“Ho, ho!” said Bobbie, “mixing with the upper ten, aye?”
“I ’aven’t got reely used to the idea yet,” confessed Mrs. Bell. “I shall miss the smell of the fried fish shop at the end dreadfully. When the wind is in the east it is quite a ’earty meal merely to look out of the doorway and sniff.”
“You’d better find somewhere to sit down, mother,” said her daughter, severely.
“I could do with a chair.”
“Come into my cottage,” said Bobbie, with pride. “This way! I’ll introduce you to mother.”
“I must say,” remarked Mrs. Bell, as they walked along the broad space between the lines of cottages, “that I’d no idea you were so comfortable. I thought they was always thrashing of you at these schools.”
“Not always,” said Bobbie.
“And fed you on brimstone and treacle.”
“You’re thinking of the old days, mother,” said Trixie. “It’s all been altered since your time.”
“Not, mind you,” said Mrs. Bell, “that I was a charity gel. Such education as I had was got at a very high-class school off the ’Ackney Road, where you had to pay your threepence a week, and where the head-mistress—unfortunately she’d no roof to her mouth—had once upon a time been lady’s maid in a very good family indeed. I don’t say I’m perfect,” argued the lady, “but the stigmer of being a charity—”