ut they'll all be jumping about like
grasshoppers before long."

Then they went on talking softly again about other things; and Baby
didn't hear, and didn't care to hear. Besides, he had already been
taught a lesson that boys and girls cannot learn too young, which is,
that to listen to things you are not meant to hear is a _sort_ of
cheating, for it is like taking something not meant for you. Of course,
while auntie and mother were talking in a louder voice he could not help
hearing, and it was no harm to listen, as if they had minded his hearing
they would have spoken more in a whisper.

Baby turned to his window to amuse himself by looking out. First he
tried to count the telegraph wires, but he could never be sure if there
were eight or nine--he had not yet learnt to count higher than ten--for
the top ones were so tiresome, they danced away out of sight, and all of
a sudden danced down again, and sometimes they seemed to join together,
so that he could not tell if they were one or two. He wondered what made
them wave up and down so; whether there were men down in the ground
that pulled them, and what they did it for; he had heard of "sending
telegrams," and Denny had told him it meant sending messages on wires,
but he did not know that these were the wires used for that. He fancied
these wires must have something to do with the railway; perhaps they
were to show the people living in the fields that the trains were
coming, so that they shouldn't get in the way and be "runned over."
This made Baby begin to think of the people living in the fields; they
were just then passing a little cottage standing all by itself. It
looked a nice cottage, and it had a sort of little garden round it, and
some cocks and hens were picking about. Baby looked back at the little
cottage as long as he could see it; he wondered who lived in it, if
there were any little boys and girls, and what they did all day. He
wondered if they went to school, or if perhaps they sometimes went
messages for their mother, and if they weren't frightened if they had
to pass through the wood, which by this time the train was running
along the edge of. Could this be Red Riding Hood's wood, perhaps? Baby
shuddered as this idea came into his mind. Or it might be the wood that
Hop-o'-my-thumb and his six brothers had to make their way through,
where the birds _would_ pick the crumbs they dropped to show the path.
It would be very "dedful" for seven little boys t