"Oh! that shows you've never read Miss Edgeworth's tales;—now, have you? If you had, you'd have recollected that there was such a word, even if you didn't remember what it was. If you've never read those stories, they would be just the thing to beguile your solitude—vastly improving and moral, and yet quite sufficiently interesting. I'll lend them to you while you're all alone."
"I'm not alone. I'm not at home, but on a visit to Miss Brownings."
"Then I'll bring them to you. I know the Miss Brownings; they used to come regularly on the school-day to the Towers. Pecksy and Flapsy I used to call them. I like the Miss Brownings; one gets enough of respect from them at any rate; and I've always wanted to see the kind of ménage of such people. I'll bring you a whole pile of Miss Edgeworth's stories, my dear."
Molly sate quite silent for a minute or two; then she mustered up courage to speak out what was in her mind.
"Your ladyship" (the title was the firstfruits of the lesson, as Molly took it, on paying due respect)—"your ladyship keeps speaking of the sort of—the class of people to which I belong as if it was a kind of strange animal you were talking about; yet you talk so openly to me that—"
"Well, go on—I like to hear you."
Still silence.
"You think me in your heart a little impertinent—now, don't you?" said Lady Harriet, almost kindly.
Molly held her peace for two or three moments; then she lifted her beautiful, honest eyes to Lady Harriet's face, and said,—
"Yes!—a little. But I think you a great many other things."