Tom Tiddlers Ground | Page 9

"I cannot bear to look at it!"
Mr. Traveller turned his head towards his friend in there, as much as to
ask him how he liked that instance of his success, and then took the
child out at the still open gate, and stood talking to her for some half an
hour in the mellow sunlight. At length he returned, encouraging her as
she held his arm with both her hands; and laying his protecting hand
upon her head and smoothing her pretty hair, he addressed his friend
behind the bars as follows:
Miss Pupford's establishment for six young ladies of tender years, is an
establishment of a compact nature, an establishment in miniature, quite
a pocket establishment. Miss Pupford, Miss Pupford's assistant with the
Parisian accent, Miss Pupford's cook, and Miss Pupford's housemaid,
complete what Miss Pupford calls the educational and domestic staff of
her Lilliputian College.

Miss Pupford is one of the most amiable of her sex; it necessarily
follows that she possesses a sweet temper, and would own to the
possession of a great deal of sentiment if she considered it quite
reconcilable with her duty to parents. Deeming it not in the bond, Miss
Pupford keeps it as far out of sight as she can--which (God bless her!)
is not very far.
Miss Pupford's assistant with the Parisian accent, may be regarded as in
some sort an inspired lady, for she never conversed with a Parisian, and
was never out of England--except once in the pleasure- boat Lively, in
the foreign waters that ebb and flow two miles off Margate at high
water. Even under those geographically favourable circumstances for
the acquisition of the French language in its utmost politeness and
purity, Miss Pupford's assistant did not fully profit by the opportunity;
for the pleasure-boat, Lively, so strongly asserted its title to its name on
that occasion, that she was reduced to the condition of lying in the
bottom of the boat pickling in brine--as if she were being salted down
for the use of the Navy--undergoing at the same time great mental
alarm, corporeal distress, and clear-starching derangement.
When Miss Pupford and her assistant first foregathered, is not known to
men, or pupils. But, it was long ago. A belief would have established
itself among pupils that the two once went to school together, were it
not for the difficulty and audacity of imagining Miss Pupford born
without mittens, and without a front, and without a bit of gold wire
among her front teeth, and without little dabs of powder on her neat
little face and nose. Indeed, whenever Miss Pupford gives a little
lecture on the mythology of the misguided heathens (always carefully
excluding Cupid from recognition), and tells how Minerva sprang,
perfectly equipped, from the brain of Jupiter, she is half supposed to
hint, "So I myself came into the world, completely up in Pinnock,
Mangnall, Tables, and the use of the Globes."
Howbeit, Miss Pupford and Miss Pupford's assistant are old old friends.
And it is thought by pupils that, after pupils are gone to bed, they even
call one another by their christian names in the quiet little parlour. For,
once upon a time on a thunderous afternoon, when Miss Pupford
fainted away without notice, Miss Pupford's assistant (never heard,
before or since, to address her otherwise than as Miss Pupford) ran to
her, crying out, "My dearest Euphemia!" And Euphemia is Miss

Pupford's christian name on the sampler (date picked out) hanging up
in the College-hall, where the two peacocks, terrified to death by some
German text that is waddling down-hill after them out of a cottage, are
scuttling away to hide their profiles in two immense bean-stalks
growing out of flower-pots.
Also, there is a notion latent among pupils, that Miss Pupford was once
in love, and that the beloved object still moves upon this ball. Also, that
he is a public character, and a personage of vast consequence. Also,
that Miss Pupford's assistant knows all about it. For, sometimes of an
afternoon when Miss Pupford has been reading the paper through her
little gold eye-glass (it is necessary to read it on the spot, as the boy
calls for it, with ill- conditioned punctuality, in an hour), she has
become agitated, and has said to her assistant "G!" Then Miss Pupford's
assistant has gone to Miss Pupford, and Miss Pupford has pointed out,
with her eye-glass, G in the paper, and then Miss Pupford's assistant
has read about G, and has shown sympathy. So stimulated has the
pupil- mind been in its time to curiosity on the subject of G, that once,
under temporary circumstances favourable to the bold sally, one
fearless pupil did actually obtain possession of the paper, and range all
over it in search of G, who