The Vocabulary Assignment

Note: the vocabulary items are in bold.

The girl stood before the old man, twisting her hair nervously around her fingers and wondering why he had insisted on this clandestine meeting. What was so urgent that it couldn't involve her friends? They were bound to wonder why she, usually as gregarious as any of them, had been so reticent today.

For a long moment the only sound breaking the ominous silence was the susuration of the wind in the leaves outside as he pored over a paper, seemingly oblivious to her presence. Finally she could bear it no longer. "Sir?"

"Speak when you're spoken to," the old man said, his eyes resting on her at last. "I knew you were there. I was merely trying to devise a suitable penance for you, on account of your being so late. Don't people inculcate the importance of punctuality on you youngsters anymore? If they don't, they're making an egregious error."

She swallowed. How the others would laugh if they could see their intrepid friend reduced to a quivering pile of nerves! She regretted ever agreeing to this meeting with the pugnacious man. "The path was tortuous, sir," she croaked, the mellifluous voice for which she was so well known abandoning her. "I expected it to run in a straight line."

"Well, aren't you a model of perspicacity," he said sarcastically. "Haven't you ever heard of a map?"

"A map?" she said blankly. "Oh... well, why do you live so far out of town anyway?"

"To get away from the cacophony of the city," the irascible man said petulantly. "But excuses will gain you no mitigation. Your dreadful reputation has even surpassed your father's. Miscreants, both of you. Must be congenital or something."

Though she generally considered herself to be of a phlegmatic nature, she found herself growing angry. "I wouldn't say that--" she began.

"I would," he cut it. "I don't care for euphemisms. Give me the truth without any cushioning, I say."

"What do you want, anyway?" she demanded.

He shrugged. "Money, power, the usual. I'm no altruist; I'm as selfish as anyone."

"No, I mean, what do you want from me?" She paused. "For that matter, who are you? Who am I? What am I doing here? And why are we using these ridiculously long words?"

"I have no idea," he said. "If we knew, then this would have to be a real story, with a real plot and real characters. As it is, we are only letters of the alphabet being manipulated to complete this silly vocabulary assignment."

"Oh," she said. "Does that mean I don't get in trouble for being late after all?"