With the exception of Lucy and Bim they were exceedingly noisy children.
Lucy should have passed her days in the schoolroom under the care of
Miss Agg, a melancholy and hope-abandoned spinster, and, during lesson
hours, there indeed she was. But in the schoolroom she had no one to
impress with her amazing wisdom and dignity. "Poor mummy," as she always
thought of her mother, was quite unaware of her habits or movements, and
Miss Agg was unable to restrain either the one or the other, so Lucy
spent most of her time in the nursery, where she sat, calm and
collected, in the midst of confusion that could have "given old Babel
points and won easy." She was reverenced by all the younger children
for her sedate security, but by none of them so surely and so
magnificently as Bim. Bim, because he was quieter than the other
children, claimed for his opinions and movements the stronger interest.
His nurses called him "deep," "although for a deep child I must say he's
'appy."
Both his depth and his happiness were at Lucy's complete disposal. The
people who saw him in the Square called him "a jolly little boy," and,
indeed, his appearance of gravity was undermined by the curl of his
upper lip and a dimple in the middle of his left cheek, so that he
seemed to be always at the crisis of a prolonged chuckle.
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