And after luncheon she set to work again, and called up all the cruel schoolmasters—­whole regiments and brigades of them; and when she saw them, she frowned most terribly, and set to work in earnest, as if the best part of the day’s work was to come.  And she boxed their ears, and thumped them over the head with rulers, and pandied their hands with canes, and told them that they told stories, and were this and that bad sort of people; and the more they were very indignant, and stood upon their honour, and declared they told the truth, the more she declared they were not, and that they were only telling lies; and at last she birched them all round soundly with her great birch-rod and set them each an imposition of three hundred thousand lines of Hebrew to learn by heart before she came back next Friday.  And at that they all cried and howled so, that their breaths came all up through the sea like bubbles out of soda water; and that is one reason of the bubbles in the sea.  There are others; but that is the one which principally concerns little boys.  And by that time she was so tired that she was glad to stop; and, indeed, she had done a very good day’s work.

Tom did not quite dislike the old lady; but he could not help thinking her a little spiteful—­and no wonder if she was, poor old soul; for if she has to wait to grow handsome till people do as they would be done by, she will have to wait a very long time.

Poor old Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid! she has a great deal of hard work before her, and had better have been born a washerwoman, and stood over a tub all day; but, you see, people cannot always choose their own profession.

But Tom longed to ask her one question; and, after all, whenever she looked at him, she did not look cross at all; and now and then there was a funny smile in her face, and she chuckled to herself in a way which gave Tom courage, and at last he said: 

“Pray, ma’am, may I ask you a question?”

“Certainly, my little dear.”

“Why don’t you bring all the bad masters here and serve them out, too?  The butties [Footnote:  Butty, in the English coal-mining regions, is the name given to a man who takes a contract to work out a certain area of coal.  He employs other people to work for him.  A nailer is a man who makes nails.] that knock about the poor collier-boys; and the nailers that file off their lads’ noses and hammer their fingers; and all the master sweeps, like my master Grimes?  I saw him fall into the water long ago; so I surely expected he would have been here.  I’m sure he was bad enough to me.”

Then the old lady looked so very stern that Tom was quite frightened, and sorry that he had been so bold.  But she was not angry with him.  She only answered, “I look after them all the week round; and they are in a very different place from this, because they knew that they were doing wrong.”

She spoke very quietly; but there was something in her voice which made Tom tingle from head to foot, as if he had got into a shoal of sea nettles.