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iS8 THE PRINCESS AND CURDIE.
house where everything is left lying about in a shameless way, tempting poor innocent girls !—a house where nobody cares for anything, or has the least respect to the value of property!"
" I suppose you envy me this brooch of mine," said another. "There was just a half-sheet of note-paper about it, not a scrap more, in a drawer that's always open in the writing-table in the study ! What sort of a place is that for a jewel? Can you call it stealing to take a thing from such a place as that ? Nobody cared a straw about it. It might as well have been in the dust-hole ! If it had been locked up—then, to be sure !"
u Drinking ! " said the chief porter, with a husky laugh, " And who wouldn't drink when he had a chance ? Or who would repent it, except that the drink was gone ? Tell me that, Miss Innocence."
" Lying ! " said a great, coarse footman. " I suppose you mean when I told you yesterday you were a pretty girl when you didn't pout ? Lying, indeed ! Tell us something worth repenting of! Lying is the way of Gwyntystorm. You should have heard Jabez lying to the cook last night! He wanted a sweetbread for his pup, and pretended it was for the princess ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! "
" Unkindness ! I wonder who's unkind ! Going and listening to any stranger against her fellow-servants, and then bringing back his wicked words to trouble them 1 |
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