elf-contempt.

One of the results of all the frenzied hurrying was that every now and
then there was an accident: somebody got hurt: and it was strange that
accidents were not more frequent, considering the risk, that were
taken. When they happened to be working on ladders in busy streets
they were not often allowed to have anyone to stand at the foot, and
the consequence was that all sorts and conditions of people came into
violent collision with the bottoms of the ladders. Small boys playing
in the reckless manner characteristic of their years rushed up against
them. Errand boys, absorbed in the perusal of penny instalments of the
adventures of Claude Duval, and carrying large baskets of
green-groceries, wandered into them. Blind men fell foul of them.
Adventurous schoolboys climbed up them. People with large feet became
entangled in them. Fat persons of both sexes who thought it unlucky to
walk underneath, tried to negotiate the narrow strip of pavement
between the foot of the ladder and the kerb, and in their passage
knocked up against the ladder and sometimes fell into the road.
Nursemaids wheeling perambulators--lolling over the handle, which they
usually held with their left hands, the right holding a copy of Orange
Blossoms or some halfpenny paper, and so interested in the story of the
Marquis of Lymejuice--a young man of noble presence and fabulous
wealth, with a drooping golden moustache and very long legs, who,
notwithstanding the diabolical machinations of Lady Sibyl Malvoise, who
loves him as well as a woman with a name like that is capable of loving
anyone, is determined to wed none other than the scullery-maid at the
Village Inn--inevitably bashed the perambulators into the ladders.
Even when the girls were not reading they nearly always ran into the
ladders, which seemed to possess a magnetic attraction for
perambulators and go-carts of all kinds, whether propelled by nurses or
mothers. Sometimes they would advance very cautiously towards the
ladder: then, when they got very near, hesitate a little whether to go
under or run the risk of falling into the street by essaying the narrow
passage: then they would get very close up to the foot of the ladder,
and dodge and dance about, and give the cart little pushes from side to
side, until at last the magnetic influence exerted itself and the
perambulator crashed into the ladder, perhaps at the very moment that
the man at the top was stretching out to d