"I object to these constant, trivial interruptions," stated Cottsill.

"Yes, let us onward," urged the chairman.

"Play ball!" added Totts.

"Chew gum!" finished Cottsill.

"I'm through," Egghorn said, sitting down.

It was beyond my power to guide them. I also sat down. I also was through.

"Through?" exclaimed Totts. "That reminds me." And running to his blackboard he wrote:--

THRU

"What's that thing?" asked Willows.

"Hup, hup," began Egghorn.

"Through," replied Totts, raising his voice.

"_What_?" said Willows, raising his voice, too.

"Through, through!" answered the convention in a body.

And Miss Appleby, amid the general din, remarked, "That's the way a pig would spell if it got the chance."

"Thru, clu, blu, nu, hu," wrote Totts.

"Hu? Hu?" repeated Willows, vacantly; "what's hu?"

"Hup, hup, hup," vainly continued Egghorn, waving his arms.

"Hu's who," explained Cottsill, loudly.

"Who, who!" explained the whole convention to Willows.

"Booh, pooh!" said Willows. And running to the blackboard he added:

"Bu, pu, and stu, also glu."

But Egghorn was now standing on his chair, and screaming, "Hup, hup, hup," with the most energetic violence.

"Oh, write it!" every one cried out to him.

They lifted Egghorn down from his chair, and he ran eagerly to his blackboard, upon which he wrote, "This is illiterate, this is unscholarly."

And again the convention cried out together, "We're not here to be scholarly, we're not here to be literate."

"Have yore way, gennlemen," said Jesse Willows, "I'll stand for anything."

"Well, I can't stand this any longer!" exclaimed Miss Appleby; and rising to her pretty feet, she continued, "Gentlemen, in your charitable solicitude for foreigners, you may be making our spelling easy for Lithuanians (though I doubt it), but you are making it quite impossible for the English."

Upon this a cold silence fell, and then, "And who are the English, madam?" asked Cottsill.

Miss Appleby gave her delightful brief laugh. "I'm sorry you don't know, sir," said she, "for I didn't come here to begin your education." And she sat down. There was an impulse in me to call her Gertrude, but I felt it to be premature.

A general murmuring confusion of consulting and dissenting voices now arose among the scholars.

"But what did you come here for?" I asked Miss Appleby.

"Not to see unbroken dogs put their muddy paws all over the greatest language in the world," she retorted.

"Dear me, dear me," I returned, with soothing deprecation, for she was plainly very much incensed, "then what did you come for?"

"Oh, for reasons," she returned evasively.

Doubts that I could not define began suddenly to fill my mind, and I said to her, "Didn't you write about Shakespeare?"

"A college joke," she answered contemptuously. "I'm writing a poem now.

I shall call it, 'How we brought the Good Spelling from Ghent to Aix.'"

"Then you don't believe in the Higher Spelling?" I asked.

"No!" she declared, with defiance.

"Does Professor Willows?" I pursued.

"Hadn't you better ask him about that?" she replied.

I think my face must have turned the reddest that anger can paint faces; for now, at any rate, I had no doubts as to how I had been made game of in the private car. Yes, they had mocked me. The impudent young man had manufactured absurd spelling for my serious attention, and he and Miss Appleby had then made merry together over it, and over myself. But before I could frame a fitting rebuke to the frivolous though lovely young woman beside me, a distracting hubbub of voices was set up, and through this I heard Kibosh calling:--

"On your blackboards, gentlemen, on your blackboards."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Professor Dudelsacker.]

The convention gradually heard him, too, and scholar after scholar bounded from his chair, seized a piece of chalk, and began to write.

Only one was left, who stood at his place, pouring forth the most execrable sounds I have ever heard.

"Professor Dudelsacker has the floor," said Kibosh.

"Burrmeowskreeyiyiwurrburrwowwowmeow," went the professor.

"Turn that Central Pennsylvania Dutch quacker out!" shouted some one.

"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.