Page:Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey (1st edition), Volume 3 (Agnes Grey).djvu/82

74 order; and, as the children were continually littering the floor with fragments of toys, bricks, stones, stubble, leaves, and other rubbish which I could not prevent their bringing, or oblige them to gather up, and which the servants refused to "clean after them," I had to spend a considerable portion of my valuable leisure moments, on my knees upon the floor, in painsfully reducing things to order. Once, I told them that they should not taste their supper till they had picked up everything from the carpet; Fanny might have hers when she had taken up a certain quantity, Mary Ann, when she had gathered twice as many, and Tom was to clear away the rest.

Wonderful to state, the girls did their part; but Tom was in such a fury that he flew upon the table, scattered the bread and milk about the floor, struck his sisters, kicked the coals out of the coal-pan, attempted to overthrow the table and chairs, and seemed inclined to make a Douglas-larder of the whole contents of the room; but I seized upon him, and, sending Mary Ann to call her mamma, held him in spite of kicks, blows, yells, and execrations, till Mrs. Bloomfield made her appearance.

"What is the matter with my boy?" said she.