It was an extraordinary looking place. Kitty thought it was the queerest place she had ever seen. It had a tumbled-about, pulled-about appearance, for the ground was all in mounds and holes, and the roots of the trees bulged bare from the sides of the banks. Presently there came a sound of screaming and shouting. Above these dismal cries Kitty fancied she heard the sound of smacking.
“Is that Naughty Children Land?” she asked.
Her play-fellow did not answer.
She turned to look for him, but the queer creature was gone. Kitty was alone. “Extraordinary!” muttered Kitty. “It must be Naughty Children Land,” she continued. It was not at all difficult to get into Naughty Children Land; just a step down a bank, a jump over a ditch, and Kitty was in it.
She made a few steps forward. The ground was covered with broken toys. Battered, smashed, noseless, eyeless, hairless dollies; tops without a spin in them; whips without handles, drums without heads; torn picture-books, blotted copy-books, mangled lesson-books, their pages miserably fluttering about.
Queer dull little birds, with one feather only for a tail, flew here and there, uttering melancholy chirps. “Tweet—tweet!” they cried. “Hi—ss—hiss” shrieked a cat, making an ∾ of his thin body, and waving a tail that appeared to have been pulled and pulled till it was more like a bell-rope than anything else.
But what attracted Kitty’s attention was a group of little girls, sitting with their shoulders up to their ears, their chins in their hands, their hair falling over their eyes. They would have been very pretty but for their frowning eyebrows, their puckered foreheads, their tumbled hair, their under lips, that had stuck out so long that now they always stuck out. Every now and then these dismal children gave a big spiteful sob, and their faces were smeared with dirty tears.
“What is the matter? Why do you look so miserable?” asked Kitty.
At first the woebegone children drew down their eyebrows more closely, and stuck their under lips further out. Then in a sing-song, sob-broken voice, raising their shoulders still nearer to their ears, burying their chins deeper in their hands, making wryer faces, they sang in a chorus: