"Will you, now, take it all right if I call you by your Christian name? Us Mennonites daresent call folks Mr. and Mrs. because us we don't favor titles. What's your first name now?"
Mr. Fairchilds considered the question with the appearance of trying to remember. "You'd better call me Pestalozzi," he answered, with a look and tone of solemnity.
"Pesky Louzy!" Mrs. Waekernagel exclaimed. "Well, now think! That's a name where ain't familiar 'round here. Is it after some of your folks?"
"It was a name I think I bore in a previous incarnation as a teacher of youth," Fairchilds gravely replied.
Mrs. Waekernagel looked blank. "Tillie!" she appealed to her niece, who had shyly stepped half behind her, "do you know right what he means?"
Tillie dumbly shook her head.
"Pesky Louzy!" Mrs. Waekernagel experimented with the unfamiliar name. "Don't it, now, beat all! It'll take me awhile till I'm used to that a'ready. Mebbe I'll just call you Teacher; ain't?"
She looked at him inquiringly, expecting an answer. "Ain't!" she repeated in her vigorous, whole-souled way.
"Eh—ain't WHAT?" Fairchilds asked, puzzled.
"Och, I just mean, SAY NOT? Can't you mebbe talk English wery good? We had such a foreigners at this HOtel a'ready. We had oncet one, he was from Phil'delphy and he didn't know what we meant right when we sayed, 'The butter's all any more.' He'd ast like you, 'All what?' Yes, he was that dumm! Och, well," she added consolingly, "people can't help fur their dispositions, that way!"