The children started to their feet; they looked around, they saw Kitty, and were rushing toward her in their anger, when all at once, but whence Kitty could not tell, there appeared the two severe old women waving their birch rods.
“Hoity! toity!” they muttered, laying hold of as many of the children as they could pounce upon. “You’ll have enough of your faces by Christmas Day in Punishment Land.”
They strode off so quickly with the children tucked under their arms that Kitty could not tell which way they had gone, any more than she could tell how they had come.
“I am not vain. I never look at myself in the glass,” remarked the little girl in her high voice; as she said this another pimple came out, this time on her forehead, over her right eye. “When I brush my hair, or pin on my collar, I shut my eyes not to see my face. Not even to have a peep.”
“I wonder,” said Kitty, watching with great interest the pimples spreading and spreading, “how you ever came to Naughty Children Land when you are so good.”
“I come to teach the children to be good,” answered her guide with a smug sigh.
Another pimple, larger than the others, was just coming out on her left cheek, when Kitty gave a start and the demure little girl a scream. One of the old ladies suddenly appeared behind the latter’s back—how she had come there was the wonder; she tucked the boaster under her arm, and marched off at a tremendous rate, with her captive screaming and wriggling in the wildest passion.
“I am sure she was not a bit good, and I am sure she was a great goose—never killing a flea or taking a peep at herself in the glass,” muttered Kitty, straining her eyes to discover which way they had gone.
“I wonder where the old women take them?” she continued.