when they are washed?" And he looked at his own wrist, and tried
to rub the soot off, and wondered whether it ever would come off.
"Certainly I should look much prettier then, if I grew at all like
her."

And looking round, he suddenly saw, standing close to him, a little
ugly, black, ragged figure, with bleared eyes and grinning white
teeth. He turned on it angrily. What did such a little black ape
want in that sweet young lady's room? And behold, it was himself,
reflected in a great mirror, the like of which Tom had never seen
before.

And Tom, for the first time in his life, found out that he was
dirty; and burst into tears with shame and anger; and turned to
sneak up the chimney again and hide; and upset the fender and threw
the fire-irons down, with a noise as of ten thousand tin kettles
tied to ten thousand mad dogs' tails.

Up jumped the little white lady in her bed, and, seeing Tom,
screamed as shrill as any peacock. In rushed a stout old nurse
from the next room, and seeing Tom likewise, made up her mind that
he had come to rob, plunder, destroy, and burn; and dashed at him,
as he lay over the fender, so fast that she caught him by the
jacket.

But she did not hold him. Tom had been in a policeman's hands many
a time, and out of them too, what is more; and he would have been
ashamed to face his friends for ever if he had been stupid enough
to be caught by an old woman; so he doubled under the good lady's
arm, across the room, and out of the window in a moment.