"I've resigned already meowowwow," squealed Dudelsacker, in a fury; and he took his departure at once.
But this brought us no calm. Twenty pieces of chalk were rattling on the blackboards like a platoon of busy telegraphic instruments. Each scholar was making his own list for the new dictionary of English, and I read the lists of Totts, Maverick, and Cottsill, so far as they had written them. Jesse Willows was writing, too, with sweeping flourishes; but I had ceased to place faith in his integrity.
| Surracuse | Rud |
| Yurrup | But |
| Surrup | Cut |
| Mawrul | Grantha |
| Sawrul | Cyar |
| Kwawrul | Cyard |
| Awringe | Cyart |
| Amurrican | Gyarden |
| Tremenjus | Coat-house |
| Beverly Fahms |
| Anywheres Everywheres Nowheres Tremendious | } | Cottsill's list |
"Awringe," I murmured aloud, in ignorance of its meaning; but my own voice revealed to me that it was our chief Florida fruit, as pronounced by Lysander Totts, of Numa Pompilius, New York, discoverer of Cleopatra's true sex. The whole great West was rattling away on the boards behind me, but what I saw in front of me was enough to hold my attention; and my eyes were straying back and forth between awringe and grantha, when Totts, happening to glance up from his work, beheld the work of Maverick next him.
He stopped abruptly. "Rud?" he inquired of the professor from Fishball University, author of Pecan Nuts.
"Road," explained Maverick, writing out the old spelling. "Road, boat, coat."
"Hm," said Totts, with disapprobation.
"But what is grantha?" I whispered to Miss Appleby.