And her twin brother couldn’t wind up a top for his life.  He knows no more of Jack the Giant Killer or of Sinbad the Sailor than he knows of the people in the stars.  He could as soon play at leap-frog or at cricket as change into a cricket or a frog himself.  But he is so much the better off than his sister that on his narrow world of fact an opening has dawned into such broader regions as lie within the ken of Mr. Guppy.  Hence his admiration and his emulation of that shining enchanter.

Judy, with a gong-like clash and clatter, sets one of the sheet-iron tea-trays on the table and arranges cups and saucers.  The bread she puts on in an iron basket, and the butter (and not much of it) in a small pewter plate.  Grandfather Smallweed looks hard after the tea as it is served out and asks Judy where the girl is.

“Charley, do you mean?” says Judy.

“Hey?” from Grandfather Smallweed.

“Charley, do you mean?”

This touches a spring in Grandmother Smallweed, who, chuckling as usual at the trivets, cries, “Over the water!  Charley over the water, Charley over the water, over the water to Charley, Charley over the water, over the water to Charley!” and becomes quite energetic about it.  Grandfather looks at the cushion but has not sufficiently recovered his late exertion.

“Ha!” he says when there is silence.  “If that’s her name.  She eats a deal.  It would be better to allow her for her keep.”

Judy, with her brother’s wink, shakes her head and purses up her mouth into no without saying it.

“No?” returns the old man.  “Why not?”

“She’d want sixpence a day, and we can do it for less,” says Judy.

“Sure?”

Judy answers with a nod of deepest meaning and calls, as she scrapes the butter on the loaf with every precaution against waste and cuts it into slices, “You, Charley, where are you?” Timidly obedient to the summons, a little girl in a rough apron and a large bonnet, with her hands covered with soap and water and a scrubbing brush in one of them, appears, and curtsys.

“What work are you about now?” says Judy, making an ancient snap at her like a very sharp old beldame.

“I’m a-cleaning the upstairs back room, miss,” replies Charley.

“Mind you do it thoroughly, and don’t loiter.  Shirking won’t do for me.  Make haste!  Go along!” cries Judy with a stamp upon the ground.  “You girls are more trouble than you’re worth, by half.”

On this severe matron, as she returns to her task of scraping the butter and cutting the bread, falls the shadow of her brother, looking in at the window.  For whom, knife and loaf in hand, she opens the street-door.

“Aye, aye, Bart!” says Grandfather Smallweed.  “Here you are, hey?”

“Here I am,” says Bart.

“Been along with your friend again, Bart?”

Small nods.

“Dining at his expense, Bart?”