A small fire of fooling was kept up throughout the morning. If the door-bell has been rung once, it has forty times, by Mrs. Mashum's cub of a boy, who would jerk the handle or toss up his ball at the wire, and then run out of sight. In going from my own room to my niece's, I saw a sixpence on the floor, and, stooping down to pick it up, found it fast. Congratulating myself on not having been observed, I was passing on, when that disagreeable urchin shouted, from behind a door—
"April fool, old lady!"
He deserves to be sent to the House of Refuge.
Ann Sophia herself has put me out of all manner of patience by saying, as I sat sewing at the front window in her parlor, "Pray, Aunt Abigail, whose carriage do you suppose that is?" when no vehicle was in view but the milkman's. Or, suddenly, she would exclaim, "What ladies are those crossing the street?" when none were anywhere to be seen.
But the meanest of all was a very rude thing, which she repeated several times upon different persons, apparently delighted with its efficacy. This was to rush up suddenly, and screaming out, "See there!" throw her arm directly across one's nose with so much force as to oblige that organ to follow the direction of her outstretched finger, whether or no. Such a sort of fooling by compulsion struck me as particularly reprehensible.
"I'd try it on you, aunty," said the volatile child, "if I were not afraid of scoring my arm."
Such an insinuation against my nose! Had it been any one besides Sophy, I could not have forgiven the speech. She is such a highty-tighty.
But one trick which she played was really good, especially as its object was a man to whom I have taken a huge dislike. He is an Irish gentleman connected with some legal firm in town, most desperately polite, with a very long round nose and fiery red hair. He is continually poking dishes at me across the table, and is fairly oppressive with his attentions. Moreover, he calls me "Mrs." perpetually. "Mrs.," indeed! Intimating that I am old enough to be a "Mrs.," if not one in fact. As he rises very late, he never appears at breakfast with ourselves; but at dinner we have the misery of his presence. To-day, when we were almost through with the first course, he entered with an air much flushed and uncomfortable.
"Are you ill, Mr. O'Killigan?" asked Mrs. Mashum.
"No, thank you, madam," said he, with one of his customary efforts at politeness. "But I have been trying for a long while to shave, till forced in despair to give up the attempt. The deuce has got into my soap."