A couple of gentlefolk once lived in a certain part of England. (My godmother never would tell the name either of the place or the people, even if she knew it. She said one ought not to expose one’s neighbors’ failings more than there was a due occasion for.) They had an only child, a daughter, whose name was Amelia. They were an easy-going, good-humored couple; “rather soft,” my godmother said, but she was apt to think anybody “soft” who came from the southern shires, as these people did. Amelia, who had been born farther north, was by no means so. She had a strong, resolute will, and a clever head of her own, though she was but a child. She had a way of her own too, and had it very completely. Perhaps because she was an only child, or perhaps because they were so easy going, her parents spoiled her. She was, beyond question, the most tiresome little girl in that or any other neighborhood. From her baby days her father and mother had taken every opportunity of showing her to their friends, and there was not a friend who did not dread the infliction. When the good lady visited her acquaintances, she always took Amelia with her, and if the acquaintances were fortunate enough to see from the windows who was coming, they used to snatch up any delicate knick-knacks, or brittle ornaments lying about, and put them away, crying, “What is to be done? Here comes Amelia!”

When Amelia came in, she would stand and survey the room, whilst her mother saluted her acquaintances; and if anything struck her fancy, she would interrupt the greetings to draw her mother’s attention to it, with a twitch of her shawl, “Oh, look, mamma, at that funny bird in the glass case!” or perhaps, “Mamma, mamma! There’s a new carpet since we were here last;” for, as her mother said, she was “a very observing child.”

Then she would wander round the room, examining and fingering everything, and occasionally coming back with something in her hand to tread on her mother’s dress, and break in upon the ladies’ conversation with—“Mamma, mamma! What’s the good of keeping this old basin! It’s been broken and mended, and some of the pieces are quite loose now. I can feel them:” or—addressing the lady of the house—“That’s not a real ottoman in the corner. It’s a box covered with chintz. I know, for I’ve looked.”

Then her mamma would say, reprovingly, “My dear Amelia!”

And perhaps the lady of the house would beg, “Don’t play with that old china, my love; for though it is mended, it is very valuable;” and her mother would add, “My dear Amelia, you must not.”

Sometimes the good lady said, “You must not.” Sometimes she tried—“You must not.” When both these failed, and Amelia was balancing the china bowl on her finger ends, her mamma would get flurried, and when Amelia flurried her, she always rolled her r’s, and emphasized her words, so that it sounded thus:

“My dear-r-r-r-Ramelia! You must not.”

At which Amelia would not so much as look round, till perhaps the bowl slipped from her fingers, and was smashed into unmendable fragments. Then her mamma would exclaim, “Oh, dear-r-r-r, oh, dear-r-r-r-Ramelia!” and the lady of the house would try to look as if it did not matter, and when Amelia and her mother departed, would pick up the bits, and pour out her complaints to her lady friends, most of whom had suffered many such damages at the hands of this “very observing child.”

When the good couple received their friends at home, there was no escaping from Amelia. If it was a dinner party, she came in with the dessert, or perhaps sooner. She would take up her position near some one, generally the person most deeply engaged in conversation, and either lean heavily against him or her, or climb on to his or her knee, without being invited. She would break in upon the most interesting discussion with her own little childish affairs, in the following style—

“I’ve been out to-day. I walked to the town. I jumped across three brooks. Can you jump? Papa gave me sixpence to-day. I am saving up my money to be rich. You may cut me an orange; no, I’ll take it to Mr. Brown, he peels it with a spoon and turns the skin back. Mr. Brown! Mr. Brown! Don’t talk to mamma, but peel me an orange, please. Mr. Brown! I’m playing with your finger-glass.”

And when the finger-glass full of cold water had been upset on to Mr. Brown’s shirt-front, Amelia’s mamma would cry—“Oh dear, oh dear-r-Ramelia!” and carry her off with the ladies to the drawing-room.

Here she would scramble on to the ladies’ knees, or trample out the gathers of their dresses, and fidget with their ornaments, startling some luckless lady by the announcement, “I’ve got your bracelet undone at last!” who would find one of the divisions broken open by force, Amelia not understanding the working of a clasp.

Or perhaps two young lady friends would get into a quiet corner for a chat. The observing child was sure to spy them, and run on to them, crushing their flowers and ribbons, and crying—“You two want to talk secrets, I know. I can hear what you say. I’m going to listen, I am. And I shall tell, too.” When perhaps a knock at the door announced the nurse to take Miss Amelia to bed, and spread a general rapture of relief.

Then Amelia would run to trample and worry her mother, and after much teasing, and clinging, and complaining, the nurse would be dismissed, and the fond mamma would turn to the lady next to her, and say with a smile—“I suppose I must let her stay up a little. It is such a treat to her, poor child!”

But it was no treat to the visitors.

Besides tormenting her fellow-creatures, Amelia had a trick of teasing animals. She was really fond of dogs, but she was still fonder of doing what she was wanted not to do, and of worrying everything and everybody about her. So she used to tread on the tips of their tails, and pretend to give them biscuit, and then hit them on the nose, besides pulling at those few, long, sensitive hairs which thin-skinned dogs wear on the upper lip.

Now Amelia’s mother’s acquaintances were so very well-bred and amiable, that they never spoke their minds to either the mother or the daughter about what they endured from the latter’s rudeness, wilfulness, and powers of destruction. But this was not the case with the dogs, and they expressed their sentiments by many a growl and snap. At last one day Amelia was tormenting a snow-white bull-dog (who was certainly as well-bred and as amiable as any living creature in the kingdom), and she did not see that even his patience was becoming worn out. His pink nose became crimson with increased irritation, his upper lip twitched over his teeth, behind which he was rolling as many warning Rs as Amelia’s mother herself. She finally held out a bun towards him, and just as he was about to take it, she snatched it away and kicked him instead. This fairly exasperated the bull-dog, and as Amelia would not let him bite the bun, he bit Amelia’s leg.

