"To go on like that before the pore thing. She can't help it." "Bah!" ejaculated the French maid, "it is disgust. An organ man! The child is _affreusement stupide_." "I have a heart of my own," sighed the cook. "Yais, but you do not go to throw it to a man like that, Madame Downes." "Hear, hear!" said the butler, and there was a chorus of approval. "I say it is disgust--disgrace," continued Mademoiselle Justine. "The girl is mad, and should be sent home to the _bon_ papa down in the country." "I have a heart of my own," said Mrs Downes again. "Ah, you needn't laugh, Mary Ann. Some people likes footmen next door." The housemaid addressed tossed her head and exclaimed, "Well, I'm sure!" "And so am I," replied the cook, regardless of the sneers and smiles of the rest of the domestics at the table. "As I said before, I have a heart of my own, and if some people follow the example of their betters,"--here Mrs Downes stared very hard at the contemptuous countenance of the French maid,--"and like the furren element, it's no business of nobody's." Madame Justine's eyes flashed. "Did you make that saying for me, Madame Downes?" she flashed out viciously. "Sayings ain't puddens," retorted cook. "I say, make you that vairy witty jeer for me?" cried Mademoiselle Justine viciously. "What I say is," continued the cook, who, having a blunter tongue, stood on her defence, but heaping up dull verbiage round her position as a guard against the Frenchwoman's sharp attack, "that a man's a man, and if he's a furrener it ain't no fault of his. I should say he's a count at least, and he's very handsome." "Counts don't count in this country," said Robbins smiling, and waiting for the applause of the table. "Count indeed!" cried Mademoiselle Justine. "Count you the fork and spoons, Mr Robbins, and see that these canaille music men come not down the air--_ree_. As for that green-goose girl Preen--Bah! she is a little shild for her mamma to vip and send to bed wizout her soop--_paire_. Madame Downes, you are a vairy foolish woman." Mademoiselle Justine rose from her seat, and made a movement as if to push back a chair; but she had been seated upon a form which accommodated half a dozen more domestics, and in consequence she had to climb out and glide toward the door, through which she passed with a rustle like that of a cloud of dead leaves swept into a barn. "You've put ma'amselle out, Mrs Downes," said Robbins with condescension. "That's easy enough done, Mr Robbins. It's her furren blood. I don't like young people to be sneered at if they're a bit tender. I've got a heart of my own." "And a very good heart too, Mrs Downes," said the butler. "Hear, hear," said Joseph the footman.