d blasted her life too, but she
worshiped him something awful, all the same-ee. Dora Gray gave Little
Rosebud a lovely dark-red rose that was soaked with deadly poison, so
that if you touched it to the lips of a person, the person would drop
dead. She told Little Rosebud to protect herself with it if they chased
her. But she didn't get a chance to see whether it would work or not,
for when she heard them coming back of her after while with the
bloodhounds barking, she dropped with terror down flat on her stummick.
She had suffered so much she couldn't stand anything more. The doctors
said she was dead when they picked her up, and they buried her and stuck
a little white slab on her grave, with 'Rosebud, aged sixteen' on it."

"Hot air!" from the irrepressible Phoebe.

I felt that courtesy required I should agree upon that point, and I did
so, conservatively, venturing to ask the name of the author.

Mrs. Smith mentioned the name of a well-known writer of trashy fiction
and added, "Didn't you never read none of her books?"

My negative surprised her. Then Phoebe asked:

"Did you ever read 'Daphne Vernon; or, A Coronet of Shame'?"

"No, I haven't read them, either," I replied.

"Oh, mama! Carry me out and let me die!" groaned Mrs. Smith, throwing
down her paste-brush and falling forward in mock agony upon the smeared
table.

"Water! Water!" gasped Phoebe, clutching wildly at her throat; "I'm
going to faint!"

"What's the matter? What did I say that wasn't right?" I cried, the
nature of their antics showing only too plainly that I had "put my foot
in it" in some unaccountable manner. But they paid no attention.
Mortified and utterly at sea, I watched their convulsed shoulders and
heard their smothered giggles. Then in a few minutes they straightened
up and resumed work with the utmost gravity of countenance and without a
word of explanation.

"What was it you was asking?" Phoebe inquired presently, with the most
innocent air possible.

"I said I hadn't read the books you mentioned," I replied, trying to
hide the chagrin and mortification I felt at being so ignominiously
laughed at.

"Eyether of them?" chirped Mrs. Smith, with a vicious wink.

"Eyether of them?" warbled Phoebe in her mocking-bird soprano.

It was my turn to drop the paste-brush now. Eye-ther! It must have
slipped from my tongue unconsciously. I could not remember having ever
pronounced the word like that before.

I didn't feel equal, then