When he was not thus oscillating on the landscape, he was sweating in intellectual indecision in the parlour: trying to write a little note to Jinny to inform her that she was to come to Frog Farm no more, inasmuch as he intended to go into Chipstone himself once or twice a fortnight, and could easily bring home whatever was necessary. He had thought that when he had found a feather dropped by a green goose, cut his quill, concocted an ink out of soot and water, and discovered a piece of white paper wrapped round his bank-notes, that his difficulties were over. But the worst now remained, for he could not satisfy himself as to the phraseology of this note, being, as he had truly pleaded, no great shakes at letter-writing. Such glibness as he could muster in conversation was paralysed in fact by a pen. There was not even one of those word-books he had seen scholarly people use to ensure the spelling, and one must not unnecessarily afford material to a minx who—having obviously to do with bills and accounts—might conceivably be literate. He had a vague remembrance of her reading texts quite easily at the Sunday-school, young as she was. Even if she could spell no better than he, she might possess one of these spelling-protectors. The only book at Frog Farm being his mother’s Bible, he tried to secure accuracy by limiting himself to its words. But its vocabulary seemed strangely lacking. He had decided, for example, to begin with “Maddam.” One could not call such a stranger as the new Jinny “_Dear_ Miss,” he thought, and “Miss” alone sounded thin and abrupt. No, “Maddam” was the mouth-filling resonance necessary: it struck a note of massive dignity. But did it really have two “d’s”? And to his amazement and anguish neither “Maddam” nor “Madam” was to be discovered from Genesis to Revelation. Adam, the nearest analogue, who came in his reference volume with welcome promptitude, even precipitateness, had, he found, only one “d,” but was he a sure guide to the orthography of the creature formed out of his spare rib? This and the many other curious and amazing passages that beguiled him on his route—presented thus to a fresh and world-experienced eye—ran away with so much time that Martha would be summoning him to the next of his many meals before he had even dipped his quill into the soot. “Mr. William Flynt presents his complements” was another promising start—he had got a debt-demanding letter once at a boarding-house with this austerely courteous overture—but alas!—marvel on marvel—there did not appear to be a single “complement,” whether in the Old Testament or the New. Not a very courteous people, the Jews, he thought, under either dispensation. This happy-go-lucky hunt for words—an exciting steeplechase in which one skipped over spacious histories and major prophets with the chance of tumbling on the very word—began to be an absorbing substitute for ratting.