Vocabulary Lesson

Tonight while I was reading to Julia from L.M. Montgomery's "Anne of Avonlea," she had a vocabulary question.

ME: (reading) "Anne dropped the reins and stood up with a tightening of the lips that boded no good to the predatory quadruped.  Not a word said she, but she climbed nimbly down over the wheels, and whisked across the fence before Diana understood what had happened.  'Anne, come back,' shrieked the latter, as soon as she found her voice."
JULIA: What's "the LATTER" mean?
ME: "Latter" means...so, like, if I said to Daddy, "Julia and Madeleine both had dinner, and the latter had dessert," it would mean that the name I mentioned last is the person who had dessert.  So it would mean that Madeleine had dessert.  If I said "the former"-
JULIA: Wait, but why would Madeleine have dessert and not me??
ME: Well...I was just trying to give an example that you would understand.  "The latter" means the most recently mentioned person or thing in a set.  It-
JULIA: But it makes me think about climbing a ladder.
ME: (showing her the paragraph in the book) Well, it's spelled differently.
JULIA: Ohhh!  I was picturing it with "Ds!" 
ME: Anyway, so the latter means-
JULIA: Wait, Mommy, so does that mean that "BLADDER" is spelled with "T's" too??
ME: No.  It's spelled with "D's".  But a word that is spelled like this one is the word "matter."  Like in "what's the matter."
JULIA: (delightedly) Or like "Potter!"

We never did get to delve into what "latter" means.  But that's okay, because we got to talk about all kinds of other cool stuff like bladders and why Madeleine might hypothetically get dessert but Julia wouldn't.  It's all good!