"Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand."
If the anti-Amélites had needed any increase of enthusiasm they got it now. They had Scripture on their side. If it were proper for the men of Gilead, where the well-known balm came from, to slay forty-two thousand people for a mispronunciation, surely the Carthaginians had authority to stand by their "alturrs" and their "fi-urs" and protect them from those who called them "altahs" and "fiahs."
No country except ours could foster such a feud. No language except the chaos we fumble with could make it possible. By and by the war wore out of its own violence. People ceased to care how a thing was said, and began to take interest again in what was said. Those who had mimicked Amélie had grown into the habit of mimicry until they half forgot their scorn. The old-time flatness and burr began to soften from attrition, to be modified because they were conspicuous. You would have heard Arthur subduing his twang and unburring the "r." If you had asked him he would have told you his name was either "Arthuh" or "Ahthur."
Amélie and her little bodyguard, on the other hand, grew so nervous of the sacred emblems that they avoided their use. When they came to a word containing an "a" or a final "r" they hesitated or sidestepped and let it pass. Amélie fell into the habit of saying "couldn't" for "cahn't," and "A. M." for "mawning."
People began to smile when they met her, and she smiled back. Slowly everybody that had "not been speaking" began speaking, bowing, chatting. Now, when one of the disputed words drifted into the talk, each tried to concede a little to the other's belief, as soldiers of the blue and the gray trod delicately on one another's toes after peace was decreed. Everybody was now half and half, or, as Tudie vividly spoke it, "haff and hahf." You would hear the same person say "haff-pahst ten," "hahf-passt eleven," and "hahf-pahst twelve."
Carthage became as confused in its language as Alsace-Lorraine.
V
All through this tremendous feud Orson Carver had been faithful to Amélie. Whether he had given Tudie the sack or she him was never decided. But she was loyal to her dialect. He ceased to call; Tudie ceased to invite him. They smiled coldly and still more coldly, and then she ceased to see him when they met. He was simply transparent.
Orson was Amélie's first cavalier in Carthage. He found her mightily attractive. She was brisk of wit and she adored his Boston and his ways. She was sufficiently languorous and meek in the moonlight, too—an excellent hammock-half.
But when the other Outlanders had begun to gather to her standard it crowded the porch uncomfortably.