"It's the silly sentimental fashion in
which both you and father treat work-people that makes them so
difficult to deal with. If the working classes were taught their
place--"
"Working classes! How you talk! Dorothy is as much a lady as we are,
and sometimes I think rather more of a lady than either of us. She is
the daughter of a clergyman."
"So she says," sniffed the elder girl.
"Well, she ought to know," replied the younger indifferently.
"It's people like you who spoil dependents in her position, with your
Dorothy this and Dorothy that. Her name is Amhurst."
"Christened Dorothy, as witness godfather and godmother," murmured the
younger without turning her head.
"I think," protested their mother meekly, as if to suggest a
compromise, and throw oil on the troubled waters, "that she is
entitled to be called Miss Amhurst, and treated with kindness but with
reserve."
"Tush!" exclaimed the elder indignantly, indicating her rejection of
the compromise.
"I don't see," murmured the younger, "why you should storm, Sabina.
You nagged and nagged at her until she'd finished your ball-dress. It
is mamma and I that have a right to complain. Our dresses are almost
untouched, while you can sail grandly along the decks of the
'Consternation' like a fully rigged yacht. There, I'm mixing my
similes again, as papa always says. A yacht doesn't sail along the
deck of a battleship, does it?"
"It's a cruiser," weakly corrected the mother, who knew something of
naval affairs.
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