I felt such an apologetic cannibal as I explained!
She it was who split up the chopping board to light the fire, the first morning after her arrival, because she couldn’t find a bundle of firewood anywhere. On being referred to the stack of dry kindling wood in the coal shed—she had never heard of lighting fires with trees before; never thought, indeed, to live with a family that expected you to do such things!
On one occasion, when I was in one of the largest and poorest of the London Elementary Schools, where the children looked as pitifully sordid and poverty-stricken as I have ever seen them, I asked a few questions of one small girl in the front row of a class. Her outside dress consisted of an old dilapidated waistcoat worn over a dingy flannelette nightgown, while a ragged piece of serge fastened around the waist with a safety-pin did duty for a skirt. But she was only one among a classful of rags and tatters.
“What is your name?” I asked, by way of starting conversation.
“Victorine,” the forlorn-looking little thing replied.
“And what is your lesson about?” I then inquired.
“Therdelfykorrickul,” she informed me.
Seeing the bewildered look on my face, the head mistress, who was showing me round, said, “Enunciate your words more carefully, Victorine, and speak slowly.”