I recovered my equanimity instantly. "You are trying to discourage us, Aunt Julia," I said, "but it won't work. You can call the drawing-room a 'parlor' if you like. But we shan't. Nor are we trying to ape Buckingham Palace. We are too American for that. The trouble here is that whenever you try to be nice, refined, and courteous, you are accused of aping something. We ape nothing at all. We prefer a drawing-room because it has a more cultured sound. Just as we intend to call the china-closet a 'pantry.' This is a free country." "Fiddlesticks!" cried Aunt Julia. "You are very devoted to your drawing-room and your pantry, but I'm grieved to think that a sensible girl like Letitia, and an able-bodied young man, like yourself, haven't thought it worth while to ask the janitor about the disposition of the garbage." That settled it. I had endured a good deal. I had been patient, polite, kindly, and amused. Yes, I had been half-amused. When I heard Aunt Julia sully her lips with a word so coarse as "garbage" in the presence of my innocent little unsophisticated Letitia, I decided that the time for protest had indeed arrived. "Mrs. Dinsmore," I said--not even "Aunt Julia"--"I must really ask you to avoid such disgusting words and topics, or, if you must mention them, to do so to me alone. I can stand it--perhaps. But it is not nice for your niece. There may be such a thing as garbage in the world--I believe that there is--but one does not care to allude to it at home." I looked at Letitia. A slight expression of disgust manifested itself on her face, although she tried for my sake to conceal it. "It is a word that has come to us, Archie, from the old French _garbe_," she said quickly, with her own admirable tact. "It was once more disgusting than it now seems to be. Americans use it to express kitchen refuse or anything of that sort. Of course, our cook will have no refuse, for we shall get a good one. Probably, in low, unrefined households they do have refuse. It is possibly quite general--for average people do not understand the refinement of living. Aunt Julia meant nothing, I am sure." Letitia, the sweetest and most diplomatic girl I have ever met, rose and kissed Aunt Julia, and I was bound to feel mollified. Not that Aunt Julia was in the least upset by my dignity. In fact, she was convulsed with laughter, but it was the same sort of laughter that I prefer to call a snortch, or a sniffth. "If you ever eat oranges," she persisted in continuing, "what are you going to do with the peel? And your potato skins? And your melon rinds? And your old bones? And your tin cans? And your grocery boxes? That is what we unrefined people call garbage. But I dare say that you and Letitia will put it all in your drawing-room and make a cozy corner of it, or tie it up with blue ribbons. You silly children!" she cried, drying the laughter from her eyes, "if you weren't so amusing I could be angry with you."