On O. Henry's "By Courier"

The story has three characters. Their names are not mentioned in the story, yes except of the tall young man, Dr. Arnold, by Mr. Ashburton's letter at the end; the other two are a lady and a boy who carries the man's suitcase. It is apparent from their language, the man and the lady (note "lady", not "woman" ) are of a similar social status, and in fact they were husband and wife. They are of a higher social status than the dirty porter boy--of course the man is a doctor.

The man and woman speak standard English, the language of the educated people--they use standard words, pronounce their words correctly and clearly; their sentences are grammatical and complete. The when the man gives boy his message to his estranged wife, he puts his message concretely and nuanced clearly so the messenger performs better. He knows how the boy speaks, and how the boy speaks volumes about his level of sensibility.

The boy is not educated, or at least he seems so. O. Henry imitates how he speaks--he replaces the dental consonant /ð/ (as in "the" and "other" ) with the alveolar /d/ (as in "do" ). "Yer" is both "you" and "your" for him. He says "wy" not "why", "t'ree" not "three", and uses a lot of contractions, vague phrases with no established meanings such as "bunch of hot air", and ones redolent of rustic sensibility (Johnny act), and so on.

At the same time he does not understand polysyllabic words with foreign affixes which the lady fondly uses (this indicates her status), such as, "juxtaposition".

The lady has a marital problem with the man--she once saw him with a woman in a very suspicious position, and no two people of the opposite sexes, in normal circumstances, ever put themselves in that kind of "tableau", "juxtaposition", "propinquity" except when they are engaged in something sexual. The lady still finds the memory sensitive and she speaks about it in an indirect or euphemistic way. She says:

Tell him I saw him and Miss Ashburton beneath the pink oleander. The tableau was pretty, but the pose and the juxtaposition was too eloquent and evident to require explanation.

The boy is not that sophisticated, and back to the man he says bluntly:

She says she caught yer dead to rights, huggin' a bunch o' calico in de hot-house. She side-stepped to pull some posies and yer was squeezin' de oder gal to beat the band. She says it looked cute, all right, all right, but it made her sick.