"You story!" said Lizarann, hurt. "He can help himself, he can. He don't call for no help. Who was helping him?"
"Clapham Church Parsing—same as see your uncle Mr. Steptoe drownded—and rilewye-stytion cabman with rilings for trunks atop. Three thousand six hundred and thirty-two. Got him indoors they did."
Lizarann felt inclined to cry; this was a throw-back! But she wasn't one to give in easily. "My Daddy says he could swarm up the rigging as soon as not," said she. "Only the doctor he says for to keep quiet a bit, owing to prudence." When Lizarann repeated phrases lately heard, you would have thought, to listen to her, she was quite a big girl.
Now, it must not be supposed that Lizarann and Bridgetticks had not met during the past eight weeks. On the contrary, visits had been arranged, by request, even before Lizarann had been thought plenty well enough for school, only not to fret herself. These were the terms in which Miss Fossett's Anne confirmed that lady's opinion, and sanctioned a continued study of arithmetic and calligraphy. But intercourse during school-hours is fettered by formula; and when there's carpets and the bed made and all, you have to set quiet, and it's not the same thing. So when these two found themselves once more in their old haunt, it was as though a ceremonial padlock had been removed from their tongues. Lizarann's improved exterior—for Teacher and Anne had reconstructed it—clashed a little with Bridgetticks; but the principle held good. Here, on Mr. 'Icks's doorstep, when an imputation of falsehood as an exordium to any reply seemed natural and genial, neither speaker felt bound to check her inspirations. Lizarann and Bridgetticks were themselves again.
They sat on the doorstep, cloze or no!—this referred to Lizarann's frock—and Bridget retained her younger brother, perhaps for slight rehearsals of the vengeance she had in store for him; he was that troublesome! Bridget smelt of soap and warm steam.
"You wented on stelts, and wooden legs is better than stelts!" Lizarann's uneasiness rankles, and she longs for public acknowledgment of her Daddy's prospects of rehabilitation.
"I shouldn't 'a said so," Bridget answered. "Stelts you catches hold atop. Wooden legs is balancin'. Stelts is your hands as well as your legs. Wooden legs you're stood-on-end and pitches yourself over, just as like as not. Not onlest you have crutches. Your Daddy he 's crutches, he has. I see 'em myself!" Lizarann could say nothing about Job's comforters, if only because, on the one occasion when she had heard them mentioned—by Mr. Winkleson—she had supposed them to be woollen ones. Besides, she was interested on another point.
"My Daddy hasn't no scrutches," said she. She had caught their name, without understanding it, when her father used it; and now decided on denying them provisionally, pending inquiry into their nature. "What's a scrutch?"
"Oh, you little ignorance!" said Bridget. "Never to know what a crutch is, at your age!" She appealed to her infant brother to say, directly minute, what a crutch was, or she would take advantage of his unprotected youth to smack him. His reply, needing interpretation, was that it was a penny-farden. Halexandericks had evidently a turn for negotiation. His sister cast him off, telling him to go and ply by himself on the pivement, and then resumed: "If you'd 'a knowed 'em when you seed 'em, you might have kep' your eye open, and took note."
Lizarann, skipping the unnecessary, immediately replied: "Daddy said they was second-hand, and to go back when done with."