frenzy of enthusiasm swung the rings free from their hold, and
descended, swing and all, in a crash on the oil-clothed floor. The
crash, the shrieks of the victim and his attendant sprites, smote upon
Mrs Garnett's ears as she sat wrestling with the "stocking basket" in a
room below, and as she credibly avowed, took years from her life.
Almost the first objects which met her eye, when, in one bound, as it
seemed, she reached the scene of the disaster, was a selection of small
white teeth scattered over the oil-clothed floor. Henceforth for years
Harry pursued his way minus front teeth, and the nursery legend darkly
hinted that so injured had been the gums by his fall that no second
supply could be expected. Harry avowed a sincere aspiration that this
should be the case. "I can eat as much without them," he declared, "and
when I grow up I'll have them false, and be an explorer, and scare
savages like the man in Rider Haggard," so that teeth, or no teeth,
would appear to hold the secret of his destiny.

Russell had adenoids, and snored. His peculiarities included a faculty
for breaking his bones, at frequent and inconvenient occasions, an
insatiable curiosity about matters with which he had no concern, and a
most engaging and delusive silkiness of manner. "Gentleman Russell," a
title bestowed by his elders, had an irritating effect on an elder
brother conscious of being condemned by the contrast, and when quoted
downstairs brought an unfailing echo of thumps in the seclusion of the
playroom.

Tim played on his privileges as "littlest," and his mother's barely
concealed partiality, and was as irritating to his elders as a small
person can be, who is always present when he is not wanted, absent when
he is, in peace adopts the airs of a conqueror, and in warfare promptly
cries, and collapses into a curly-headed baby boy, whom the authorities
declare it is "cr-uel" to bully!

For the rest, the house was of the high and narrow order common to town
terraces, inconveniently crowded by its many inmates, and viewed from
without, of a dark and grimy appearance.

Sandon Terrace had no boast to make either from an architectural or a
luxurious point of view, and was so obviously inferior to its neighbour,
Napier Terrace, that it was lacerating to the Garnett pride to feel that
their sworn friends the Vernons were so much better domiciled than
themselves. Napier Terrace had a strip of garden between itself and the
rough oute