Everything was locked up; the coal-cellar, the candle-box, the salt-box, the meat-safe, were all padlocked.

There was nothing that a beetle could have lunched upon.

The pinched and meagre aspect of the place would have killed a chameleon.

He would have known, at the first mouthful, that the air was not eatable, and must have given up the ghost in despair.
The small servant stood with humility in presence of Miss Sally, and hung her head.
'Are you there ?' said Miss Sally.
'Yes, ma'am,' was the answer in a weak voice.
'Go further away from the leg of mutton, or you'll be picking it, I know,' said Miss Sally.
The girl withdrew into a corner, while Miss Brass took a key from her pocket, and opening the safe, brought from it a dreary waste of cold potatoes, looking as eatable as Stonehenge.

This she placed before the small servant, ordering her to sit down before it, and then, taking up a great carving-knife, made a mighty show of sharpening it upon the carving-fork.
'Do you see this ?' said Miss Brass, slicing off about two square inches of cold mutton, after all this preparation, and holding it out on the point of the fork.
The small servant looked hard enough at it with her hungry eyes to see every shred of it, small as it was, and answered, 'yes.' 'Then don't you ever go and say,' retorted Miss Sally, 'that you hadn't meat here.