“Wh-what is wrong?” Charley asked, with a quavering voice, his lips of that “ashy hue” which good romancers delight in introducing.
“Why,” Marmaduke began, “don’t you observe, sometimes the writer addresses the finder distantly in the third person, and then again familiarly and imploringly in the second person! Now, that is ridiculous. Grammar says not to mix the second and third persons together in writing; use either the one or the other.”
At this, Henry crammed the strings of his headgear, together with his fingers, far into his capacious mouth, and forgot that the limb on which he roosted was no longer comfortable; whilst the others heaved an audible sigh of relief, perceiving that Marmaduke, instead of wishing to find fault with the letter, wished only to display his great knowledge of things and people in general, grammar in particular.
But the plotters, one and all, had been in ignorance of this gross insult to grammar. Whether Henry had not been aware of the rule as quoted by Marmaduke, or whether he had been too sleepy to observe it, is an open question. It is stated (he stated it himself, of course, for no one heard him), however, that he muttered in his throat: “Certainly, this Marmaduke is no boy at all! His language is too far-fetched for a Yankee boy. Yes; he is some stunted old crack-brained dwarf of sixty!”
As soon as Charley could collect himself sufficiently he replied in these words: “I presume that the captive was in too disturbed a state of mind to pay particular attention to such minor matters as grammar. And besides, her grammars were probably at home in France, for likely she didn’t go aboard with a satchel of school-books in her hand. Now, the person considered most was evidently the person who should fly to the rescue.”
“Don’t treat her woes so lightly,” Marmaduke said angrily, beginning to suspect that the boys were making fun of him.
“That ghost story is queer; what do you think of it?” asked Will, anxious to have the grammarian’s opinion of that.
“Well, you know the French are a more excitable and romantic race than we are,” was the answer. “In her solitude and misery perhaps she fancies that ghosts are hovering near, for all French people have a powerful imagination.”
Ah! the boy overhead was gifted with a more powerful imagination than any one believed.