“I’m going to change all that. People think I’m naughty when I speak like a domestic. And I really don’t mean anything wrong.”
“We all use too much slang,” said the tolerant-minded vicar. “It is sheer indolence. We refuse to bother our brains for the right word.”
CHAPTER XVII
TWO MOORLAND EPISODES
Though all hands were needed on the farm in strenuous endeavor to repair the storm’s havoc, Dr. MacGregor forbade Martin to work when he examined the reopened cut. Thus, the boy was free to guide Fritz, the chauffeur, on the morning the man came to look at Bolland’s herd.
Fritz Bauer—that was the name he gave—had improved his English pronunciation marvelously within a fortnight. He no longer confused “d’s” and “t’s.” He had conquered the sibilant sound of the “s.” He was even wrestling with the elusive “th,” substituting “d” for “z.”
“I learnt from a book,” he explained, when Martin complimented him on his mastery of English. “Dat is goot—no, good—but one trains de ear only in de country where de people spik—speak—de language all de time.”
The sharp-witted boy soon came to the conclusion that his German friend was more interested in the money value of the cattle as pedigreed stock than in the “points”—such as weight, color, bone, level back, and milking qualities—which commended them to the experienced eye. Bauer asked where he could obtain a show catalogue, and jotted down the printer’s address. When they happened on a team of Cleveland bays, however, Fritz was thoroughly at home, and gratified his hearer by displaying a horseman’s knowledge of a truly superb animal.