"I think, Roland," said my mother, "that the establishment is settled,--
Bolt, who is equal to three men at least; Primmins, cook and
housekeeper; Molly, a good, stirring girl, and willing (though I've had
some difficulty in persuading her to submit not to be called Anna
Maria). Their wages are but a small item, my clear Roland."

"Hem!" said Roland; "since we can't do with fewer servants at less
wages, I suppose we must call it small."

"It is so," said my mother, with mild positiveness. "And indeed, what
with the game and fish, and the garden and poultry-yard, and your own
mutton, our housekeeping will be next to nothing,"

"Hem!" again said the thrifty Roland, with a slight inflection of the
beetle brows. "It may be next to nothing, ma'am,--sister,--just as a
butcher's shop may be next to Northumberland House; but there is a vast
deal between nothing and that next neighbor you have given it."

This speech was so like one of my father's--so naive an imitation of
that subtle reasoner's use of the rhetorical figure called Antanaclasis
(or repetition of the same words in a different sense)--that I laughed
and my mother smiled. But she smiled reverently, not thinking of the
Antanaclasis, as, laying her hand on Roland's arm, she replied in the
yet more formidable figure of speech called Epiphonema (or exclamation),
"Yet, with all your economy, you would have had us--"

"Tut!" cried my uncle, parrying the Epiphonema with a masterly
Aposiopesis (or breaking off); "tut! if you had done what I wished, I
should have had more pleasure for my money!"