"I don't care," retorted the indignant follower; "you can't have a train without any passenger—it's silly. I don't care if I do say Gamboge. There! Gamboge it!"
I turned upon him. I had endured "terrapin-buzzards," hurled at the group by my woman child, perceiving need of relief for her pent-up passion. I had, moreover, for the same reason, permitted my namesake to roll under his tongue the formidable and satisfying expletive, "John B. Gough!" But I felt that the line must be drawn at Gamboge. Terrapin-buzzards was bad enough, though it was true that this might be used innocently, as in a moment of mild dismay, or as an exclamation of mere astonishment without sinister import. But Gamboge!—and ripped out brazenly as it had been?—No! A thousand times No!
"Calvin," I said sternly, "aren't you ashamed to use such language—before me—and before your little sister?"
But here the little sister sank beneath her true woman's level by saying:—
"I know worse than that—Dut!"
With a look of deadly coldness I sought to chill the pride that shone in her eyes as she achieved this new enormity.
"What is 'Dut'?" I asked severely.
"Dut is—is a Dut," she answered, somewhat abashed by my want of enthusiasm.
"A Dut is a baddix—a regular baddix," volunteered her brother. Following a device familiar to philologists, he submitted concrete examples.
"Two of those Sullivans are Duts, and so's Mrs. Sullivan sometimes when she makes me split kindling and let the cat alone and—"