“I never make blots! It’s you that makes blots!” cried Erebus, ruffled. “Mr. Etheridge says I write ever so much better than you do. Ever so much better.”
“That’s why you’re writing the letter and not me,” said the Terror coldly. “Fire away: ‘My dear Aunt Amelia’—I say, Wiggins, what’s the proper words for ‘awfully keen’?”
“‘Keen’ is ‘interested’—I don’t know how many ‘r’s’ there are in ‘interested’—and ‘awfully’ is an awfully difficult word,” said Wiggins, pondering.
The Terror looked up “interested” in the dictionary with a laborious painfulness, and announced triumphantly that there was but a single “r” in it; then he said, “What’s the right word for ‘awfully,’ Wiggins? Buck up!”
“‘Tremendously,’” said Wiggins with the air of a successful Columbus.
“That’s it,” said the Terror. “‘My dear Aunt Amelia: I have often heard that you are tremendously interested in cats’ homes’”—
“I should think you had!” said Erebus.
“Now don’t jabber, please; just stick to the writing,” said the Terror. “I’ve got to make this letter a corker; and how can I think if you jabber?”
Erebus made a hideous grimace and bent to her task.
“‘Little Deeping wants a cats’ home awfully’—no: ‘tremendously.’ I like that word ‘tremendously’; it means something,” said the Terror.