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17. mistress
Five variant spellings of mistress are found in the copy used for the Paviers: mistres (eight +J1), mistris (twenty-two +J10), mistresse (forty-seven +J11), mistrisse (one +J1), and misteris (thirty-five +J5). Of these five spellings, B prefers mistris and mistresse and rejects the other three. Although Alice Walker assigned mistresse to A and mistris to B as characteristic spellings, B's treatment of the word in the Paviers indicates that he employed both forms. On the surface, simple numerical superiority does favor the -is form, but this is a result of the numerical superiority of -is forms in copy.
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