“Oh, my dear Bruno!” Sylvie exclaimed, with her hands over her ears. “You shouldn’t say ‘like’: you should say ‘what.’”
To which Bruno replied, doggedly, “I only says ‘what!’ when oo doosn’t speak loud, so as I can hear oo.”
“Where did he go to?” I asked, hoping to prevent an argument.
“He went more far than he’d never been before,” said Bruno.
“You should never say ‘more far,’” Sylvie corrected him: “you should say ‘farther.’”
“Then oo shouldn’t say ‘more broth,’ when we’re at dinner,” Bruno retorted: “oo should say ‘brother’!”
This time Sylvie evaded an argument by turning away, and beginning to roll up the Map. “Lessons are over!” she proclaimed in her sweetest tones.
“And has there been no crying over them?” I enquired. “Little boys always cry over their lessons, don’t they?”
“I never cries after twelve o’clock,” said Bruno: “’cause then it’s getting so near to dinner-time.”
“Sometimes, in the morning,” Sylvie said in a low voice; “when it’s Geography-day, and when he’s been disobe——”