looks clean and industrious,« Mr. Moore remarked.
    »Looks! I don't know how she looks; and I do not say that she is altogether
dirty or idle: mais elle est d'une insolence! She disputed with me a quarter of
an hour yesterday about the cooking of the beef; she said I boiled it to rags,
that English people would never be able to eat such a dish as our bouilli, that
the bouillon was no better than greasy warm water, and as to the choucroute, she
affirms she cannot touch it! That barrel we have in the cellar - delightfully
prepared by my own hands - she termed a tub of hogwash, which means food for
pigs. I am harassed with the girl, and yet I cannot part with her lest I should
get a worse. You are in the same position with your workmen, - pauvre cher
frère!«
    »I am afraid you are not very happy in England, Hortense.«
    »It is my duty to be happy where you are, brother; but otherwise, there are
certainly a thousand things which make me regret our native town. All the world
here appears to me ill-bred (mal-élevé). I find my habits considered ridiculous:
if a girl out of your mill chances to come into the kitchen and find me in my
jupon and camisole preparing dinner (for you know I cannot trust Sarah to cook a
single dish), she sneers. If I accept an invitation out to tea, which I have
done once or twice, I perceive I am put quite into the background; I have not
that attention paid me which decidedly is my due. Of what an excellent family
are the Gérards, as we know, and the Moores also! They have a right to claim a
certain respect, and to feel wounded when it is withheld from them. In Antwerp,
I was always treated with distinction; here, one would think that when I open my
lips in company, I speak English with a ridiculous accent, whereas I am quite
assured that I pronounce it perfectly.«
    »Hortense, in Antwerp we were known rich; in England we were never known but
poor.«
    »Precisely, and thus mercenary are mankind. Again, dear brother, last
Sunday, if you recollect, was very wet; accordingly, I went to church in my neat
black sabots, objects one would not indeed wear in a fashionable city; but which
in the country I have ever been accustomed to use for walking in dirty roads.
Believe me, as I paced up