“Maud,” the little girl replied, without any shyness.
“What’s yours, little man?”
“Bill,” said the boy. “Bill Ricketts. You got somep’m stickin’ out of your vest at the top.”
Mr. Thompson incautiously followed an impulse to turn again to the mirror, whereupon the child, Maud, instantly shouted:
“Wookin’ at himseff in the wookin’-gwass!”
Her voice was so loud, and the information it imparted so discomfiting, that the visitor felt himself breaking out suddenly into a light perspiration. Foolishly, he attempted to defend himself against the accusation. “Why, no, I wasn’t, little Maudie,” he said, with an uneasy laugh.
To his horror, she responded by shouting at an even higher pitch than before:
“Wookin’ at himseff in the wookin’-gwass!”
She did not stop at that, for children in such moods are terrible, and they have no pity. P. Borodino Thompson, substantial citizen, of considerable importance financially, not only in Marlow but throughout the county, and not without dignity to maintain, found himself at the mercy of this child who appeared to be possessed (for no reason whatever) by the old original Fiend of malice. She began to leap into the air repeatedly; leaping higher and higher, clapping her hands together, at arms’-length above her head, while she shrieked, squealed, and in all ways put pressure upon her lungs and vocal organs to distribute over the world the scandal that so horridly fascinated her:
“Caught him! Wookin’ at himseff in the wookin’-gwass! Caught him wookin’ at himseff in the wookin’-gwass! Wookin’ at himseff in the wookin’-GWASS!”