'Nice! Hazel, I should like to box your ears! You naughty girl! You'll go wrong one of these days.'
'What for will I, auntie?'
'Some day you'll get spoke to!' She said the last words in a hollow whisper. 'And after that, as you won't say and do what a good girl would, you'll get picked up.'
'I'd like to see anyone pick me up!' said Hazel indignantly. 'I'd kick!'
'Oh! how unladylike! I didn't mean really picked up! I meant allegorically—like in the Bible.'
'Oh! only like in the Bible,' said Hazel disappointedly. 'I thought you meant summat real.'
'Oh! You'll bring down my grey hairs,' wailed Mrs. Prowde.
An actress was bad, but an infidel! 'That I should live to hear it—in my own villa, with my own soda cake on the cake-dish—and my own son,' she added dramatically, as Albert entered, 'coming in to have his God-fearing heart broken!'
This embarrassed Albert, for it was true, though the cause assigned was not.
'What's Hazel been up to?' he queried.