"Neat? I call it subversive and damnable!"
"Listen! The next is a stinger—"
'Something quite recent, now:
"Drainage ain't decent," now:
Damme, when was it? I've known, if you please,
Old tenants, better ones,
Crimean veterans—
Never heard they required w.c.'s—'
"My dear Sally!"
"I read you the thing as it's printed," said Miss Sally, with another liquid chuckle.
["Ain't it just 'eavingly?" whispered Tilda below, clutching the boy's arm while she listened.
"What?"
"The voice of 'er. If I could on'y speak words that way!">[
"He goes on," pursued Miss Sally, "to tell how you and Saunders—that's your new bailiff's name, is it not?—cooked up this woman's race between you as a step towards saving the Empire. The language is ribald in places, I allow; but I shouldn't greatly wonder if that, more or less, is how it happened. And any way I've come to the rescue, and kept the Imperial Ham in the family."
"I have sometimes thought, Sally—if you will forgive my putting it brutally—that you are half a Radical yourself."