"Mr. Geer, our Ivy will be seventeen, come fall."

"Possible?" replied Mr. Geer. "Who'd 'a' thunk it?"

Mr. Geer, as you may infer, was eminently a free-thinker, or rather, a
free-actor, in respect of irregular verbs. In fact, he tyrannized over
all parts of speech: wrested nouns and verbs from their original shape,
till you could hardly recognize their distorted faces; and committed
that next worst sin to murdering one's mother, namely,--murdering one's
mother-tongue, with an _abandon_ that was absolutely fascinating. Having
delivered his opinion thus sententiously, he at once subsided, closed
his placid eyes, and retired into his inner world of--thought, perhaps.

"_Mr. Geer!_"

This time he fairly jumped from his seat, and cast about him scared,
blinking eyes.

"Mr. Geer, how can you sleep away your precious time so?"

"Sleep? I--I--am sure, I was never wider awake in my life."

"Well, then, tell me what I said."

"Said? Eh,--eh,--something about Ivy, wasn't it?"

And Mr. Geer nervously twitched up the skirts of his coat, and replaced
his awry cushion, and began to think that perhaps, after all, he had
been asleep. But Mrs. Geer was too much interested in the subject of her
own cogitations to pursue her victory farther; so she answered,--