Page:The history of Mr. Polly.djvu/35

Rh in himself. His schoolmaster indeed had been both unsound and variable. New words had terror and fascination for him; he did not acquire them, he could not avoid them, and so he plunged into them. His only rule was not to be misled by the spelling. That was no guide anyhow. He avoided every recognised phrase in the language and mispronounced everything in order that he shouldn’t be suspected of ignorance, but whim.

“Sesquippledan,” he would say. “Sesquippledan verboojuice.”

“Eh?” said Platt.

“Eloquent Rapsodooce.”

“Where?” asked Platt.

“In the warehouse, O’ Man. All among the table-cloths and blankets. Carlyle. He’s reading aloud. Doing the High Froth. Spuming! Windmilling! Waw, waw! It’s a sight worth seeing. He’ll bark his blessed knuckles one of these days on the fixtures, O’ Man.”

He held an imaginary book in one hand and waved an eloquent gesture. “So too shall every Hero inasmuch as notwithstanding for evermore come back to Reality,” he parodied the enthusiastic Parsons, “so that in fashion and thereby, upon things and not under things articulariously He stands.”

“I should laugh if the Governor dropped on him,” said Platt. “He’d never hear him coming.”

“The O’ Man’s drunk with it—fair drunk,” said Polly. “I never did. It’s worse than when he got on to Raboloose.”