behind the book-case; and, would you believe it? the rocking-horse's
nose has turned up in the nursery oven."

"I can't believe it," said the Doctor. "The rocking-horse's nose
couldn't turn up, it was the purest Grecian, modelled from the Elgin
marbles. Perhaps it was the heat that did it, though. However, you seem
to have got through your troubles very well, Master Deordie. I wish
poor Tiny were at the end of her task."

"So do I," said Deordie ruefully. "But I tell you what I've been
thinking, Doctor. Nurse is always nagging at us, and we're always in
rows of one sort or another, for doing this, and not doing that, and
leaving our things about. But, you know, it's a horrid shame, for there
are plenty of servants, and I don't see why we should be always
bothering to do little things, and--"

"Oh! come to the point, please," said the Doctor; "you do go round the
square so, in telling your stories, Deordie. What have you been
thinking of?"

"Well," said Deordie, who was as good-tempered as he was slow, "the
other day Nurse shut me up in the back nursery for borrowing her
scissors and losing them; but I'd got 'Grimm' inside one of my
knickerbockers, so when she locked the door, I sat down to read. And I
read the story of the Shoemaker and the little Elves who came and did
his work for him before he got up; and I thought it would be so jolly
if we had some little Elves to do things instead of us."

"That's what Tommy Trout said," observed the Doctor.