Little things, once scarcely
observed, now give sharp annoyance, there being rarely any
discrimination and whether they were of accident, neglect, or
wilfulness.
"Phoebe!" she called, fretfully.
The voice of her daughter answered, half-indifferently, from the
next room.
"Why don't you come when I call you?" Anger now mingled with
fretfulness.
The face of a girl in her seventeenth year, on which sat no very
amiable expression, was presented at the door.
"Is that your opera cloak lying across the chair, and partly on the
floor?"
Phoebe, without answering, crossed the room, and catching up the
garment with as little carefulness as if it had been an old shawl
threw it across her arm, and was retiring, when her mother said,
sharply,--
"Just see how you are rumpling that cloak! What do you mean?"
"I'm not hurting the cloak, mother," answered Phoebe, coolly. Then,
with a shade of reproof, she added, "You fret yourself for nothing."
"Do you call it nothing to abuse an elegant garment like that?"
demanded Mrs. Caldwell. "To throw it upon the floor, and tumble it
about as if it were an old rag?"
"All of which, mother mine, I have not done.
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