"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 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.

"But these people," she went on, "did not know that they were doing
wrong: they were only stupid and impatient; and therefore I only
punish them till they become patient, and learn to use their common
sense like reasonable beings. But as for chimney-sweeps, and
collier-boys, and nailer lads, my sister has set good people to
stop all that sort of thing; and very much obliged to her I am; for
if she could only stop the cruel masters from ill-using poor
children, I should grow handsome at least a thousand years sooner.
And now do you be a good boy, and do as you would be done by, which