The Gift of the Sailor: The String of Pearls & Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street — page 146: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

eyes of her fair young friend. She told herself that with those tears a load of oppressive grief would be washed from Johanna’s spirit, and the result fully justified her prognostications. The tears subsided into sobs, and the sobs to sighs. “Ah, my dear friend,” she said, “how much have you to put up with from me. What a world of trouble I am to you.” “No,” said Arabella, “that you are not, Johanna; I am only troubled when I see you overcome with too excessive grief, and then, I confess, my heart is heavy.” “Tt shall not be so again. Forgive me this once, dear Arabella.” Johanna flung herself into her friend’s arms, and while they kissed each other, and Arabella was about commencing a hopeful kind of speech, a servant girl, with open mouth and eyes, looked into the room, transfixed with amazement. “Well, Miss Bella,” she cried at last, “you is fond of boys!” Arabella started, and so did Johanna. “Ts that you, Susan?” “Yes, Miss Bella, it is me. Well I never! The idea! I shall never get the better of this here! Only to think of you, Miss Bella, having a boy at your time of life.” “What do you mean, Susan? How dare you use such language to me? Get you gone?” “Oh, yes, I’m a-going in course; but if I had anybody in the house, it shouldn’t be a little impudent looking boy with no whiskers.” “She must know all,” whispered Johanna. “No, no,” said Arabella, “I will not, feeling my innocence, be forced into making a confidant of a servant. Let her go.” “But she will speak.” “Let her speak.” Susan left the room, and went direct to the kitchen, holding up her hands all the way, and giving free expression to her feelings as she did so— “Well, the idea now, of a little stumpy looking boy, when there’s sich a lot of nice young men with whiskers to be had just for the wagging of one’s little finger. Only to think of it. Sitting in her lap too, and them a-kissing one another like—like—coach horses. Well I never. Now there’s Lines’s, the cheesemonger’s, young man as I has in of a night, he is somebody, and such loves of whiskers I never seed in my born days afore; but I is surprised at Miss Bella, that I is—a shrimp of a boy in her lap! Oh dear, oh dear!” @9OOO0GOOO GOnMG oOo SS CO)