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"There is overheadly," said Gradka, "something that I should like to understand, which is namely the lines,

In vain did St. Dunstan exclaim, 'Vade retro Smallbeerum! discede a layfratre Petro,'

which to me is incorrect. Or perhaps it is doggish-Latin, yes?"

Anne, who was laughing so much that she had hardly been able to communicate the words of St. Dunstan, said she thought it was meant to be funny: a kind of parody of the kind of Latin the monks spoke, she supposed.

"Aha! parody!" said Gradka. "Then do I understand perfectly. The author wishes to make a laughable imitation of the mon-kish Latin, and smallbeerum is the accusative of a jocular form of small beer. That is highly amusing. Please go on, Prodshkina Anna," for, as our readers have quite forgotten, Prodshk and Prodshka are the Mixo-Lydian names for Mr. and Mrs. (or possibly Count and Countess, for nobody knows or cares), and thus Prodshkina is probably equivalent to Mademoiselle; or so Mrs. Perry said, whether anyone was listening or not.