Agnes feels, naturally, after this, that she makes a very paltry and small appearance in the eyes of her friend, and betrays herself to be very much behindhand in the ways of the world, putting up meekly, as she is, with a new baby and no second nurse or laundress; and forgetting the day when she thought her fortune was made and she was a lady forever, coming from general housework in Aberdeen Street to be nursery-maid in Harrisburg Square, she begins the usual preliminaries of neglect, and sauciness, and staying out beyond hours, and general defiance,—­takes sides in the kitchen against the family regime, and so helps on the evolution of things all and particular, that at the end of another fortnight the house is empty of servants, Mr. and Mrs. Scherman are gracefully removing their breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke, left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M’Cormick, the washerwoman, arrived for the day.  She, used to her own half dozen, picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, without uttering a syllable, she turns upon his small, bewildered, and pitifully bumped head.

It will be always a confused and mysterious riddle to his childish recollection,—­what strange gulf he fell into that day, and how the kitchen sink and those great, grabbing arms came to be at the end of it.

“How happened Dukie to tumble down-stairs?” asked Mrs. Scherman, in the way mothers do, when she had released him from Mrs. M’Cormick, carried him to the nursery, got him on her knee in a speechful condition, and was tenderly sopping the blue lump on his forehead with arnica water.

“I dicher tumber,” said the little Saxon, stoutly, replacing all the consonant combinations that he couldn’t skip, with the aspirated ‘ch;’ “I dicher tumber.  I f’ied.”

“You what?”

“F’ied.  I icher pa’yow.  On’y die tare too big!”

“Yes, indeed,” said Sin, laughing.  “The stairs are a great deal too big.  And little sparrows don’t fly—­down-stairs.  They hop round, and pick up crumbs.”

“Ho I did,” said Marmaduke, showing his white little front teeth in the midst of a surrounding shine of stickiness.

“Yes.  I see.  Sugar.  But you didn’t manage that much better, either.  The trouble is, you haven’t quite turned into a little bird, yet.  You haven’t any little beak to pick up clean with, nor any wings to fly with.  You’ll have to wait till you grow.”

“I ta’h wa’he.  I icher pa’yow now!”

“What shall I do with this child, Frank?” asked Sin, with her grave, funny lifting of her brows, as her husband came into the room.  “He’s got hypochondriasis.  He thinks he’s a sparrow, and he’s determined to fly.  We shall have him trying it off every possible—­I mean impossible—­place in the house.”