When Ellen brushed her hair at night she noticed her dismal looks, and being really concerned at Henrietta's want of control, she said bracingly that little girls must never be whiney-piney. When the lamp was put out, Henrietta sobbed herself to sleep, and she looked back on that evening as the most miserable of her childhood.

But just a wee bit impressionable and flirtatious, as who might not very well be with such a whiney-piney wife as Mrs. Recumbency was a mania with her and she had a disconcerting habit of wanting to lie down on the most inconveniently unsuitable occasions. To mitigate his over-flowing energies, which cried aloud for work, Mr. Binning took pupils.

H.O. stopped crying, but Alice went on with it. Oswald now said "We're a base and outcast family. Until that pudding's out of the house we shan't be able to look any one in the face. We must see that that pudding goes to poor children not grisling, grumpy, whiney-piney, pretending poor children but real poor ones, just as poor as they can stick."