'Hush!' she interrupted. 'Dear John!'

'Why, he's stone deaf,' urged John.

'I know he is, but--Yes, sir, certainly. Yes! certainly! I'll
make him up a bed, directly, John.'

As she hurried off to do it, the flutter of her spirits, and the
agitation of her manner, were so strange that the Carrier stood
looking after her, quite confounded.

'Did its mothers make it up a Beds then!' cried Miss Slowboy to the
Baby; 'and did its hair grow brown and curly, when its caps was
lifted off, and frighten it, a precious Pets, a-sitting by the
fires!'

With that unaccountable attraction of the mind to trifles, which is
often incidental to a state of doubt and confusion, the Carrier as
he walked slowly to and fro, found himself mentally repeating even
these absurd words, many times. So many times that he got them by
heart, and was still conning them over and over, like a lesson,
when Tilly, after administering as much friction to the little bald
head with her hand as she thought wholesome (according to the
practice of nurses), had once more tied the Baby's cap on.

'And frighten it, a precious Pets, a-sitting by the fires. What
frightened Dot, I wonder!' mused the Carrier, pacing to and fro.

He scouted, from his heart, the insinuations of the Toy-merchant,
and yet they filled him with a vague, indefinite uneasiness. For,