"Don"t pay any attention to him, my dear," said the School-Master to the landlady, whose ire was so very much aroused that she was about to make known her sentiments on certain subjects.
"No, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, "don"t pay any attention to me, I beg of you. Anything that could add to the jealousy of Mr. Pedagog would redound to the discomfort of all of us. Besides, I really do not object to the liver. I need not eat it. And as for staying my appet.i.te, I always stop on my way down-town after breakfast for a bite or two anyhow."
There was silence for a moment.
"I wonder why it is," began the Idiot, after tasting his coffee--"I wonder why it is Friday is fish-day all over the world, anyhow? Do you happen to be learned enough in piscatorial science to enlighten me on that point, Doctor?"
"No," returned the physician, gruffly. "I"ve never looked into the matter."
"I guess it"s because Friday is an unlucky day," said the Idiot. "Just think of all the unlucky things that may happen before and after eating fish, as well as during the process. In the first place, before eating, you go off and fish all day, and have no luck--don"t catch a thing. You fall in the water perhaps, and lose your watch, or your fish-hook catches in your coat-tails, with the result that you come near casting yourself instead of the fly into the brook or the pond, as the case may be. Perhaps the hook doesn"t stop with the coat-tails, but goes on in, and catches you. That"s awfully unlucky, especially when the hook is made of unusually barby barbed wire.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "YOU FISH ALL DAY, AND HAVE NO LUCK"]
"Then, again, you may go fishing on somebody else"s preserves, and get arrested, and sent to jail overnight, and hauled up the next morning, and have to pay ten dollars fine for poaching. Think of Mr. Pedagog being fined ten dollars for poaching! Awfully unfortunate!"
"Kindly leave me out of your calculations," returned Mr. Pedagog, with a flush of indignation.
"Certainly, if you wish it," said the Idiot. "We"ll hand Mr. Brief over to the police, and let _him_ be fined for poaching on somebody else"s preserves--although that"s sort of impossible, too, because Mrs. Pedagog never lets us see preserves of any kind."
"We had brandied peaches last Sunday night," said the landlady, indignantly.
"Oh yes, so we did," returned the Idiot. "That must have been what the Bibliomaniac had taken," he added, turning to the genial gentleman who occasionally imbibed. "You know, we thought he"d been--ah--he"d been absorbing."
"To what do you refer?" asked the Bibliomaniac, curtly.
"To the brandied peaches," returned the Idiot. "Do not press me further, please, because we like you, old fellow, and I don"t believe anybody noticed it but ourselves."
"Noticed what? I want to know what you noticed and when you noticed it,"
said the Bibliomaniac, savagely. "I don"t want any nonsense, either. I just want a plain statement of facts. What did you notice?"
"Well, if you must have it," said the Idiot, slowly, "my friend who imbibes and I were rather pained on Sunday night to observe that you--that you had evidently taken something rather stronger than cold water, tea, or Mr. Pedagog"s opinions."
"It"s a libel, sir!--a gross libel!" retorted the Bibliomaniac. "How did I show it? That"s what I want to know. How--did--I--show--it? Speak up quick, and loud too. How did I show it?"
"Well, you went up-stairs after tea."
"Yes, sir, I did."
"And my friend who imbibes and I were left down in the front hall, and while we were talking there you put your head over the banisters and asked, "Who"s that down there?" Remember that?"
"Yes, sir, I do. And you replied, "Mr. Auburnose and myself.""
"Yes. And then you asked, "Who are the other two?""
"Well, I did. What of it?"
"Mr. Auburnose and I were there alone. That"s what of it. Now I put a charitable construction on the matter and say it was the peaches, when you fly off the handle like one of Mrs. Pedagog"s coffee-cups."
"Sir!" roared the Bibliomaniac, jumping from his chair. "You are the greatest idiot I know."
"Sir!" returned the Idiot, "you flatter me."
But the Bibliomaniac was not there to hear. He had rushed from the room, and during the deep silence that ensued he could be heard throwing things about in the chamber overhead, and in a very few moments the banging of the front door and scurrying down the brown-stone steps showed that he had gone out of doors to cool off.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HE COULD BE HEARD THROWING THINGS ABOUT]
"It is too bad," said the Idiot, after a while, "that he has such a quick temper. It doesn"t do a bit of good to get mad that way. He"ll be uncomfortable all day long, and over what? Just because I attempted to say a good word for him, and announce the restoration of my confidence in his temperance qualities, he cuts up a high-jinks that makes everybody uncomfortable.
"But to resume about this fish business," continued the Idiot. "Fish--"
"Oh, fish be hanged!" said the Doctor, impatiently. "We"ve had enough of fish."
"Very well," returned the idiot; "as you wish. Hanging isn"t the best treatment for fish, but we"ll let that go. I never cared for the finny tribe myself, and if Mrs. Pedagog can be induced to do it, I for one am in favor of keeping shad, shark, and shrimps out of the house altogether."
VI
The Idiot was unusually thoughtful--a fact which made the School-Master and the Bibliomaniac unusually nervous. Their stock criticism of him was that he was thoughtless; and yet when he so far forgot his natural propensities as to meditate, they did not like it. It made them uneasy.
They had a haunting fear that he was conspiring with himself against them, and no man, not even a callous school-master or a confirmed bibliomaniac, enjoys feeling that he is the object of a conspiracy. The thing to do, then, upon this occasion, seemed obviously to interrupt his train of thought--to put obstructions upon his mental track, as it were, and ditch the express, which they feared was getting up steam at that moment to run them down.
"You don"t seem quite yourself this morning, sir," said the Bibliomaniac.
"Don"t I?" queried the Idiot. "And whom do I seem to be?"
"I mean that you seem to have something on your mind that worries you,"
said the Bibliomaniac.
"No, I haven"t anything on my mind," returned the Idiot. "I was thinking about you and Mr. Pedagog--which implies a thought not likely to use up much of my gray matter."
"Do you think your head holds any gray matter?" put in the Doctor.
"Rather verdant, I should say," said Mr. Pedagog.
"Green, gray, or pink," said the Idiot, "choose your color. It does not affect the fact that I was thinking about the Bibliomaniac and Mr.
Pedagog. I have a great scheme in hand, which only requires capital and the a.s.sistance of those two gentlemen to launch it on the sea of prosperity. If any of you gentlemen want to get rich and die in comfort as the owner of your homes, now is your chance."
"In what particular line of business is your scheme?" asked Mr.
Whitechoker. He had often felt that he would like to die in comfort, and to own a little house, even if it had a large mortgage on it.
"Journalism," said the Idiot. "There is a pile of money to be made out of journalism, particularly if you happen to strike a new idea. Ideas count."
"How far up do your ideas count--up to five?" questioned Mr. Pedagog, with a tinge of sarcasm in his tone.
"I don"t know about that," returned the Idiot. "The idea I have hold of now, however, will count up into the millions if it can only be set going, and before each one of those millions will stand a big capital S with two black lines drawn vertically through it--in other words, my idea holds dollars, but to get the crop you"ve got to sow the seed. Plant a thousand dollars in my idea, and next year you"ll reap two thousand.
Plant that, and next year you"ll have four thousand, and so on. At that rate millions come easy."