Read "Sink or Swim? , Volume I" by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"If I hadn't heard it from Mrs. Clay herself, I never would have / believed it! To think that John Beacham, who's a sensible man as men go, / should be marrying an Irishwoman! If Honor Blake was English-born now, / one wouldn't blame him so much; but to choose a girl that comes of / people who, as everyone knows, you can't trust farther than you can see / them, is what I call a sin and a shame."
The speaker was a woman of low stature, elderly, and sharp of voice and / feature. She was seated at a round old-fashioned mahogany table, on / which a teapot of the material known as Britannia metal steamed with a / pleasant warmth, while the odour of buttered toast, "hot and hot," / filled the little room in which she and a chosen chum and gossip had / met together to talk over the domestic affairs of their friends and / neighbours.