ays when Litton had quarreled with Martha he had
fiercely reminded Teed that only a month remained before his final
examinations, and warned him that he would hold him strictly to account.
No classics, no diploma!

Teed had sulked and moped while Litton sulked and moped; but when Litton
was reconciled to Martha the sun seemed to come out on Teed's clouded
world, too. He took a sudden extra interest in his electrical studies
and obtained permission to work in the laboratory overtime. He obtained
permission even to visit the big city for certain apparatus. And he
wrote the despondent, distant Fannie Newman that there would "shortly
be something doing in the classics."

VI

One afternoon Professor Litton, having dismissed his class--in which he
was obliged to rebuke Teed more severely than usual--fell to remembering
his last communion with Martha, the things he had said--and heard! He
wondered, as a philologist, at the strange prevalence of the "oo" sound
in his love-making. It was plainly an onomatopoeic word representing
the soul's delight. Oo! was what Ah! is to the soul in exaltation and
Oh! to the soul in surprise. If the hyacinths babbled _Ai, Ai!_ the
roses must murmur Oo! Oo!

The more he thought it over, the more nonsense it became, as all words
turn to drivel on repetition; but chiefly he was amazed that even love
could have wrought this change in him. In his distress he happened to
think of Dean Swift. Had not that fierce satirist created a dialect of
his own for his everlastingly mysterious love affairs?

Eager for the comfort of fellowship in disgrace he hurried to the
library and sought out the works of the Dean of St. Patrick's. And in
the "Journal to Stella" he found what he sought--and more. Expressions
of the most appalling coarseness alternated with the most insipid
tendernesses.

The old dean had a code of abbreviations: M.D. for "My dear," Ppt. for
"Poppet," Pdfr. for "Poor dear foolish rogue," Oo or zoo or loo stood
for "you," Deelest for "Dearest," and Rettle for "Letter," and Dallars
for "Girl," Vely for "Very," and Hele and Lele for "Here and there."
Litton copied out for his own comfort and Martha's this passage.

Do you know what? When I am writing in my own language I make up my
mouth just as if I was speaking it: "Zoo must cly Lele and Hele,
and Hele aden. Must loo mimitate Pdfr., pay? Iss, and so la shall!
And so leles fol ee rettle. Dood mollow."

And Dean Swif