Читать книгу The Mate of the Good Ship York; Or, The Ship's Adventure онлайн

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She frowned, and put down her knife and fork, and seemed as if she did not mean to go on eating. Hardy poured out a glass of frothing ale. It was a fine sparkling ale, better than champagne, and looked an elegant drink, fit for red lips in the thin glass it brimmed with foam. She took it and drank.

"It is hard for any girl to be in want," said Hardy; "but there is no distress to equal that of the lady who is in poverty. What, in God's name, can she do? She is not wanted in the kitchen, and if I were she I would rather sell matches than be a governess."

"It is the well-to-do lady who makes it hard for the poor lady," exclaimed the girl. "Two years ago I got a situation as nurse to attend an aged sick woman—she was eighty. She lived with a lady. You would think this person would have known how to treat the daughter of an officer in the navy, who was too poor to maintain her as a lady. Mr. Hardy, she used to call me Armstrong, as though I was her housemaid. I had my meals separate. When they went away for a change I was not good enough to sit in the carriage; they made me sit on the box, and the coachman, in the genial manner of the mews, asked me if I was the new maid, and if my name was Jemima. When we arrived the lady told me I must not sit with them if company came, as my presence might be objected to. I went to my bedroom, and kept in it till I was called out, and then returned to it."