Cream-pot love: Such as young fellows pretend to dairy-maids, to get
cream and other good things from them. (My brother Augustus brings a posy
every week to our cook and swears eternal devotion, but we all know it’s simply
cream-pit love.)
Plump currant: I am not plump
currant; I am out of sorts. (Overindulgence in Cook’s strawberry rhubarb curd
tarts might explain why he is not in plump currant this evening.)
Inexpressibles: Breeches. (Augustus swore he hadn’t had a single
tart, but suspicious red stains on his inexpressibles told a different tale.)
Fire shovel: He or she when young, was fed with a fire shovel; a
saying of persons with wide mouths. (Augustus’s long devotion to Cook might
explain why he appears to have been fed with a fire shovel, but Papa’s mouth is
similarly wide.)
Gallied: Hurried, vexed,
over-fatigued, perhaps like a galley slave. (Poor Cook tends to look more
than a little gallied when Augustus is home from school during holidays.)
May bees: May bees don’t fly
all the year long; an answer to anyone who prefaces a proposition with, It may
be. (Augustus hopes that maybe the strawberries will have a longer season
this year; in response, Cook was heard to mutter something about May bees.)
Hum durgeon: An imaginary illness. (Grandmama’s latest hum
durgeon involves an infirmity in her spleen; her liver is undoubtedly relieved
to have the week off.)
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