Fanny looked round and met Lawrence's eyes.
"You seem to be the only one who is ready," she said, laughing again. "One isn't a crowd, as the little boys say."
"Where do you get such expressions, my dear child?" asked Cordelia. "I really think you've learned more slang since you've been here this summer, though I shouldn't have believed it possible!"
"There!" exclaimed Fanny, turning to Mr. Brinsley again. "That's the kind of flattery my relatives lavish on me from morning till night! As if you didn't all talk slang, the whole time!"
"Fanny!" protested Augusta, whose accomplishments made her sensitive and conscious. "How can you say so?"
"Well—dialect, if you like the word better. I'll prove it you. You all say 'won't' and 'shan't'—and most of you say 'I'd like'—for instance—and Mr. Brinsley says 'ain't,' because he's English—"
"Well—what ought we to say?" asked Augusta. "Nobody says 'I will not,' and all that."
"You ought to. It's dialect not to—and the absurd thing is that people who go in for writing books generally write out all the things you don't say, and write them in the wrong order. We say 'wouldn't you'—don't we? Well, doesn't that stand for 'would not you'? And yet they print 'would you not'—always. It's ridiculous. I read a criticism the other day on a man who had written a book and who wrote 'will not you' for 'won't you' and 'would not you' for 'wouldn't you' because he wanted to be accurate. You've no idea what horrid things the critic said of him—he simply stood on his hind legs and pawed the air! It's so silly! Either we should speak as we write, or write as we speak. I don't mean in philosophy—and things—the steam-engine and the descent of man, and all that—but in writing out conversations. But then, of course, nobody will agree with me—so I talk as I please."
"There's a great deal of truth in what you say, Miss Trehearne," observed Brinsley, assuming a wise air. "Besides, I beg to differ from Miss Miner, on one point—I venture to say that I don't dislike your slang, if it's slang at all. It's expressive, of its kind."
"At last!" cried Fanny, with a laugh. "I get some praise—faint, but perceptible."