"Is that you, Susan?"
"Yes, Miss Bella, it is me. Well I never! The idea! I shall never get the better of this here! Only to think of you, Miss Bella, having a boy at your time of life."
"What do you mean, Susan? How dare you use such language to me? Get you gone!"
"Oh, yes, I'm a-going in course; but if I had anybody in the house, it shouldn't be a little impudent looking boy with no whiskers."
"She must know all," whispered Johanna.
"No, no," said Arabella, "I will not, feeling my innocence, be forced into making a confidant of a servant. Let her go."
"But she will speak."
"Let her speak."
Susan left the room, and went direct to the kitchen, holding up her hands all the way, and giving free expression to her feelings as she did so—
"Well, the idea now, of a little stumpy looking boy, when there's sich a lot of nice young men with whiskers to be had just for the wagging of one's little finger. Only to think of it. Sitting in her lap too, and them a kissing one another like—like—coach horses. Well I never. Now there's Lines's, the cheesemonger's, young man as I has in of a night, he is somebody, and such loves of whiskers I never seed in my born days afore; but I is surprised at Miss Bella, that I is—a shrimp of a boy in her lap! Oh dear, oh dear!"