CHAPTER XVI.

MY NEXT MOTHER.

We then drove home. My mother's name was Garafelina Shoppard. They were a very vulgar, purse-proud, stuck-up people. My little mother was all the time talking to me about money, and making a show. We went to a party one night. My mother's mother, (my _grandmother_) did not know how to dress in good taste at all. She was dressed in a black and yellow changeable silk, and my mother was dressed in a green and orange, with a wreath of red roses in her hair. My grandmother tried to talk French, but she mispronounced every word. That evening, when any one was introduced, she would ask them if they could "_barley vouse frog's hay_,"--and at supper, she said that she would take "_chockalat_," it was such a "_soul stirring beverage_." She took ice cream, and said that "she always took ice cream, _bekase_ she thought it cooled her _heterogeneous and amalgamated system_; besides, it was the merry month of _Jew-win_." At home, when we had company, she always talked so. We had some pretty high folks, for she had worked her way into the upper ten. One evening Sir Thomas Fitz-Patrick came to see her. At tea, she said, "Dear Sir, let me persuade you to take one _airy_ mouthful of '_fram boyses_,' or else do condescend to taste some '_frommage_;' it is quite new, my Lord, and I hope it will please your '_diddle de tory_,' taste." After tea, she said, "Oh! My Lord, don't you perfectly adore Byron and Shakspeare? I think that one is so '_cherubimical_,' and the other so '_seraphical_.' Don't you recollect that passage from 'Macbeth,' in act second, and scene second, 'Hark, who lies i' the second chamber;' and in Hamlet's '_solukey_' in scene fifth, act first, 'Alas! poor ghost?'" My little mother used to prink before the glass, and hold me up to see how handsome I was, till I was very tired of looking at myself. My mother never let me do any sewing, for fear I should spoil my fingers, and thus I passed a very idle life. I could not read much, as my mother was afraid that I would hurt my eyes. One day my mother said, that her grandmother was coming to live with us, and also her aunt, who was not married. She said that she hated old maids, though they had got to come; but she would not speak to them. I was very sorry indeed to hear this.