Reasonably enough the idiom is extremely troublesome to the child-mind. -The doctor says my mother has one foot in the grave,- wrote a little girl the other day in a Composition Exercise. -That is not true. She has both feet in bed - Again, if people will talk about -going it bald-headed,- or about being -stony-hearted- or -iron-fisted- or -brazen-faced,- and so on, they must naturally expect young children to accept the phraseology in its literal sense. Hence amusing misconceptions. Again, as I say, it is often a question of not having quite got the right word.