Alice gave a great jerk of emotion which most unfortunately upset her embroidery-frame, which fell off the table with a crash that might have{101} awaked the dead, and certainly awoke the living.
Never mind what Mr Silverdale would say, he said. Tell me what it is that you understand. Now, quick, what is it you understand? "The decline in Portuguese trade with China was accompanied with a corresponding decline in the language, but it left its impress upon the more recent pidgin English, which contains many Portuguese words. Pidgin English is a language by itself, with very little inflection either in noun, pronoun, or verb, and with a few words doing duty for many. The Chinese learn it readily, as they have no grammatical giants to wrestle with in mastering it, and the foreigners are quite ready to meet them on the road and adapt their phraseology to its requirements. The Chinese has only to commit to memory a few hundred words and know their meaning; the foreigner (if he be English-speaking) has less than a hundred foreign words to learn, together with the peculiar construction of phrases. The Chinese have printed vocabularies in which the foreign word and its meaning are set forth in Chinese characters, and thus they have no occasion to trouble themselves with the alphabet of the stranger. These books are specially intended for the use of compradores and servants in foreign employ, and are so small that they can be readily carried in the pocket.
ONE:But what nonsense this is, said Keeling angrily. As if I couldnt find her in a week for myself.
TWO:"Sir," said Miss Harper, "you give me no occasion to doubt it." She followed the men upstairs. "Estelle, go back to your sister and cousin; and if you, my dear,"--to our hostess--"will kindly go also, and stay with them--"
