Nancy | Page 2

made an excellent start: few families a better one, though we say it that
should not. Although in Algy there was a slight falling off, it was not
much to complain of. But I am sensibly uglier than Algy (as indeed he
has, on several occasions, dispassionately remarked to me); the Brat
than me; Bobby than the Brat; and so steadily on, till we reach our
nadir of unhandsomeness in Tou Tou. Tou Tou is our climax, and we
certainly defy our neighbors and acquaintances to outdo her.
Hapless young Tou Tou! made up of the thinnest legs, the widest
mouth, the invisiblest nose, and over-visiblest ears, that ever went to
the composition of a child of twelve years.
"Keep stirring always! You must take care that it does not stick to the
bottom!" say I, closing the receipt-book, and speaking on my own
account, but still as one having authority.
"All very well to say 'Keep stirring always,'" answers Barbara, turning
round a face unavoidably pretty, even though at the present moment
deeply flame-colored; eyes still sweetly laughing with gay good-humor,
even though half burnt out of her head, to answer me; "but if you had
been stirring as long as I have, you would wonder that you had any arm
left to stir with, however feebly. Here, one of you boys, take a turn!
You Brat, you never do any thing for your living!"
The Brat complies, though not with eagerness. They change
occupations: the Brat stirs, and she fishes for almonds. Ten minutes
pass: the taffy is done, and what is more it really is taffy. The upshot of
our cookery is in general so startlingly indifferent from what we had
intended, that the result in the present case takes us by surprise. We all

prove practically that, in the words of the receipt-book, it "breaks clear
between the teeth without sticking to them." It is poured into Bobby's
soup-plate, and we have thrown up the window-sashes, and set it on the
ledge to cool. The searching wind blows in dry and biting. Now it is
rushing in a violent current through the room, for the door has opened.
Mother enters.
"To what may we attribute the honor of this visit?" says Algy, turning
away from the window to meet her, and setting her a chair. Bobby
gives her a kiss, and the Brat a lump of taffy, concerning which it
would be invidious to predicate which were the stickier; so exceedingly
adhesive are both.
"Your father says," begins she, sitting down. She is interrupted by a
loud and universal groan.
"Says what? Something unpleasant of course, who is it now? Who has
done any thing now? I do hope it is the Brat," cries Bobby, viciously;
"it is quite his turn; he has been good boy of the family for the last
week."
"I dare say it is," replies the Brat, resignedly; "one can't expect such
prosperity as mine to last forever."
"Of course it is I," says Algy, rather bitterly, "it is always I. I have
never been good boy since I was ploughed; and, please God, I never
will be again."
"But what is it? what is it? About how bad is it? Is it to be one of our
worst rows?"
We are all speaking together at the top of our voices; indeed, we rarely
employ a lower key.
"It is no one; no one has done any thing," replies mother, when, at last,
we allow her to make herself heard, "only your father sends you a
message that, as Sir Roger Tempest is coming here to-day, he hopes
you will make less noise this evening in here than you did last night: he

says he could hardly hear the sound of his own voice."
"Ahem!" "Very likely!" "I dare say!" in different tones of angry
incredulity.
"He begs you to see that the swing-door is shut, as he does not wish his
friend to imagine that he keeps a private lunatic asylum."
A universal snort of indignation.
"If we are bedlamites, we know who made us so. We will tell old Roger
if he asks," etc.
"For my part," say I, resolutely pinching my lips together as I kneel on
the carpet, and violently hammer the now cold and hard taffy with the
handle of the poker, which in its day has been put to many uses vile, "I
can tell you that I shall not dine with you to-night: I should infallibly
say something to father--something unfortunate--I feel it rising; and it
would be unseemly to have one of our émeutes before this old
gentleman, would not it?"
"They are nice breezy things when you are used to them," says Barbara,
laughing; "but one requires to be brought up to them."
"Do not