“‘Hem!’ said Mac. ‘Well now, my good fellow—’
“Oh, Sir, if you had a seen the countryman when he heard them words, it would a been as good as a play. He eyed him all over, very scornful, as if he was taking his measure and weight for throwing him over the sled by his cape and his trousers, and then he put his hand in his waistcoat pocket, and took out a large black fig of coarse tobacco, and bit a piece out of it, as if it was an apple, and fell too a chewing of it, as if to vent his wrath on it, but said nothing.
“‘Well, my good fellow,’ said Mac, ‘when there are more than one, or they are in the plural number, what do you call them?’
“‘Mice,’ said the fellow.
“‘Mice!’ said M’Clure, ‘I must look into that; it’s very odd. Still, it can’t be mooses either.’
“He didn’t know what to make of it; he had been puzzled with mouse before, and found he was wrong, so he thought it was possible ‘mice’ might be the right word after all.
“‘Well,’ said he, ‘what do you call the female moose?’
“‘Why,’ sais the man, ‘I guess,’ a-talkin’ through his nose instead of his mouth—how I hate that Yankee way, don’t you, Sir? ‘Why,’ sais he, ‘I guess we call the he-moose M, and the other N, as the case may be.’
“‘Who gave them that name?’ said M’Clure.
“‘Why, I reckon,’ said the other, ‘their godfathers and godmothers at their baptism, but I can’t say, for I warn’t there.’