The things we do!

My uncle generally has his dinner-parties on
Saturday, or goes out; and aunt gives me ten shillings and sends me to
the play; that's better fun than a dinner-party." Here the lad blushed
again. "I used," says he, "when I was younger, to stand on the stairs and
prig things out of the dishes when they came out from dinner, but I'm
past that now. Maria (that's my cousin) used to take the sweet things and
give 'em to the governess. Fancy! she used to put lumps of sugar into her
pocket and eat them in the schoolroom! Uncle Hobson don't live in such
good society as Uncle Newcome. You see, Aunt Hobson, she's very kind, you
know, and all that, but I don't think she's what you call comme il faut."
"Why, how are you to judge?" asks the father, amused at the lad's candid
prattle, "and where does the difference lie?"
"I can't tell you what it is, or how it is," the boy answered, "only one
can't help seeing the difference. It isn't rank and that; only somehow
there are some men gentlemen and some not, and some women ladies and some
not.


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