"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 Phœbe, 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?" Phœbe 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 Phœbe 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 and there, to offering them any explanation or apologies for the offense. So I simply answered: