We are in the school-room, the big bare school-room, that has seen us all—­that is still seeing some of us—­unwillingly dragged, and painfully goaded up the steep slopes of book-learning.  Outside, the March wind is roughly hustling the dry, brown trees and pinching the diffident green shoots, while the round and rayless sun of late afternoon is staring, from behind the elm-twigs in at the long maps on the wall, in at the high chairs—­tall of back, cruelly tiny of seat, off whose rungs we have kicked all the paint—­in at the green baize table, richly freaked with splashes.  Hardly less red than the sun’s, are our burnt faces gathered about the fire.

This fire has no flame—­only a glowing, ruddy heart, on which the bright brass saucepan sits; and kneeling before it, stirring the mess with a long iron spoon, is Barbara.  Algy, as I have before remarked, is grating a lemon.  Bobby is buttering soup-plates.  The Brat—­the Brat always takes his ease if he can—­is peeling almonds, fishing delicately for them in a cup of hot water with his finger and thumb; and I, Nancy, am reading aloud the receipt at the top of my voice, out of a greasy, dog’s-eared cookery-book, which, since it came into our hands, has been the innocent father of many a hideous compound.  Tou Tou alone, in consideration of her youth, is allowed to be a spectator.  She sits on the edge of the table, swinging her thin legs, and kicking her feet together.

Certainly we deteriorate in looks as we go downward.  In Barbara we made an excellent start:  few families a better one, though we say it that should not.  Although in Algy there was a slight falling off, it was not much to complain of.  But I am sensibly uglier than Algy (as indeed he has, on several occasions, dispassionately remarked to me); the Brat than me; Bobby than the Brat; and so steadily on, till we reach our nadir of unhandsomeness in Tou Tou.  Tou Tou is our climax, and we certainly defy our neighbors and acquaintances to outdo her.

Hapless young Tou Tou! made up of the thinnest legs, the widest mouth, the invisiblest nose, and over-visiblest ears, that ever went to the composition of a child of twelve years.

“Keep stirring always!  You must take care that it does not stick to the bottom!” say I, closing the receipt-book, and speaking on my own account, but still as one having authority.

“All very well to say ‘Keep stirring always,’” answers Barbara, turning round a face unavoidably pretty, even though at the present moment deeply flame-colored; eyes still sweetly laughing with gay good-humor, even though half burnt out of her head, to answer me; “but if you had been stirring as long as I have, you would wonder that you had any arm left to stir with, however feebly.  Here, one of you boys, take a turn!  You Brat, you never do any thing for your living!”