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.
"How like my mother to be patronising this wedding -- just the thing she / is certain to do! That sort of popularity costs nothing -- not five / shillings, or trust Milady for staying away."
"O, but, Arthur, you forget the present," said Kate Vavasour -- "the / present that cost, O, _such_ a quantity of money! -- mamma did not say how / much. But it's a brooch like a bull's-eye, only flat, with a white / stripe across it; and it came from the jeweller's at Leigh, with several / others to choose from, and mamma kept the biggest. She said it was ‘just / the thing,' but I can't say that I admired it much."