w'at _Hi_ says--halthough 'e pyes as reg'lar as clockworks."

"Clockworks fawther with a waxworks darter!" cried the slavey, who had
a taste for humor of a kind. "Th' one 'ud stop if t'other melted.
_That's_ sure."

"'E hidolizes 'er that much hit mykes me think o' Roman Catholics an'
such," the landlady replied.

Then, for a time, she paused in thought, while the slavey lost herself
in dreams that, possibly, she had been serving and been worshiping a
real princess. As the height of the ambition of all such as she, in
London, is to be humble before rank, the mere thought filled her with
delight and multiplied into the homage of a subject for an over-lord
the love she felt already for the charming German girl of whom they
spoke.

"She _might_ be," said the landlady, at length.

"W'at? Princesses?" inquired the wistful slavey.

The landlady looked shrewdly at her. It might be that by thus
confiding to the servant her own speculations as to her lodgers'
rank, she had been sowing seed of some extravagance. Hypnotized by the
idea, the slavey might slip to the two mysterious Germans, sometime,
something which would not be charged upon the bill! "Nothink of the
sort!" she cried, therefore, hastily. "An' don't you never tyke no
coals to 'em that you don't tell abaht--you 'ear?"

The slavey promised, but the seed was sown. From that time on full