"Spare us!" she cried. "Does she ever want us? I don't think she knows when
we are in the room, unless we tread upon her gown, when she screams out
'Little viper!' and hits us with her fan."
"The lightest touch, Papillon; not so hard as you strike your favourite
baby."
"Oh, she doesn't hurt me; but the disrespect of it! Her only daughter, and
nearly as high as she is!"
"You are an ungrateful puss to complain, when her ladyship is so kind as to
let you be here to see all her fine company."
"I am sick of her company, almost always the same, and always talking about
the same things. The King, and the Duke, and the General, and the navy;
or Lady Castlemaine's jewels, or the last new head from Paris, or her
ladyship's Flanders lace. It is all as dull as ditch-water now Monsieur de
Malfort is gone. He was always pleasant, and he let me play on his guitar,
though he swore it excruciated him. And he taught me the new Versailles
coranto. There's no pleasure for any one since he fell ill and left
England."
"You shall come to the Manor. It will be a change, even though you hate the
country and love London."
"I have left off loving London. I have had too much of it. If his lordship
let us go to the play-house often it would be different.
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