As for the girls, they
were trained by too good a master and mistress not to become apt
scholars. They knew what a bill of sale was from their tenderest
years; the broker's was no unfamiliar face; and they quite understood
how to treat a man in possession. Their management of duns was
consummate. Happy Jack used to listen to the comedy of excuses and
coaxings; and when the importunate had departed, grumblingly and
unpaid, he used solemnly to kiss his daughters on the forehead, and
invoke all sorts of blessings upon his preservers, his good angels,
his little girls, who were so clever, and so faithful, and so true.
And in many respects they were good girls. The style in which they
turned frocks, put a new appearance upon hoods, and cloaks, and
bonnets, and came forth in what seemed the very lustre of novelty--the
whole got up by a skilful mutual adaptation of garments and parts of
garments--was wonderful to all lady beholders. In cookery, they beat
the famous _chef_ who sent up five courses and a dessert, made out of
a greasy pair of jack-boots and the grass from the ramparts of the
besieged town.
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