But her levity in such a crisis only excited her lover the more. "Everybody at the station was laughing at you. To-night when you traipsed down the stairs, looking so pretty in your new dress, you had to spoil everything by saying: 'What a chahming pahty. Shall we dahnce, Ahthuh?' I just wanted to die."
The victim of his tirade declined to wither. She answered: "I cahn't tell you how sorry I am to have humiliated you. But if it's a sin to speak correctly you'll have to get used to it."
"No, I won't; but you'll get over it. You can live it down in time; but don't you dare try to change your name to Amélie. They'd laugh you out of Carthage."
"Oh, would they now? Well, Amélie is my name for heahaftah, and if you don't want to call me that you needn't call me anything."
"Look here, Em."
"Amélie."
"Emamélie! for Heaven's sake don't be a snob!"
"You're the snob, not I. There's just as much snobbery in sticking to mispronunciation as there is in being correct. And just as much affectation in talking with a burr as in dropping it. You think it's all right for me to dress as they do in New York. Why shouldn't I talk the same way? If it's all right for me to put on a pretty gown and weah my haiah the most becoming way, why cahn't I improve my name, too? You cahn't frighten me. I'm not afraid of you or the rest of your backwoods friends. Beauty is my religion, and if necessary I'll be a mahtah to it."
"You'll be a what?"
"A mahtah."