along as if she were
going to fall on her nose at any moment.

In this fashion she came along till she got to the stall where Jem and
his mother were, and there she stopped.

'Are you Hannah the herb seller?' she asked in a croaky voice as her
head shook to and fro.

'Yes, I am,' was the answer. 'Can I serve you?'

'We'll see; we'll see! Let me look at those herbs. I wonder if you've
got what I want,' said the old woman as she thrust a pair of hideous
brown hands into the herb basket, and began turning over all the neatly
packed herbs with her skinny fingers, often holding them up to her nose
and sniffing at them.

The cobbler's wife felt much disgusted at seeing her wares treated like
this, but she dared not speak. When the old hag had turned over the
whole basket she muttered, 'Bad stuff, bad stuff; much better fifty
years ago--all bad.'

This made Jem very angry

'You are a very rude old woman,' he cried out. 'First you mess all our
nice herbs about with your horrid brown fingers and sniff at them with
your long nose till no one else will care to buy them, and then you say
it's all bad stuff, though the duke's cook himself buys all his herbs
from us.'

The old woman looked sharply at the saucy boy, laughed unpleasantly, and
said:

'So you don't like my long nose, sonny? Well, you shall have one
yourself, right down to your chin.'

As she spoke she shuffled towards the hamper of cabbages, took up one
after another, squeezed them hard, and threw them back, muttering again,
'Bad stuff, bad stuff.'

'Don't waggle your head in that horrid way,' begged Jem anxiously. 'Your
neck is as thin as a cabbage-stalk, and it might easily break and your
head fall into the basket, and then who would buy anything?'

'Don't you like thin necks?' laughed the old woman. 'Then you sha'n't
have any, but a head stuck close between your shoulders so that it may
be quite sure not to fall off.'

'Don't talk such nonsense to the child,' said the mother at last.

'If you wish to buy, please make haste, as you are keeping other
customers away.'

'Very well, I will do as you ask,' said the old woman, with an angry
look. 'I will buy these six cabbages, but, as you see, I can only walk
with my stick and can carry nothing. Let your boy carry them home for me
and I'll pay him for his trouble.'

The little fellow didn't like this, and began to cry, for he was afraid
of the old woman, but his mother ordered him to go, for she though