"'Come, Miss So-and-So,' one would say, 'don't sit fretting there;
there's a warm fire, and a nice basin of bread-and-milk waiting for
you, if you will only be quick and get ready.'

"Get ready! a nice order indeed! It meant that they must wash
themselves and be dressed before they would be allowed to touch a
morsel of food.

"But it is of no use dwelling on the unfeelingness of those keepers.
One day one of them actually said:-

"'If you knew what it was to have to get up without a fire to come
to, and without a breakfast to eat, you would leave off grumbling at
nothing.'

"NOTHING! they called it NOTHING to have to get out of a warm bed
into the fresh morning air, and dress before breakfast!

"Well, my dears," pursued Aunt Judy, after waiting here a few
seconds, to see if anybody would groan, "I shall take it for granted
you feel for the GETTING-UP misery as well as the GOING-TO-BED one,
although you have not groaned as I expected. I will just add, in
conclusion, that the summer GETTING-UP misery was just the reverse of
this winter one. Then the poor little wretches were expected to wait
till their nursery was dusted and swept; so there they had to lie,
sometimes for half-an-hour, with the sun shining in upon them, not
allowed to get up and come out into the dirt and dust!

"Of course, on those occasions they had nothing to do but squabble
among themselves and teaze; and I assure you they had every now and