“I wish you would say tart, Stephen, my son. If you will persist in working as a mechanic, and wasting your time in fruitless schemes—”
“Hush, mother!” said Mr Hallett, with an uneasy glance at me.
“Yes, my son; but I cannot bear you to forget all our old genteel ways. We may be poor, but we can still be respectable.”
“Yes, yes; of course, dear,” said Mr Hallett nastily, as he saw that his mother was about to shed tears. “Come, Antony, let’s be waiters.”
I jumped up to assist him, just as Linny, looking very rosy and pretty in her bonnet and jacket, hurried out of a side room, and kissing her mother, and nodding to us, hastened downstairs.
“Ah?” said Mrs Hallett, with another sigh, “we ought not to be reduced to that.”
“To what, dear?” said Mr Hallett, as he busily removed the dinner things.
“Letting that young and innocent girl go about the streets alone without a protector, offering herself as a prey to every designing wretch who casts his eyes upon her fresh, fair face.”
“My dear mother,” said Mr Hallett, laughing, “London is not quite such a sink of iniquity as you suppose, and you have tutored Linny too well for there to be any occasion for fear. There, come, lean back and rest till we have done, and then I will read you one of your favourites.”
Mrs Hallett allowed herself to be gently pressed back in her seat, and lay there still complaining that a son of hers should have to stoop, and also ask his visitor to stoop, to such a degrading toil.