52 THE COUSINS.

if she did not know exactly how to express her
meaning.

“When do you use ‘do don’t,’ Mary?” asked
Mr. Lovett.

‘When I want to beg a person not to do some-~
thing.”

“You said to me just now ‘do don’t’ be vexcd;
can you not ask the same thing in other words ?”

Mary thought for a moment, and then said,
“ Please not to be vexed.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Lovett; “now I under-
stand what you mean; but let me tell you what
‘do don’t’ seems to others to mean. Please to be
—Please not to be vexed. And now both causes
have been heard, Judge Lovett will pronounce
sentence. Muss he declares to be inelegant, and
altogether unnecessary, since there is some good
and true English word expressing each thing for
which it is used. ‘Do don’t’ he thinks quite in-
admissible, because it commands two directly op-
posite things, to do, and not to do, at the same
time ; so he condemns these two faulty expressions
to be banished for ever from the company of Miss
Lucy Lovett and Miss Mary Mowbray; but the