Now , all of you run away , except Tom ; and he may stay and see what I am going to do . It will be a very good warning for him to begin with , before he goes to school . `` Now , Tom , every Friday I come down here and call up all who have ill-used little children and serve them as they served the children . '' And at that Tom was frightened , and crept under a stone ; which made the two crabs who lived there very angry , and frightened their friend the butter-fish into flapping hysterics : but he would not move for them . And first she called up all the doctors who give little children so much physic -LRB- they were most of them old ones ; for the young ones have learnt better , all but a few army surgeons , who still fancy that a baby 's inside is much like a Scotch grenadier 's -RRB- , and she set them all in a row ; and very rueful they looked ; for they knew what was coming . And first she pulled all their teeth out ; and then she bled them all round : and then she dosed them with calomel , and jalap , and salts and senna , and brimstone and treacle ; and horrible faces they made ; and then she gave them a great emetic of mustard and water , and no basons ; and began all over again ; and that was the way she spent the morning . And then she called up a whole troop of foolish ladies , who pinch up their children 's waists and toes ; and she laced them all up in tight stays , so that they were choked and sick , and their noses grew red , and their hands and feet swelled ; and then she crammed their poor feet into the most dreadfully tight boots , and made them all dance , which they did most clumsily indeed ; and then she asked them how they liked it ; and when they said not at all , she let them go : because they had only done it out of foolish fashion , fancying it was for their children 's good , as if wasps ' waists and pigs ' toes could be pretty , or wholesome , or of any use to anybody . Then she called up all the careless nurserymaids , and stuck pins into them all over , and wheeled them about in perambulators with tight straps across their stomachs and their heads and arms hanging over the side , till they were quite sick and stupid , and would have had sun-strokes : but , being under the water , they could only have water-strokes ; which , I assure you , are nearly as bad , as you will find if you try to sit under a mill-wheel . And mind -- when you hear a rumbling at the bottom of the sea , sailors will tell you that it is a ground-swell : but now you know better . It is the old lady wheeling the maids about in perambulators . And by that time she was so tired , she had to go to luncheon . And after luncheon she set to work again , and called up all the cruel schoolmasters -- whole regiments and brigades of them ; and when she saw them , she frowned most terribly , and set to work in earnest , as if the best part of the day 's work was to come . More than half of them were nasty , dirty , frowzy , grubby , smelly old monks , who , because they dare not hit a man of their own size , amused themselves with beating little children instead ; as you may see in the picture of old Pope Gregory -LRB- good man and true though he was , when he meddled with things which he did understand -RRB- , teaching children to sing their fa-fa-mi-fa with a cat-o ' - nine tails under his chair : but , because they never had any children of their own , they took into their heads -LRB- as some folks do still -RRB- that they were the only people in the world who knew how to manage children : and they first brought into England , in the old Anglo-Saxon times , the fashion of treating free boys , and girls too , worse than you would treat a dog or a horse : but Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid has caught them all long ago ; and given them many a taste of their own rods ; and much good may it do them . And she boxed their ears , and thumped them over the head with rulers , and pandied their hands with canes , and told them that they told stories , and were this and that bad sort of people ; and the more they were very indignant , and stood upon their honour , and declared they told the truth , the more she declared they were not , and that they were only telling lies ; and at last she birched them all round soundly with her great birch-rod and set them each an imposition of three hundred thousand lines of Hebrew to learn by heart before she came back next Friday . And at that they all cried and howled so , that their breaths came all up through the sea like bubbles out of soda-water ; and that is one reason of the bubbles in the sea . There are others : but that is the one which principally concerns little boys . And by that time she was so tired that she was glad to stop ; and , indeed , she had done a very good day 's work . Tom did not quite dislike the old lady : but he could not help thinking her a little spiteful -- and no wonder if she was , poor old soul ; for if she has to wait to grow handsome till people do as they would be done by , she will have to wait a very long time . Poor old Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid ! she has a great deal of hard work before her , and had better have been born a washerwoman , and stood over a tub all day : but , you see , people can not always choose their own profession .
But Tom longed to ask her one question ; and after all , whenever she looked at him , she did not look cross XXXXX all ; and now and then there was a funny smile in her face , and she chuckled to herself in a way which gave Tom courage , and at last he said : `` Pray , ma'am , may I ask you a question ? ''
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