boy, and were determined to make the most of him. When deeply interested
in anything, Martin was as grave and serious as a philosopher.

Aunt Dorothy Grumbit had a turned-up nose,--a very much turned-up nose;
so much so, indeed, that it presented a front view of the nostrils! It
was an aggravating nose, too for the old lady's spectacles refused to
rest on any part of it except the extreme point. Mrs. Grumbit invariably
placed them on the right part of her nose, and they as invariably slid
down the curved slope until they were brought up by the little hillock at
the end. There they condescended to repose in peace.

Mrs. Grumbit was mild, and gentle, and little, and thin, and
old,--perhaps seventy-five; but no one knew her age for certain, not even
herself. She wore an old-fashioned, high-crowned cap, and a gown of
bed-curtain chintz, with flowers on it the size of a saucer. It was a
curious gown, and very cheap, for Mrs. Grumbit was poor. No one knew the
extent of her poverty, any more than they did her age; but she herself
knew it, and felt it deeply,--never so deeply, perhaps, as when her
orphan nephew Martin grew old enough to be put to school, and she had not
wherewithal to send him. But love is quick-witted and resolute. A
residence of six years in Germany had taught her to knit stockings at a
rate that cannot be described, neither conceived unless seen. She knitted
two dozen pairs. The vicar took one dozen, the doctor took the other. The
fact soon became known. Shops were not numerous in the village in those
days; and the wares they supplied were only second rate. Orders came
pouring in, Mrs. Grumbit's knitting wires clicked, and her little old
hands wagged with incomprehensible rapidity and unflagging
regularity,--and Martin Rattler was sent to school.

While occupied with her knitting, she sat in a high-backed chair in a