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 non-commissioned
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.
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