and there, to offering them any explanation or
apologies for the offense. So I simply answered:

"No; are they very good? are they as good as 'Little Rosebud's Lovers'?"

"No, it ain't," said Mrs. Smith, decisively and a little contemptuously;
"and it ain't two books, eye-ther; it's all in one--'Daphne Vernon; or,
A Coronet of Shame.'"

"Well, now I think it is," put in Phoebe. "Them stories with two-handled
names is nearly always good. I'll buy a book with a two-handled name
every time before I'll buy one that ain't. I was reading a good one last
night that I borrowed from Gladys Carringford. It had three handles to
its name, and they was all corkers."

"Why don't you spit 'em out?" suggested Mrs. Smith. "Tell us what it
was."

"Well, it was 'Doris; or, The Pride of Pemberton Mills; or, Lost in a
Fearful Fate's Abyss.' What d' ye think of that?"

"It sounds very int'resting. Who wrote it?"

"Charles Garvice," replied Phoebe. "Didn't you ever read none of his,
e--y--e--ther?"

"No, I must say I never did," I answered, ignoring their mischievous
raillery with as much grace as I could summon, but taking care to choose
my words so as to avoid further pitfalls.

"And did you never read none of Charlotte M. Braeme's?" drawled Mrs.
Smith, with remorseless cruelty--"none of Charlotte M. Braeme's,
eye-ther?"

"No."

"Nor none by Effie Adelaide Rowlands, e--y--e-ther?" still persisted
Mrs. Smith.

"No; none by her."

"E--y--e--ther!" Both my tormentors now raised their singing-voices into
a high, clear, full-blown note of derisive music, held it for a brief
moment at a dizzy altitude, and then in soft, long-drawn-out cadences
returned to earth and speaking-voices again.

"What kind of story-books do you read, then?" they demanded. To which I
replied with the names of a dozen or more of the simple, every-day
classics that the school-boy and-girl are supposed to have read. They
had never heard of "David Copperfield" or of Dickens. Nor had they ever
heard of "Gulliver's Travels," nor of "The Vicar of Wakefield." They had
heard the name "Robinson Crusoe," but they did not know it was the name
of an entrancing romance. "Little Women," "John Halifax, Gentleman,"
"The Cloister and the Hearth," "Les Miserables," were also unknown,
unheard-of literary treasures. They were equally ignorant of the
existence of the conventional Sunday-school romance. They stared at me
in amazement when I rattled off a heterogeneous assor