best mode of extrication might be to push him forward. This was so favorably received by the milkman and beadle, that he would immediately have been pushed into the area, if I had not held his pinafore, while Richard and Mr. Gruppy ran down through the kitchen, to catch him when he should be released. At last he was happity got down without any accident, and then he began to beat Mr. Gruppy with a hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner.
Nobody had appeared belonging to the house, except a person in pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom ; I don't know with what object, and I don't think she did. I therefore supposed that Mrs. Jellyby was not at home ; and was quite surprised when the person appeared in the passage without the pattens, and going up to the back room on the first floor, before Ada and me, announced us as, “Them two young ladies, Missis Jellyby !” We passed several more children on the way up, whom it was difficult to avoid treading on in the dark ; and as we came into Mrs. Jellyby's presence, one of the poor little things fell down stairs—down a whole flight (as it sounded to me), with a great noise.
Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which we could not help showing in our own faces, as the dear child's head recorded its passage with a bump on every stair—Richard afterwards said he counted seven, besides one for the landing—received us with perfect equanimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman, of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if—I am quoting Richard again—they could see nothing nearer than Africa !
“I am very glad indeed,” said Mrs. Jellyby, in an agreeable voice, “to have the pleasure of receiving you. I have a great respect for Mr. Jarndyce ; and no one in whom he is interested can be an object of indifterence to me.”
We expressed our acknowledgments, and sat down behind the door where there was a lame invalid of a sofa. Mrs. Jellyby had very good hair, but was too much occupied with her African duties to brush it. The shawl in which she had been loosely muffled, dropped on to her chair when she advanced to us ; and as she turned to resume her seat, we could not help noticing that her dress didn't nearly meet up the back, and that the open space was railed across with a lattice-work of stay-lace—like a summer-house.
The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only very untidy, but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we followed the poor child who had tumbled down stairs : I think into the back kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him.
But what principally struck us was a jaded, and unhealthy-looking, though by no means plain girl, at the writing-table, who sat biting the feather of her pen, and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever was in such a state of ink. And, from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet, which were disfigured with frayed and broken satin slippers trodden down at heel, she really seemed to have no article of dress upon her, from a pin upwards, that was in its proper condition or its right place.
“You find me, my dears,” said Mrs. Jellyby, snufiing the two great
