“And where’s Bart?” Grandfather Smallweed inquires of Judy, Bart’s twin sister.

“He an’t come in yet,” says Judy.

“It’s his tea-time, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“How much do you mean to say it wants then?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Hey?”

“Ten minutes.” (Loud on the part of Judy.)

“Ho!” says Grandfather Smallweed.  “Ten minutes.”

Grandmother Smallweed, who has been mumbling and shaking her head at the trivets, hearing figures mentioned, connects them with money and screeches like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, “Ten ten-pound notes!”

Grandfather Smallweed immediately throws the cushion at her.

“Drat you, be quiet!” says the good old man.

The effect of this act of jaculation is twofold.  It not only doubles up Mrs. Smallweed’s head against the side of her porter’s chair and causes her to present, when extricated by her granddaughter, a highly unbecoming state of cap, but the necessary exertion recoils on Mr. Smallweed himself, whom it throws back into his porter’s chair like a broken puppet.  The excellent old gentleman being at these times a mere clothes-bag with a black skull-cap on the top of it, does not present a very animated appearance until he has undergone the two operations at the hands of his granddaughter of being shaken up like a great bottle and poked and punched like a great bolster.  Some indication of a neck being developed in him by these means, he and the sharer of his life’s evening again fronting one another in their two porter’s chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten on their post by the Black Serjeant, Death.

Judy the twin is worthy company for these associates.  She is so indubitably sister to Mr. Smallweed the younger that the two kneaded into one would hardly make a young person of average proportions, while she so happily exemplifies the before-mentioned family likeness to the monkey tribe that attired in a spangled robe and cap she might walk about the table-land on the top of a barrel-organ without exciting much remark as an unusual specimen.  Under existing circumstances, however, she is dressed in a plain, spare gown of brown stuff.

Judy never owned a doll, never heard of Cinderella, never played at any game.  She once or twice fell into children’s company when she was about ten years old, but the children couldn’t get on with Judy, and Judy couldn’t get on with them.  She seemed like an animal of another species, and there was instinctive repugnance on both sides.  It is very doubtful whether Judy knows how to laugh.  She has so rarely seen the thing done that the probabilities are strong the other way.  Of anything like a youthful laugh, she certainly can have no conception.  If she were to try one, she would find her teeth in her way, modelling that action of her face, as she has unconsciously modelled all its other expressions, on her pattern of sordid age.  Such is Judy.