Dickens's Christmas Books - complete online versions

The Christmas Carol, The Chimes, Cricket On the Hearth, Battle Of Life
& The Haunted Man & the Ghosts's Bargain with Illustrations.

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	THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH.	169
	talent for getting this Baby into difficulties : and had several times imperilled its short life, in a quiet way peculiarly her own. She
	was of a spare and straight shape, this young lady, inso­much that her garments ap­peared to be in constant danger of sliding off those sharp pegs, her shoulders, on which they were loosely hung. Her costume was re­markable for the partial de­velopment, on all possible occasions, of some flannel vestment of a singular structure; also for affording glimpses, in the region of
	the back, of a corset, or pair of stays, in colour a dead - green. Being al­ways in a state of gap­ing admira­tion at every­thing, and absorbed, besides, in the per­petual con­templation of her mis­tress's per­fections and the Baby's, Miss Slow-boy, in her little errors of judgment,
	may be said to have done equal honour to her head and to her heart; and though these did less honour to the Baby's head, which they were the occasional means of bringing into contact with deal doors, dressers, stair-rails, bedposts, and other foreign