“No! but his leg was several inches longer than his arm, so having turned his tail towards his object, he stretched out his hind-paw, and before I could rush back, my splendid alabaster clock had been upset and broken to shivers.”

Laura soon became quite as mischievous as Harry, which [13] ]is very surprising, as she was a whole year older, and had been twice as often scolded by Mrs. Crabtree. Neither of these children intended any harm, for they were only heedless lively romps, who would not for twenty worlds have told a lie, or done a shabby thing, or taken what did not belong to them. They were not greedy either, and would not on any account have resembled Peter Grey, who was at the same school with Frank, and who spent all his own pocket-money, and borrowed a great deal of other people’s, to squander at the pastry-cook’s, saying, he wished it were possible to eat three dinners, and two breakfasts, and five suppers every day.

Harry was not a cruel boy either; he never lashed his pony, beat his dog, pinched his sister, or killed any butterflies, though he often chased them for fun, and one day he even defended a wasp, at the risk of being stung, when Mrs. Crabtree intended to kill it.

“Nasty, useless vermin!” said she angrily, “What business have they in the world! coming into other people’s houses, with nothing to do! They sting and torment every body! Bees are very different, for they make honey.”

“And wasps make jelly!” said Harry resolutely, while he opened the window, and shook the happy wasp out of his pocket handkerchief.

Mrs. Crabtree allowed no pets of any description in her territories, and ordered the children to be happy without any such nonsense. When Laura’s canary-bird escaped one unlucky day out of its cage, Mrs. Crabtree was strongly suspected by Major Graham, of having secretly opened the door, as she had long declared war upon bulfinches, white mice, parrots, kittens, dogs, bantams, and gold fish, observing that animals only made a noise and soiled the house, therefore every creature should remain in its own home, “birds in the air, fish in the sea, and beasts in the desert.” She seemed always watching in hopes Harry and [14] ]Laura might do something that they ought to be punished for; and Mrs. Crabtree certainly had more ears than other people, or slept with one eye open, as, whatever might be done, night or day, she overheard the lowest whisper of mischief, and appeared able to see what was going on in the dark.

When Harry was a very little boy, he sometimes put himself in the corner, after doing wrong, apparently quite sensible that he deserved to be punished, and once, after being terribly scolded by Mrs. Crabtree, he drew in his stool beside her chair, with a funny penitent face, twirling his thumbs over and over each other, and saying, “Now, Mrs. Crabtree! look what a good boy I am going to be!”

“You a good boy!” replied she contemptuously: “No! no! the world will be turned into a cream-cheese first!”

Lady Harriet gave Harry and Laura a closet of their own, in which she allowed them to keep their toys, and nobody could help laughing to see that, amidst the whole collection, there was seldom one unbroken. Frank wrote out a list once of what he found in this crowded little store-room, and amused himself often with reading it over afterwards. There were three dolls without faces, a horse with no legs, a drum with a hole in the top, a cart without wheels, a churn with no bottom, a kite without a tale, a skipping-rope with no handles, and a cup and ball that had lost the string. Lady Harriet called this closet the hospital for decayed toys, and she often employed herself as their doctor, mending legs and arms for soldiers, horses, and dolls, though her skill seldom succeeded long, because play-things must have been made of cast-iron to last a week with Harry. One cold winter morning when Laura entered the nursery, she found a large fire blazing, and all her wax dolls sitting in a row within the fender staring at the flames. Harry intended no mischief on this occasion, but great was his vexation when [15] ]Laura burst into tears, and showed him that their faces were running in a hot stream down upon their beautiful silk frocks, which were completely ruined, and not a doll had its nose remaining. Another time, Harry pricked a hole in his own beautiful large gas ball, wishing to see how the gas could possibly escape, after which, in a moment, it shrivelled up into a useless empty bladder,—and when his kite was flying up to the clouds, Harry often wished that he could be tied to the tail himself, so as to fly also through the air like a bird, and see every thing.

Mrs. Crabtree always wore a prodigious bunch of jingling keys in her pocket, that rung whenever she moved, as if she carried a dinner bell in her pocket, and Frank said it was like a rattlesnake giving warning of her approach, which was of great use, as everybody had time to put on a look of good behaviour before she arrived. Even Betty, the under nursery-maid, felt in terror of Mrs. Crabtree’s entrance, and was obliged to work harder than any six house-maids united. Frank told her one day that he thought brooms might soon be invented, which would go by steam and brush carpets of themselves, but, in the meantime, not a grain of dust could lurk in any corner of the nursery without being dislodged. Betty would have required ten hands, and twenty pair of feet, to do all the work that was expected; but the grate looked like jet, the windows would not have soiled a cambric handkerchief, and the carpet was switched with so many tea-leaves, that Frank thought Mrs. Crabtree often took several additional cups of tea in order to leave a plentiful supply of leaves for sweeping the floor next morning.