Judge Peters, tall and spare, in glossy frock coat and tall hat, met Kitty at the station. Miss Almeria Bygood was there, too, and Mr. Mallow. It was quite a getherin', the latter said: quite a getherin'. Gen'lly, he despised to see folks conjugating round the deepo, but this was an occasion, you see.
Mr. Very Jordano, notebook in hand, keeping a sharp lookout for the train, agreed with him.
"I expect Miss Kitty will be a distang young lady!" he said. "Traveled the world around; the world around. A select gathering is surely appropriate-tate-tate!"
It must not be supposed that Cyrus was a place of individual dialects. Most of us spoke ordinary English or good, strong, racy Yankee; it was only these two gentlemen who were peculiar in their speech. Mr. Jordano had formerly had an impediment; was, in fact, a confirmed stutterer, till he came to man's estate. The story went that one day, wishing to go to Tupham, he found himself wholly unable to ask for a ticket. He stood before the friendly station master, gasping, scarlet, but uttering no sound.
"Come, Very!" said Mr. Tosh. "Put a name to it! Where do you want to go? Train's due!"
"T-T-T-" stammered Mr. Very, "T-T-T-Damn it! I'll walk to Tupham!"
After this experience, he set himself, carefully and methodically, to remedy the defect: labored, suffered, finally conquered. I know not what his method was: I only know that he was apt to repeat the final syllable of a word, sometimes with singular effect. When he said, "Business is looking up-pup-pup," or "I fear I must be going now-wow-wow!" strangers were surprised. To us, it was as much a part of Mr. Jordano as his foreign idioms; foreign idiocies, Mrs. Sharpe called them. These were simply an assertion of his Italian descent. Nothing vexed him so much as to be addressed as "Jordan," a thing that happened now and then. "Names ending in O," he would say, "are invariably of Latin origin, Latin origin-gin-gin!"
He set great store by the letter "O," and seemed to think that it could not fail to impart a Latin tinge to whatever word it adorned. His favorite exclamation, "Nimporto!" (pronounced as spelled) was an example of his method, if it could be called a method. He knew little of French vowel sounds, nothing of accents; i was English i to him, long or short as might be, except when it was mysteriously a. Distingué was "distang," and so on. It is unlikely that he was acquainted with Mrs. Plornish, as he thought Dickens unrefined, and never read him; but his epithets sometimes rivaled those of that immortal lady.
Here is the train, and here is—a fine lady? a flounced and furbelowed Frenchwoman, as Mrs. Sharpe predicted? No! just Kitty! our own Kitty, rather pale, rather larger-eyed than usual (which was unreasonable!) sweet and simple in her dark gray dress.
"Very distang!" murmured Mr. Jordano, making a series of little bows over his note-book. "Oh, very distang, indeed!"