But Egghorn was now standing on his chair, and screaming, "Hup, hup, hup," with the most energetic violence.
"Oh, write it!" every one cried out to him.
They lifted Egghorn down from his chair, and he ran eagerly to his blackboard, upon which he wrote, "This is illiterate, this is unscholarly."
And again the convention cried out together, "We're not here to be scholarly, we're not here to be literate."
"Have yore way, gennlemen," said Jesse Willows, "I'll stand for anything."
"Well, I can't stand this any longer!" exclaimed Miss Appleby; and rising to her pretty feet, she continued, "Gentlemen, in your charitable solicitude for foreigners, you may be making our spelling easy for Lithuanians (though I doubt it), but you are making it quite impossible for the English."
Upon this a cold silence fell, and then, "And who are the English, madam?" asked Cottsill.
Miss Appleby gave her delightful brief laugh. "I'm sorry you don't know, sir," said she, "for I didn't come here to begin your education." And she sat down. There was an impulse in me to call her Gertrude, but I felt it to be premature.
A general murmuring confusion of consulting and dissenting voices now arose among the scholars.
"But what did you come here for?" I asked Miss Appleby.