"To teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can be
understood," said Mrs. Garth, with severe precision. "Should you like
to speak as old Job does?"
"Yes," said Ben, stoutly; "it's funnier. He says, 'Yo goo'--that's
just as good as 'You go.'"
"But he says, 'A ship's in the garden,' instead of 'a sheep,'" said
Letty, with an air of superiority. "You might think he meant a ship
off the sea."
"No, you mightn't, if you weren't silly," said Ben. "How could a ship
off the sea come there?"
"These things belong only to pronunciation, which is the least part of
grammar," said Mrs. Garth. "That apple-peel is to be eaten by the
pigs, Ben; if you eat it, I must give them your piece of pasty. Job
has only to speak about very plain things. How do you think you would
write or speak about anything more difficult, if you knew no more of
grammar than he does? You would use wrong words, and put words in the
wrong places, and instead of making people understand you, they would
turn away from you as a tiresome person. What would you do then?"
"I shouldn't care, I should leave off," said Ben, with a sense that
this was an agreeable issue where grammar was concerned.
"I see you are getting tired and stupid, Ben," said Mrs. Garth,
accustomed to these obstructive arguments from her male offspring.
Having finished her pies, she moved towards the clothes-horse, and
said, "Come here and tell me the story I told you on Wednesday, about
Cincinnatus."
"I know! he was a farmer," said Ben.
"Now, Ben, he was a Roman--let _me_ tell," said Letty, using her elbow
contentiously.
"You silly thing, he was a Roman farmer, and he was ploughing."
"Yes, but before that--that didn't come first--people wanted him," said
Letty.
"Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first," insisted Ben.
"He was a wise man, like my father, and that made the people want his
advice. And he was a brave man, and could fight. And so could my
father--couldn't he, mother?"
"Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us,"
said Letty, frowning. "Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak."
"Letty, I am ashamed of you," said her mother, wringing out the caps
from the tub. "When your brother began, you ought to have waited to
see if he could not tell the story. How rude you look, pushing and
frowning, as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows! Cincinnatus, I
am sure, would have been sorry to see his daughter behave so." (Mrs.
Garth delivered this awful sentence with much majesty of enunciation,
and Letty felt that between repressed volubility and general disesteem,
that of the Romans inclusive, life was already a painful affair.) "Now,
Ben."