“Tut-tut-tut, boys,” interrupted the Patriarch, thumping the floor with his stick. “Don’t git quarrelin’ over sech a leetle thing ez the meanin’ o’ a word. Mebbe ye’s both right.”
The Tinsmith had hitherto occupied a nail keg near the stove, unnoticed. Now he began to rub his hands together gleefully and to chuckle. The Teacher was convinced that his own discomfiture was the cause of the other’s mirth.
“Well, what are you so tickled about?” he snapped.
“Aurory Borealis. Perry Muthersbaugh spelled down Jawhn Jimson on that very word. Yes, he done it on that very word. My, but that there was a bee, Perfessor!”
“Now ’fore you git grindin’ away, sence you’ve got on spellin’,” said the Chronic Loafer, “I want to tell a good un——”
“Let him tell us about Perry Muthersbaugh,” said the Teacher in decisive tones. The title “professor” had had a softening effect, and he repaid the compliment by supporting the Tinsmith’s claim to the floor.
Compelled to silence, the Chronic Loafer closed his eyes as though oblivious to all about him, but a hand stole to his ear and formed a trumpet there to aid his hearing.
“Some folks is nat’ral spellers jest ez others is nat’ral musicians,” began the Tinsmith. “Agin, it’s jest ez hard to make a good speller be edication ez it is to make a good bass-horn player, fer a felly that hain’t the inborn idee o’ how many letters is needed to make a word’ll never spell no better than the man that hain’t the nat’ral sense o’ how much wind’s needed to make a note, ’ll play the bass-horn.”
“I cannot wholly agree with you,” the Teacher interrupted. “Give a child first words of one syllable, then two; drill him in words ending in t-i-o-n until——”