The Railway Children - E. Nesbit

“If it had been glass pots here,” said Perks, “I wouldn't ha' said so much. It's
there being all this heaps and heaps of things I can't stand. No—nor won't,
neither.”
“But they're not all from us—” said Peter, “only we forgot to put the labels on.
They're from all sorts of people in the village.”
“Who put 'em up to it, I'd like to know?” asked Perks.
“Why, we did,” sniffed Phyllis.
Perks sat down heavily in the elbow-chair and looked at them with what
Bobbie afterwards described as withering glances of gloomy despair.
“So you've been round telling the neighbours we can't make both ends meet?
Well, now you've disgraced us as deep as you can in the neighbourhood, you can
just take the whole bag of tricks back w'ere it come from. Very much obliged,
I'm sure. I don't doubt but what you meant it kind, but I'd rather not be
acquainted with you any longer if it's all the same to you.” He deliberately
turned the chair round so that his back was turned to the children. The legs of the
chair grated on the brick floor, and that was the only sound that broke the
silence.
Then suddenly Bobbie spoke.
“Look here,” she said, “this is most awful.”
“That's what I says,” said Perks, not turning round.
“Look here,” said Bobbie, desperately, “we'll go if you like—and you needn't
be friends with us any more if you don't want, but—”
“WE shall always be friends with YOU, however nasty you are to us,” sniffed
Phyllis, wildly.
“Be quiet,” said Peter, in a fierce aside.
“But before we go,” Bobbie went on desperately, “do let us show you the
labels we wrote to put on the things.”
“I don't want to see no labels,” said Perks, “except proper luggage ones in my
own walk of life. Do you think I've kept respectable and outer debt on what I
gets, and her having to take in washing, to be give away for a laughing-stock to
all the neighbours?”
“Laughing?” said Peter; “you don't know.”
“You're a very hasty gentleman,” whined Phyllis; “you know you were wrong
once before, about us not telling you the secret about the Russian. Do let Bobbie
tell you about the labels!”