Caleb's eyes expressed solicitude as they turned toward Grace, and they indicated great sense of relief when Grace clapped her hands and exclaimed:—
"That is it!"
"Well," said Caleb, "it does me good to know that the change is big enough to see, for it's taken a powerful lot o' work. I used to be at the head of the grammar class when I was a boy at school, but 'Evil communications corrupt good manners,' as the Bible says, an' I've been hearin' the language twisted ev'ry which way ever since I left school. I never noticed that anythin' was wrong till I got into some long talks with Mary, an' even then I didn't suppose that 'twas my manner o' speech that once in a while made her twitch as if a skeeter had suddenly made himself too familiar. One evenin'—I didn't know till afterwards that she'd had an extra hard day at the store, an' had brought a nervous headache home with her—she gave an awful twitch while I was talkin', an' then she whispered 'Them!' to herself, an' looked as disapprovin' as a minister at a street-fight. Then all of a sudden my bad grammar came before my eyes, as awful as conviction to a sinner. But I was tryin' to set my best foot forward, so I went on:—
"'I said "them" for "those" just now, perhaps you noticed?'
"'I believe I did,' said she.
"'Well,' said I, 'that word was pounded into me so hard at school one day that I've never been able to get rid of it. You see, I was the teacher's favorite, after a fashion, because it was known that I was expectin' to study for the ministry, so the teacher kept remindin' me that grammar was made to practise as well as recite, an' 'twasn't of any use to use the language correctly in the class if I was goin' to smash it an' trample on the pieces on the playground. I took the warnin' an' one day, when four of us boys were havin' a game of long-taw at recess I said somethin' about "those" marbles. One of the boys jumped as if he had been shot, and when he came down he rolled back his lips an' said "Those!" kind o' contemptuous-like, an' another snickered "Those!" an' the other growled "Those!" an' then the first one said, "Fellers, Preachy's puttin' on airs; let's knock 'em out of him," an' then all of 'em jumped on me an' pounded me until the bell rang us in from recess, an' from that time to this I've stuck to "them" like a penitent to the precious promises.'
"Well, she had a laugh over that; she said afterward that it cured her headache, but after quietin' down she said, lookin' out o' the side o' her face kind o' teasin'-like, an' also mighty bewitchin':—
"'What did the boys do to make you say "ain't" for "haven't"?'
"Then I was stuck, an' laughed at myself as the best way of turnin' it off, but for the rest of the evenin' I was chasin' the old grammar back through about twenty years of army talk an' store talk, an' 'twas harder than a dog nosin' a rabbit through a lot full o' blackberry patches, an' I reckon I lost the scent a good many times. I stayed in the city that night, so as to get into a bookstore an' a grammar book early next mornin', an' I dived into that book ev'ry chance I got, in the hoss-cars an' ev'rywhere else, an' when I was on the ocean an' not sayin' my prayers, nor readin' the Bible, I was doin' only three things, an' generally doin' all of 'em at once,—thinkin' of Mary, keepin' my head an' shoulders up as my old soldier-chum Jim had made me promise to do, an' puttin' Claybanks English into decent grammatical shape. I tried to stop droppin' my 'g's' too, for she seemed to think they deserved a fightin' chance o' life, even if they did come in only on the tail-ends of words; I'd have got along fairly well at it, if it hadn't been for the English people, but some of them seem to hate a 'g' at the end of a word as bad as if it was an 'h' at the beginnin', which is sayin' a good deal. But see here, isn't it most church time? I s'pose the sooner I take up my cross, the less I'll dread it."