A little later Georgia and her mother and Georgia's Mr. Tank came over to see them. During the summer Ernestine and Karl had been bestowing an approving interest on Georgia and Joseph Tank. Karl liked him; he said the fellow laughed as though there was no reason why he shouldn't. "He doesn't know everything," he told Ernestine, "but knows too much to seem to know what he doesn't."
Georgia had been disposed to be apologetic about Mr. Tank's paper bags, and Karl had retorted: "Great Scott, Georgia, is there anything the world needs much worse than paper bags?"
To-night Mr. Tank was all enthusiasm about a ball game he had attended that afternoon. He gave Karl the story of the game in the picturesque fashion of a man more eager to express what he wishes to say than to guard the purity of his English. "Oh, it was hot stuff, clear through," he concluded. "Bully good game!"
"It is sometimes almost impossible for me to tell what Georgia and Mr. Tank are talking about," sighed Mrs. McCormick. "They use so many words which are not in the dictionary. Now when people confine themselves to words which are in the dictionary, I am always able to ascertain their meaning."
"I'm long for saying a thing the way I can get it said," laughed Tank. "And I'm long for this new spelling. I never could get next to the old system, and now if they push this deal through, I can pat myself on the back and say, 'Good for you, old boy. You were just waiting for them to start in right.' It would be such a good one on the teachers who bumped my head against the wall because I didn't begin pneumonia with a p and every other minute run in an i or an e I had sense enough to know had no business there at all. Oh, I'm long for taking a fall out of the old spelling book."
"I do hope, Karl," admonished Mrs. McCormick, "that you will use your influence with scholars to see that the dictionary is let alone. It is certainly a very profane and presumptuous thing to think of changing a dictionary,"—turning to Ernestine for approval.
"When I was a child," observed Georgia, "I had a sublime and unquestioning faith in two things,—the Bible and the dictionary. The Bible was written by God and the dictionary by Noah Webster, and both were to remain intact to the end of time. But the University of Chicago is re-writing the Bible, and 'most any one who feels like it can take a hand at the dictionary, so what is there left for a poor girl to believe in?"
"Believe in the American dollar," said Tank cheerfully. "That's the solidest thing I've ever been up against."
Mrs. McCormick left them to call upon a friend who lived next door, Karl and Mr. Tank turned to frenzied finance, and Georgia and Ernestine wandered away by themselves—Ernestine surmised that Georgia wanted to talk to her.
"How goes it at The Mail?" she asked.