"Allen, Grant - Miss Cayley's Adventures 01 - The Adventure of the Cantankerous Old Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Grant)

It was a very rough passage. The Count helped us to carry
our nineteen hand-packages and four rugs on board; ut I
noticed that, fascinated as she was with him, Lady Georgina
resisted his ingenious efforts to gain possession of her
precious jewel-case as she descended the gangway. She clung
to it like grim death, even in the chops of the Channel.
Fortunately I am a good sailor, and when Lady Georgina's
sallow cheeks began to grow pale, I was steady enough to
supply her with her shawl and her smelling-bottle. She
fidgeted and worried the whole way over. She would be
treated like a vertebrate animal. Those horrid Belgians had
no right to stick their deck-chairs just in front of her.
The impertinence of the hussies with the bright red hair--a
grocer's daughters, she felt sure--in venturing to come and
on the same bench with her--the bench 'for ladies only,'
under the lee of the funnel! 'Ladies only,' indeed! Did
the baggages pretend they considered themselves ladies? Oh,
that placid old gentleman in the episcopal gaiters was their
father, was he? Well, a bishop should bring up his
daughters better, having his children in subjection with all
gravity. Instead of which--' Lois, my smelling-salts!'
This was a beastly boat; such an odour of machinery; they
had no decent boats nowadays; with all our boasted
improvements, she could remember well when the cross-Channel
service was much better conducted than it was at present.
But that was before we had compulsory education. The
working classes were driving trade out of the country, and
the consequence was, we couldn't build a boat which didn't
reek like an oil-shop. Even the sailors on oar were French
--jabbering idiots; not an honest British Jacktar among the
lot of them; though the stewards were English, and very
inferior Cockney English at that, with their off-hand ways,
and their School Board airs and graces. She'd School Board
them if they were her servants; she'd show them the sort of
respect that was due to people of birth and education. But
the children of the lower classes never learnt their
catechism nowadays; they were too much occupied with
literatoor, jography, and free-'and drawrin'. Happily for
my nerves, a good lurch to leeward put a stop for a while to
the course of her thoughts on the present distresses.

At Ostend the Count made a second gallant attempt to
capture the jewel-case, which Lady Georgina automatically
repulsed. She had a fixed habit, I believe, of sticking
fast to that jewel-case; for she was too overpowered by the
Count's urbanity, I feel sure, to suspect for a moment his
honesty of purpose. But whenever she travelled, I fancy,
she clung to her case as if her life depended upon it; it
contained the whole of her valuable diamonds.