Never had it been their lot to serve 'really nice' people--this phrase of theirs was anything but meaningless.

They had lived with more or less well-to-do families in the lower middle class--people who could not have inherited refinement, and had not acquired any, neither proletarians nor gentlefolk, consumed with a disease of vulgar pretentiousness, inflated with the miasma of democracy.

It would have been but a natural result of such a life if the sisters had commented upon it in a spirit somewhat akin to that of their employers; but they spoke without rancour, without scandalmongering.

They knew themselves superior to the women who had grudgingly paid them, and often smiled at recollections which would have moved the servile mind to venomous abuse.
At nine o'clock they took a cup of cocoa and a biscuit, and half an hour later they went to bed.

Lamp oil was costly; and indeed they felt glad to say as early as possible that another day had gone by.
Their hour of rising was eight.