they were, and so tipped the glass. Then there was the trap-door in the
sidewalk. She became occasionally tired of that trap-door. Seven people
lived under the sidewalk; and when they lifted and slammed the trap,
coming in and out, they reminded her of something which Sary Jane bought
her once, when she was a very little child, at Christmas time,--long ago,
when rents were cheaper and flour low. It was a monkey, with whiskers
and a calico jacket, who jumped out of a box when the cover was lifted;
and then you crushed him down and hasped him in. Sometimes she wished
that she had never had that monkey, he was so much like the people
coming in and out of the sidewalk.

In fact, there was a monotony about all the people in the Lady of
Shalott's looking-glass. If their faces were not dirty, their hands were.
If they had hats, they went without shoes. If they did not sit in the
sun with their heads on their knees, they lay in the mud with their
heads on a jug.

"Their faces look blue!" she said to Sary Jane.

"No wonder!" snapped Sary Jane.

"Why?" asked the Lady of Shalott.

"Wonder is we ain't all dead!" barked Sary Jane.

The people in the Lady of Shalott's glass died, however,
sometimes,--often in the summer; more often last summer, when the attic
smoked continually, and she mistook Sary Jane's voice for the rat-trap
every day.