Her mamma was so distressed that she fell into hysterics, and hardly knew what she was saying. She said the bull-dog must be shot for fear he should go mad, and Amelia’s wound must be done with a red-hot poker for fear she should go mad (with hydrophobia). And as of course she couldn’t bear the pain of this, she must have chloroform, and she would most probably die of that; for as one in several thousands dies annually under chloroform, it was evident that her chance of life was very small indeed. So, as the poor lady said, “Whether we shoot Amelia and burn the bull-dog—at least I mean shoot the bull-dog and burn Amelia with a red-hot poker—or leave it alone; and whether Amelia or the bull-dog has chloroform or bears it without—it seems to be death or madness everyway!”

And as the doctor did not come fast enough, she ran out without her bonnet to meet him, and Amelia’s papa, who was very much distressed too, ran after her with her bonnet. Meanwhile the doctor came in by another way, found Amelia sitting on the dining-room floor with the bull-dog, and crying bitterly. She was telling him that they wanted to shoot him, but that they should not, for it was all her fault and not his. But she did not tell him that she was to be burnt with a red-hot poker, for she thought it might hurt his feelings. And then she wept afresh, and kissed the bull-dog, and the bull-dog kissed her with his red tongue, and rubbed his pink nose against her, and beat his own tail much harder on the floor than Amelia had ever hit it. She said the same things to the doctor, but she told him also that she was willing to be burnt without chloroform if it must be done, and if they would spare the bull-dog. And though she looked very white, she meant what she said.

But the doctor looked at her leg, and found it was only a snap, and not a deep wound; and then he looked at the bull-dog, and saw that so far from looking mad, he looked a great deal more sensible than anybody in the house. So he only washed Amelia’s leg and bound it up, and she was not burnt with the poker, neither did she get hydrophobia; but she had got a good lesson on manners, and thenceforward she always behaved with the utmost propriety to animals, though she tormented her mother’s friends as much as ever.

Now although Amelia’s mamma’s acquaintances were too polite to complain before her face, they made up for it by what they said behind her back. In allusion to the poor lady’s ineffectual remonstrances, one gentleman said that the more mischief Amelia did, the dearer she seemed to grow to her mother. And somebody else replied that however dear she might be as a daughter, she was certainly a very dear friend, and proposed that they should send in a bill for all the damage she had done in the course of the year, as a round robin to her parents at Christmas. From which it may be seen that Amelia was not popular with her parents’ friends, as (to do grown-up people justice) good children almost invariably are.

If she was not a favorite in the drawing-room, she was still less so in the nursery, where, besides all the hardships naturally belonging to attendance on a spoilt-child, the poor nurse was kept, as she said, “on the continual go” by Amelia’s reckless destruction of her clothes. It was not fair wear and tear, it was not an occasional fall in the mire, or an accidental rent or two during a game at “Hunt the Hare,” but it was constant wilful destruction, which nurse had to repair as best she might. No entreaties would induce Amelia to “take care” of anything. She walked obstinately on the muddy side of the road when nurse pointed out the clean parts, kicking up the dirt with her feet; if she climbed a wall she never tried to free her dress if it had caught; on she rushed, and half a skirt might be left behind for any care she had in the matter. “They must be mended,” or, “They must be washed,” was all she thought about it.

“You seem to think things clean and mend themselves, Miss Amelia,” said poor nurse one day.

“No, I don’t,” said Amelia, rudely. “I think you do them; what are you here for?”

But though she spoke in this insolent and unladylike fashion, Amelia really did not realize what the tasks were which her carelessness imposed on other people. When every hour of nurse’s day had been spent in struggling to keep her wilful young lady regularly fed, decently dressed, and moderately well-behaved (except, indeed, those hours when her mother was fighting the same battle downstairs); and when at last, after the hardest struggle of all, she had been got to bed not more than two hours later than her appointed time, even then there was no rest for nurse. Amelia’s mamma could at last lean back in her chair and have a quiet chat with her husband, which was not broken in upon every two minutes, and Amelia herself was asleep; but nurse must sit up for hours wearing out her eyes by the light of a tallow candle, in fine-darning great, jagged and most unnecessary holes in Amelia’s muslin dresses. Or perhaps she had to wash and iron clothes for Amelia’s wear next day. For sometimes she was so very destructive, that towards the end of the week she had used up all her clothes and had no clean ones to fall back upon.

Amelia’s meals were another source of trouble. She would not wear a pinafore; if it had been put on, she would burst the strings, and perhaps in throwing it away knock her plate of mutton broth over the tablecloth and her own dress. Then she fancied first one thing and then another; she did not like this or that; she wanted a bit cut here and there. Her mamma used to begin by saying, “My dear-r-Ramelia, you must not be so wasteful,” and she used to end by saying, “The dear child has positively no appetite;” which seemed to be a good reason for not wasting any more food upon her; but with Amelia’s mamma it only meant that she might try a little cutlet and tomato sauce when she had half finished her roast beef, and that most of the cutlet and all the mashed potato might be exchanged for plum tart and custard; and that when she had spooned up the custard and played with the paste, and put the plum stones on the tablecloth, she might be tempted with a little Stilton cheese and celery, and exchange that for anything that caught her fancy in the dessert dishes.

The nurse used to say, “Many a poor child would thank God for what you waste every meal time, Miss Amelia,” and to quote a certain good old saying, “Waste not want not.” But Amelia’s mamma allowed her to send away on her plates what would have fed another child, day after day.