Pagina 40 van 1294

Since she has attained years of maturity, she has read other

books of romantic tendency and of late she had read with great

interest a book she got through Mr. Lebeziatnikov, Lewes'

Physiology--do you know it?--and even recounted extracts from it

to us: and that's the whole of her education. And now may I

venture to address you, honoured sir, on my own account with a

private question. Do you suppose that a respectable poor girl can

earn much by honest work? Not fifteen farthings a day can she

earn, if she is respectable and has no special talent and that

without putting her work down for an instant! And what's more,

Ivan Ivanitch Klopstock the civil counsellor--have you heard of

him?--has not to this day paid her for the half-dozen linen

shirts she made him and drove her roughly away, stamping and

reviling her, on the pretext that the shirt collars were not made

like the pattern and were put in askew. And there are the little

ones hungry....