear, dear! Give it me back, Mum,' said Flopson; `and Miss Jane, come and dance to baby, do!'

One of the little girls, a mere mite who seemed to have prematurely taken upon herself some charge of the others, stepped out of her place by me, and danced to and from the baby until it left off crying, and laughed. Then, all the children laughed, and Mr Pocket (who in the meantime had twice endeavoured to lift himself up by the hair) laughed, and we all laughed and were glad.

Flopson, by dint of doubling the baby at the joints like a Dutch doll, then got it safely into Mrs Pocket's lap, and gave it the nutcrackers to play with: at the same time recommending Mrs Pocket to take notice that the handles of that instrument were not likely to agree with its eyes, and sharply charging Miss Jane to look after the same. Then, the two nurses left the room, and had a lively scuffle on the staircase with a dissipated page who had waited at dinner, and who had clearly lost half his buttons at the gamingtable.

I was made very uneasy in my mind by Mrs Pocket's falling into a discussion with Drummle respecting two baronetcies, while she ate a sliced orange steeped in sugar and wine, and forgetting all about the baby on her lap: who did most appalling things with the nutcrackers. At length, little Jane perceiving its young brains to be imperilled, softly left her place, and with many small artifices coaxed the dangerous weapon away. Mrs Pocket finishing her orange at about the same time, and not approving of this, said to Jane:

`You naughty child, how dare you? Go and sit down this instant!'

`Mamma dear,' lisped the little girl, `baby ood have put hith eyeth out.'

`How dare you tell me so?' retorted Mrs Pocket. `Go and sit down in your chair this moment!'

Mrs Pocket's dignity was so crushing, that I felt quite abashed: as if I myself had done something to rouse it.

`Belinda,' remonstrated Mr Pocket, from the other end of the table, `how can you be so unreasonable? Jane only interfered for the protection of baby.'

`I will not allow anybody to interfere,' said Mrs Pocket. `I am surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the affront of interference.'

`Good God!' cried Mr Pocket, in an outbreak of desolate desperation. `Are infants to be nutcrackered into their tombs, and is nobody to save them?'