Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/88

76 trusted. And perhaps they are right. The half dozen pairs of embroidered silk stockings and the dainty French silver-buckled shoes, which arrived a month later addressed to Miss, Hill View Villa, only confirmed their distrust. He must have had them sent—that tambourine girl could never have afforded these—why, they were pure silk—and the quality! It was plain that his Castanet girl—his mother and sister took a pleasure in crediting her daily with some fresh and unpleasing instrument—could have had neither taste, money, nor honesty to such a point as this.

As for the young man, he bore it all very meekly, only he was glad when his essays on the decadence of things in general led to a berth on the staff of a big daily, and made it possible for him to take rooms in town—because he had grown weary of living with his family, and of hearing so constantly that She played the bones and the big drum and the concertina, and that She was a twopenny adventuress who stole his sister's shoes and stockings. He prefers to sit in his quiet room in the Temple, and to remember that she played the guitar and sang