"Who thought of having them, having them, having them?" thundered Cottsill.
"Gentlemen! Oh, Gentlemen!" wailed Kibosh.
"But consistency——" objected Maverick.
"You cut out consistency yourself," Cottsill reminded him. We despatched the past participles, and came also without much disturbance through catalog, demagog, and so forth (vogue and rogue made some trouble, and our fundamental principle of inconsistency had once more to be asserted), but when their blood was roused and the fire of simplification grew hot in them, and they adopted the following with cheers and noises of feet——
Receev, deceev, conceev, beleev,
weev, leev, greev, seez, pleez, teez—
I felt that we had really got near the weeding-out point, especially when Jesse Willows rose and added fleez. "Plural of dogbiters," he explained, and sat down quietly. At this Miss Appleby gave one brief, happy laugh, but at once resumed a singular tapping of her foot which I had begun to observe. We now thoroughly phoneticked many words: blud, for instance, and wunss (which is so much phoneticker than once!) and the days of the week: Munday, for instance, and Toozday. (I say Tewsday, myself, but I did not mention it to these profound American scholars.)
"My little daughter Zola B.," said Professor Maverick, "can always spell Wednesday."
"My nine children never can," said Totts.
"I withdraw the objection," said Maverick; and so it was Wensday.