friend the butter-fish into flapping hysterics: but he would not
move for them.

And first she called up all the doctors who give little children so
much physic (they were most of them old ones; for the young ones
have learnt better, all but a few army surgeons, who still fancy
that a baby's inside is much like a Scotch grenadier's), and she
set them all in a row; and very rueful they looked; for they knew
what was coming.

And first she pulled all their teeth out; and then she bled them
all round: and then she dosed them with calomel, and jalap, and
salts and senna, and brimstone and treacle; and horrible faces they
made; and then she gave them a great emetic of mustard and water,
and no basons; and began all over again; and that was the way she
spent the morning.

And then she called up a whole troop of foolish ladies, who pinch
up their children's waists and toes; and she laced them all up in
tight stays, so that they were choked and sick, and their noses
grew red, and their hands and feet swelled; and then she crammed
their poor feet into the most dreadfully tight boots, and made them
all dance, which they did most clumsily indeed; and then she asked
them how they liked it; and when they said not at all, she let them
go: because they had only done it out of foolish fashion, fancying
it was for their children's good, as if wasps' waists and pigs'
toes could be pretty, or wholesome, or of any use to anybody.

Then she called up all the careless nurserymaids, and stuck pins
into them all over, and wheeled them about in perambulators with