“It is English, Tom, only the old gentleman razeed it a little. The third ship in the lee line of the Channel fleet was a eighty, called the Impregnable, but the old gentleman knows more about books than sea matters.”
“A marvellous misconception,” quoth the Dominie.
“There’s another,” cried Tom, laughing; “that must be a three-decker. Come, father, here’s the bottle, you must take another glass to wash that down.”
“Pray what was the meaning of that last long word, sir,” said Mary, taking the Dominie by the arm, “mis—something.”
“The word,” replied the Dominie, “is a compound from conception, borrowed from the Latin tongue implying conceiving; and the mis prefixed, which negatives or reverses the meaning; misconception, therefore, implies not to conceive. I can make you acquainted with many others of a similar tendency as mis-conception; videlicet, mis-apprehension, mis-understanding, mis-contriving mis-applying, mis—”
“Dear me, what a many misses,” cried Mary, “and do you know them all?”
“Indeed do I,” replied the Dominie, “and many, many more are treasured in my memory, quod nunc describere tongum est.”
“I’d no idea that the old gentleman was given to running after the girls in that way,” said old Tom to Stapleton.
“Human natur’,” replied the other.
“No more did I,” continued Mary; “I shall have nothing to say to him;” and she drew off her chair a few inches from that of the Dominie.