"The reason I don't like it," replied the boy, "is because it's not my name."
"Well, then," said Edward Snow, winking to the other boys, "won't you play with us, Master Horace?"
"I'll not go back to be laughed at," replied he, stoutly: "when I'm home I play with Hoosier boys, and they're politer than Yankees."
"'Twas only those big boys," said Johnny Bell; "now they've gone off. Come, let's play something."
"I should think you'd be willing for us to laugh," added honest little Willy Snow; "we can't help it, you talk so funny. We don't mean anything."
"Well," said Horace, quite restored to good humor, and speaking with some dignity, "you may laugh at me one kind of a way, but if you mean humph when you laugh, I won't stand it."
"Woon't stand it!" echoed Peter Grant; "ain't that Dutch?"
"Dutch?" replied Horace: "I'll show you what Dyche is! We have a Dyche teacher come in our school every day, and he stamps his foot and tears round! 'Sei ruhig,' he says: that means, 'hush your mouth and keep still.'"
"Is he a Jew, and does he stay in a synagogue?"
"No, he is a German Luteran, or a Dutch Deformed, or something that way."