But Gamboge!--and ripped out brazenly as it had been ?--No! A thousand times No! "Calvin," I said sternly, "aren't you ashamed to use such language--before me--and before your little sister ?" But here the little sister sank beneath her true woman's level by saying:-- "I know worse than that--Dut!" With a look of deadly coldness I sought to chill the pride that shone in her eyes as she achieved this new enormity.
"What is 'Dut' ?" I asked severely.
"Dut is--is _a_ Dut," she answered, somewhat abashed by my want of enthusiasm.
"A Dut is a baddix--a regular baddix," volunteered her brother.
Following a device familiar to philologists, he submitted concrete examples.
"Two of those Sullivans are Duts, and so's Mrs.Sullivan sometimes when she makes me split kindling and let the cat alone and--" "That will do," I said; "that's enough of such talk.

Come right into the house." "It ain't a baddix to say 'O Crackers!'" he observed tentatively, as he followed us.
"It may not be for some people," I answered.

"Nice people might say that once in a great while, on week-days, if they never said any other baddixes; but it's just as bad as any of them if you say all the others--especially that horrible one--" "Gamboge," he reminded me, brightly.
"Never mind saying it again!" Then came a new uproar from the wagon-box.

We perceived that the train had moved off again, manned now entirely by Sullivans.

They sought, I detected, to produce in our minds an impression that the thing was going better than ever.