ature! WHAT do you mean
by it?'

The shaking figure, unnerved and disjointed from head to foot, put
out its two hands a little way, as making overtures of peace and
reconciliation. Abject tears stood in its eyes, and stained the blotched
red of its cheeks. The swollen lead-coloured under lip trembled with a
shameful whine. The whole indecorous threadbare ruin, from the broken
shoes to the prematurely-grey scanty hair, grovelled. Not with any sense
worthy to be called a sense, of this dire reversal of the places of
parent and child, but in a pitiful expostulation to be let off from a
scolding.

'I know your tricks and your manners,' cried Miss Wren. 'I know where
you've been to!' (which indeed it did not require discernment to
discover). 'Oh, you disgraceful old chap!'

The very breathing of the figure was contemptible, as it laboured and
rattled in that operation, like a blundering clock.

'Slave, slave, slave, from morning to night,' pursued the person of the
house, 'and all for this! WHAT do you mean by it?'

There was something in that emphasized 'What,' which absurdly frightened
the figure. As often as the person of the house worked her way round to
it--even as soon as he saw that it was coming--he collapsed in an extra
degree.

'I wish you had been taken up, and locked up,' said the person of the
house. 'I wish you had been poked into cells and black holes, and run
over by rats and spiders and beetles. I know their tricks and their
manners, and they'd have tickled you nicely. Ain't you ashamed of
yourself?'

'Yes, my dear,' stammered the father.

'Then,' said the person of the house, terrifying him by a grand muster
of her spirits and forces before recurring to the emphatic word, 'WHAT
do you mean by it?'

'Circumstances over which had no control,' was the miserable creature's
plea in extenuation.

'I'LL circumstance you and control you too,' retorted the person of the
house, speaking with vehement sharpness, 'if you talk in that way. I'll
give you in charge to the police, and have you fined five shillings when
you can't pay, and then I won't pay the money for you, and you'll be
transported for life. How should you like to be transported for life?'

'Shouldn't like it. Poor shattered invalid. Trouble nobody long,' cried
the wretched figure.

'Come, come!' said the person of the house, tapping the table near her
in a business-like manner, and shaking her head and her chin; 'you know
what you've got