“How's that?” inquired Uncle Bart.
“She beareth all things,” chuckled Jed.
“Aaron Boynton was, indeed, a man of most adhesive larnin',” agreed Timothy, who had the reputation of the largest and most unusual vocabulary in Edgewood. “Next to Jacob Cochrane I should say Aaron had more grandeloquence as an orator than any man we've ever had in these parts. It don't seem's if Ivory was goin' to take after his father that way. The little feller, now, is smart's a whip, an' could talk the tail off a brass monkey.”
“Yes, but Rodman ain't no kin to the Boyntons,” Abel reminded him. “He inhails from the other side o' the house.”
“That's so; well, Ivory does, for certain, an' takes after his mother, right enough, for she hain't spoken a dozen words in as many years, I guess. Ivory's got a sight o' book-knowledge, though, an' they do say he could talk Greek an' Latin both, if we had any of 'em in the community to converse with. I've never paid no intention to the dead languages, bein' so ocker-pied with other studies.”
“Why do they call 'em the dead languages, Tim?” asked Rish Bixby.
“Because all them that ever spoke 'em has perished off the face o' the land,” Timothy answered oracularly. “Dead an' gone they be, lock, stock, an' barrel; yet there was a time when Latins an' Crustaceans an' Hebrews an' Prooshians an' Australians an' Simesians was chatterin' away in their own tongues, an' so pow'ful that they was wallopin' the whole earth, you might say.”
“I bet yer they never tried to wallop these here United States,” interpolated Bill Dunham from the dark corner by the molasses hogs-head.
“Is Ivory in here?” The door opened and Rodman Boynton appeared on the threshold.
“No, sonny, Ivory ain't been in this evening,” replied Ezra Simms. “I hope there ain't nothin' the matter over to your house?”