“Language fails me!” declared Ready, as the laughter lulled. “I’m like the old tramp I saw to-day. Fellows, he was a finely educated man, and he could speak five different languages, yet he confessed to me that his downfall was brought upon him because he did not know how to say one common little English word of two letters.”
“What rot!” grunted Browning, from the couch.
“It’s true,” asserted Jack, with great earnestness. “Drunkenness made him a vagabond, and he became a drunkard just because he could not say that one little word of two letters.”
“And he could speak five different languages?” incredulously asked Carson, from his corner.
“He could.”
“And the word of two letters was a simple English word?” broke in Greg Carker.
“So I stated.”
“Dud-dud-dud-did he have an impup-pup-pup-pediment in his sus-sus-sus-speech?” inquired Joe Gamp seriously.
“Not the least.”