Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/21

 "Oh, if you object, it is not worth talking about—it is a place very easy to supply."

"The only objection I have to make, ma'am, you will not perhaps think a very unreasonable one. My child must be qualifying herself for the future, and I fear the very light work she has here would rather unfit than fit her for the future."

"Oh, very well—as you please—a droll objection though—hey, Mary! There is no end to the whims and demands of servants nowadays—always something new! but it really is a little too much to expect to turn a gentleman's house into a school!"

Mrs. Lee felt her heart rising, but she struggled to keep it down, and asked, with the humility necessary to her forlorn condition, "if she might take till Monday to consider."

"No-on the whole, I don't think your girl would suit me-children that have never lived out are very apt to have their heads full of whims."

"Do let's go, mother," whispered Lucy. And they went without one kind word that would intimate they were beings of the same human family with the mistress of the mansion.

"What a goose the woman is!" said Mrs. Oatley, as the door closed upon the disappointed applicants. Yet Mrs. Oatley was not a hard-hearted woman; she only had never considered the feelings and rights of her inferiors in position. Strange reverses and revelations would there be to the more favoured classes if an intrinsic graduating scale could be applied.

Mrs. Lee retraced her way to the intelligence-office. The man was civil, and looked over his