“You talk to her,” said Miss Jean behind the black-board where they had taken refuge again. “I declare I’ll take a fit if this goes on! Did you ever hear of such a creature?”
Miss Amelia almost cried. All her fixed ideas of children were shattered at a blow. Here was one who did not in the least degree fit in with the scheme of treatment in the doo-cot. But she went forward with a look of great severity.
“Of course, coming from America and all that, and never having been at school before, you don’t know,” she said, “but I must tell you that you are not behaving nicely—not like a nice little girl at all, Lennox. Nice little girls in school in this country listen, and never say anything unless they’re asked. They are respectful to their teachers, and never ask questions, and certainly never contradict them, and—”
“But, please, Miss Duff, I wasn’t contradicting,” explained Bud very soberly, “and when respect is called for, I’m there with the goods. You said honor was spelt with a ‘u,’ and I guess you just made a mistake, same as I might make myself, for there ain’t no ‘u’ in honor, at least in America.”
“I—I—I never made a mistake in all my life,” said Miss Amelia, gasping.
“Oh, Laura!” was all that Bud replied, but in such a tone, and with eyes so widely opened, it set half of the other pupils tittering.
“What do you mean by ‘Oh, Laura’?” asked Miss Jean. “Who is Laura?”
“You can search me,” replied Bud composedly. “Jim often said ‘Oh, Laura!’ when he got a start.”
“It’s not a nice thing to say,” said Miss Jean. “It’s not at all ladylike. It’s just a sort of profane language, and profane language is an ‘abomination unto the Lord.’”
“But it was so like Jim,” said Bud, giggling with recollection. “If it’s slang I’ll stop it,—at least I’ll try to stop it. I’m bound to be a well-off English undefied, you know; poppa—father fixed that.”