Eliza's Mother
mas, and you call it 'kindness!' Kindness! Hah! Oh, hah, hah!"
"Don't make those silly noises, and get on with your breakfast!" said Eliza.
Afterward she asked me if I still meant to send her mother that little vase.
"Oh, yes!" I said. "We can afford it; it's nothing to us."
Eliza, entirely misunderstanding the word that I next used, got up and said that she would not stop in the room to hear her poor mother sworn at.
"The word I used," I said, calmly, "was alabaster, and not what you suppose."
"You pronounced it just like the other thing."
"I pronounced it in an exclamatory manner," I replied, "from contempt! You seem to me very ready to think evil. This is not the first time!"
Eliza apologized. As a matter of fact, I really did say alabaster. But I said it emphatically, and I own that it relieved my feelings.
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