“Oh, sir, they’ll never be mine. You might as well talk of my wearin’ the crown of England.”
“Always low and servile comparisons, Annie!”
“Lord, sir, be a queen’s crown low?”
“To think of it as a desirable and enviable thing is extremely low.”
“I’m afraid, sir, I don’t understand. Will you please put up these pearls? They’re that beautiful I don’t dare touch ’em.”
“They will be my wife’s. Therefore I repeat they will be yours.”
“That’s what I come to say to you, sir. What we have thought of won’t never be. Can’t never be. Tisn’t in reason. When the ’bus run over me in Piccadilly last year, and you picked me up and took me ’ome, you seemed like a prince to me, sir——”
“Always vulgar and servile comparisons!”
“And when you come about our place, mother said to me, ‘That gent don’t mean no good, and it’s the broom I’ll take to him’; and Sam he said, ‘If he’s harter Hann I’ll give ’im a ’idin’.’ And then you said we was to marry, and mother said it was all moonshine, and Sam didn’t like the idea of it; but you said it would be a beautiful example to all classes, and I—I—well I couldn’t believe my ears, Mr. Bertram.”
“What is the use of going over all this ground, Annie?”