ey
themselves.

VI

IN WHICH PHOEBE AND MRS. SMITH HOLD FORTH UPON MUSIC AND LITERATURE

"Don't you never read no story-books?" Mrs. Smith asked, stirring the
paste-pot preparatory to the afternoon's work. She looked at me
curiously out of her shrewd, snapping dark eyes as she awaited my
answer. I was conscious that Mrs. Smith didn't like me for some reason
or other, and I was anxious to propitiate her. I was pretty certain she
thought me a boresome prig, and I determined I'd prove I wasn't. My
confession of an omnivorous appetite for all sorts of story-books had
the desired effect; and when I confessed further, that I liked best of
all a real, tender, sentimental love-story, she asked amiably:

"How do you like 'Little Rosebud's Lovers'?"

"I've never read that," I replied. "Is it good?"

"It's fine," interposed Phoebe; "but I like 'Woven on Fate's Loom'
better--don't you?" The last addressed to Mrs. Smith.

"No, I can't say as that's my impinion," returned our vis-a-vis, with a
judicious tipping of the head to one side as she soused her dripping
paste-brush over the strips. "Not but what 'Woven on Fate's Loom' is a
good story in its way, either, for them that likes that sort of story.
But I think 'Little Rosebud's Lovers' is more int'resting, besides being
better wrote."

"And that's just what I don't like about it," retorted Phoebe, her
fingers traveling like lightning up and down the corners of the boxes.
"You like this hot-air talk, and I don't; and the way them fellows and
girls shoot hot-air at each other in that there 'Little Rosebud's
Lovers' is enough to beat the street-cars!"

"What is it about?" I asked with respectful interest, addressing the
question to Mrs. Smith, who gave promise of being a more serious
reviewer than the flippant Phoebe. Mrs. Smith took a bite of gingerbread
and began:

"It's about a fair, beautiful young girl by the name of Rosebud Arden.
Her pa was a judge, and they lived in a grand mansion in South Car'lina.
Little Rosebud--that's what everybody called her--had a stepsister Maud.
They was both beauties, only Maud didn't have a lovely disposition like
Little Rosebud. A Harvard gradjate by the name of Percy Fielding got
stuck on Little Rosebud for the wealth she was to get from her pa, and
she was terrible stuck on him. She was stuck on him for fair, though not
knowing he was a villain of the deepest dye. That's what the book called
him. He talked her into marrying