"He did everything he could, when he got Little Rosebud here, to get her under his power. He tried his dirty best to poison her food, but Little Rosebud was foxy and wouldn't touch a bite of anything, but just sat in her cell and watched the broiled chicken and fried oysters, and all the other good things they sent to tempt her, turn to a dark-purplish hue. One night she escaped disguised in the turnkey's daughter's dress. Her name was Dora Gray, and Paul Howard had 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.