"You can come in," said a shrill little voice behind the door, "only mind you don't tread on things."
"What a funny little voice!" said Jem, but she had no sooner said it than she jumped back.
The owner of the voice, who had just come forward, was no other than Baby.
"Why," exclaimed Jem, beginning to feel frightened, "I left you fast asleep in your crib."
"Did you?" said Baby, somewhat scornfully. "That's just the way with you grown-up people. You think you know everything, and yet you haven't discretion enough to know when a pin is sticking into one. You'd know soon enough if you had one sticking into your own back."
"But I'm not grown up," stammered Jem; "and when you are at home you can neither walk nor talk. You're not six months old."
"Well, miss," retorted Baby, whose wrongs seemed to have soured her disposition somewhat, "you have no need to throw that in my teeth; you were not six months old, either, when you were my age."
Jem could not help laughing.
"You haven't got any teeth," she said.
"Haven't I?" said Baby, and she displayed two beautiful rows with some haughtiness of manner. "When I am up here," she said, "I am supplied with the modern conveniences, and that's why I never complain. Do I ever cry when I am asleep? It's not falling asleep I object to, it's falling awake."