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 in a chair near me, she come in jest as the girl dragged 'em off, quarrelin' and usin' words I wouldn't speak for a dollar bill. And this woman went on and told me things I hated to hear—I didn't ask her, she told of her own accord.

Sez she, "Miss Greene Smythe makes a great show, and don't want to even speak to folks full as good as she is." And here she tosted her head quite a good deal. "But if she would spend some of the time on her children she spends on fashion and them everlastin' young men danglin' round her, she would be less apt to have a gallows rared up in her family." She said she didn't believe there ever wuz such a actin' child in the hull world as Algernon. Angenora, she said, wuz better dispositioned to start with, but wuz bein' spilte by Algernon's plaguin' her so. She had got so she would swear and kick almost as loud and hard as he would while he wuz fightin' her.

"Well," sez I, "they're little things, they don't know any better."

"I know it," sez she, "their nurses are ugly dispositioned, both on 'em, and they're jest as mean as they can be to the children, though they keep 'em clean enough. But," she said they wuz ignorant as might be expected, and used so many slang words and low phrases the children had ketched their language and oaths, so their talk wuz more like a pirate's children or a buckaneer's that the children of Christian parents. "And fight!" sez she, she didn't believe there wuz a bigger fighter on earth than Algernon for his age. And lie! why, Algernon's nurse, she said, wuz such a liar that she fairly seemed to prespire untruth through her pores, and them children wuz with her all the time and breathed