l tale of a neighbour of Farmer Ingham's, that had a parcel of tea
sent her as a great present from London, with a letter that said 'twas
all the mode with the quality. And what did she, think you, but boiled
it like cabbage, and bade all her neighbours come taste the new greens."

"Did they like them?" asked Rhoda, as well as she could speak for
laughing.

"I heard they all thought with their hostess, who said, `If those were
quality greens, the quality were welcome to keep 'em; country folk would
rather have cabbage and spinach any day.'"

"Well!" said Rhoda, bridling a little, when her amusement had subsided;
"'tis very silly for mean people to ape the quality."

"It is so, my dear," replied Mrs Dorothy, with that extreme quietness
which was the nearest her gentle spirit could come to irony. "'Tis
silly for any to ape another, be he less or more."

"Why, there can be no communication between them," observed Rhoda, with
a toss of her head.

"`Communication,' my dear," said Mrs Dolly. "Yonder's a new word.
Where did you pick it up?"

"O Mrs Dolly! you can't be in the mode if you don't pick up all the new
words," answered Rhoda more affectedly than ever. She was showing off
now, and was entirely in her element.

"And pray what are the other new words, my dear?" inquired Mrs Dorothy
good-naturedly, and not without a little amusement. "That one sounds
very much like the old-fashioned `commerce.'"

"Well, I don't know them all!" said Rhoda, with an assumption of
humility; "but now-o'-days, when you speak of any one's direction, you
must say _adresse_, from the French; and if one is out of spirits, you
say he is _hipped_--that's from hypochondriacal; and a crowd of people
is a _mob_--that's short for mobile; and when a man goes about, and
doesn't want to be known, you say he is _incog._--that means incognito,
which is the Spanish for unknown. Then you say Mr Such-an-one spends
_to the tune of five_ hundred a year; and there are a lot of men _of his
kidney_; and _I bantered them_ well about it. Oh, there are lots of new
words, Mrs Dolly."

"So it seems, my dear. But are you sure incognito is Spanish?"

"Oh, yes! William Knight told me so," said Rhoda, with another toss of
her head.

"I imagined it was Latin," observed Mrs Dorothy. "But 'tis true, I
know nought of either tongue."

"Oh, William Knight knows everything," said Rhoda, hyperbolically.

"He must be a very ingenious young man," quietly obs