“Drink, pretty creature, drink! Let me explain: What I want is to ask some questions—about words, and so on. You’re a college Johnny, ain’t you?”
“Booze Arts, Harvard,” said Ducky. “Not graduated yet.”
“Man staying here in the Windsor with you—was staying here, gone now—used a lot of words I don’t quite savvy.” Neighbor leaned forward, blinking earnestly. “What is the precise distinction between a mutt, a simp, a gink and a boob? And what did he mean by saying all the time, ‘I should worry!’?”
Ducky placed the tips of his fingers accurately together, and held his head on one side, birdwise, pursing his lips precisely.
“The phrase I should worry is derived from the Hebrew verb to bibble, meaning to worry—I should bibble; you should bibble; he or she should bibble. Plural: we should bibble; ye should bibble; they should bibble.
“Mutt, simp, gink and boob are scientific terms employed rather indiscriminately by philosophers of an idealistic tendency. Broadly speaking, the words denote one whose speech, manner, education, habits or clothes differ in any respect from your own; categorically, a thinker whose opinions and ideals do not correspond in every particular with your own. Exactly equivalent terms are—in religion, heretic or infidel; in politics, demagogue, blatherskite!”
“Thank you,” said Neighbor humbly. “Myself, I understood him to mean almost the same thing as a sucker; because this fellow—it was the K. C. Kid, that sat on your left—he spoke of you and me being mutts and simps, and all them things; and at the same time he said we’d been swindled, cheated or skinned in that little poker game.”
Ducky made a passionate comment.
“That alley-goat could sure stack the cards. He showed me that,” said Neighbor, and related the painful story of the K. C. Kid’s flitting.
“We are the victims of the highly accomplished fact,” said Roger. “We can’t very well squeal; but can they do this to us with the well-known impunity?”