g,
Miselle hastily communicated the idea to Optima, and proposed a sudden
retreat, but was smilingly bidden to first consider for a moment the
operations of four workmen close at hand, two of whom, kneeling upon the
ground, grasped the handles of two little presses, very like aggravated
bullet-moulds, while the other two, bringing little masses of glass upon
the ends of their blow-sticks and dropping them carefully into the necks
of the moulds, proceeded to blow through the pipe until the air forced
out a quantity of the glass in the form of a great bubble at the top of
the mould. The pressure from within increasing still more, this bubble
necessarily burst with a smart snap, and thus caused the explosive
sounds above referred to. The two casters then scraped away the _debris_
at the top with a bit of stick, and, opening their moulds, disclosed in
one a pretty little essence-bottle, which a sharp boy in waiting
immediately snapped up on the end of a long fork, where he had already
spitted about a dozen more, and carried them away to the leer.

"But what are _you_ casting?" asked Madame, puzzled, as the other
workman opened his mould and poked its contents out upon a bit of board
held ready by another sharp boy.

"Little inks, Ma'am," was the laconic reply; and looking more narrowly
at the tiny object, it proved to be one of the small portable inkstands
used in writing-desks.

More explosions at a little distance, and two more men were found to be
casting, in the same manner, small bottles of opaque white glass,
resembling china, a quality produced by an admixture of bone-dust in the
frit. These are the bottles dear to manufacturers of pomades, hair-oils,
and various cosmetics, and Miselle turned round a cool one lying upon
the ground, half-expecting to find a flourishing advertisement of a
newly discovered _Fontaine d'Or_ upon its back. She did not find it, but
espied instead two pretty little fellows in a corner just beyond, one of
whom might be twelve and his curly-haired junior not more than ten years
old, who were gravely engaged in blowing chimneys for kerosene lamps,
and quite successfully too, as a large box behind their bench amply
proved,--these alone of all the articles mentioned not requiring to be
passed through the leer.

A little farther on, a workman, loading his pontil, by repeated
dippings, with a large quantity of glass, dropped the lump into an open
basin hollowed in the surface of one of the iron