"DIDN'T KNOW ENOUGH TO CHOOSE HIS OWN FACE"
"Ill-luck is sometimes a factor of success," said Mr. Pedagog. "You are a success as an Idiot, which appears to me to be extremely unfortunate."
"I don't know about that," said the Idiot. "I adapt myself to my company, and of course—"
"Then you are a school-master among school-masters, a lawyer among lawyers, and so forth?" queried the Bibliomaniac.
"What are you when your company is made up of widely diverse characters?" asked Mr. Brief before the Idiot had a chance to reply to the Bibliomaniac's question.
"I try to be a widely diverse character myself."
"And, trying to sit on many stools, fall and become just an Idiot," said Mr. Pedagog.
"That's according to the way you look at it. I put my company to the test in the crucible of my mind. I analyze the characters of all about me, and whatever quality predominates in the precipitate, that I become. Thus in the presence of my employer and his office-boy I become a mixture of both—something of the employer, something of an office-boy. I run errands for my employer, and boss the office-boy. With you gentlemen I go through the same process. The Bibliomaniac, the School-Master, Mr. Brief, and the rest of you have been cast into the crucible, and I have tried to approximate the result."
"And are an Idiot," said the School-Master.
"It is your own name for me, gentlemen," returned the Idiot. "I presume you have recognized your composite self, and have chosen the title accordingly."
"You were a little hard on me this morning, weren't you?" asked the genial old gentleman who occasionally imbibed, that evening, when he and the Idiot were discussing the morning's chat. "I didn't like to say anything about it, but I don't think you ought to have thrown me into the crucible with the rest."
"I wish you had spoken," said the Idiot, warmly. "It would have given me a chance to say that the grain of sense that once or twice a year leavens the lump of my idiocy is directly due to the ingredient furnished by yourself. Here's to you, old man. If you and I lived alone together, what a wise man I should be!"
And then the genial old gentleman went to the cupboard and got out a bottle of port-wine that he had been preserving in cobwebs for ten years. This he opened, and as he did so he said, "I've been keeping this for years, my boy. It was dedicated in my youth to the thirst of the first man who truly appreciated me. Take it all."
"I'll divide with you," returned the Idiot, with a smile. "For really, old fellow, I think you—ah—I think you appreciate yourself as much as I do."
XII
"I wonder what it costs to run a flat?" said the Idiot, stirring his coffee with the salt-spoon—a proceeding which seemed to indicate that he was thinking of something else.
"Don't you keep an expense account?" asked the Bibliomaniac, slyly.
"Hee-hee!" laughed Mrs. Pedagog.
"First-rate joke," said the Idiot, with a smile. "But really, now, I should like to know for how little an apartment could be run. I am interested."
Mrs. Pedagog stopped laughing at once. The Idiot's words were ominous. She did not always like his views, but she did like his money, and she was not at all anxious to lose him as a boarder.
"It's very expensive," she said, firmly. "I shouldn't ever advise any one to undertake living in a flat. Rents are high. Butcher bills are enormous, because the butchers have to pay commissions, not only to the cook, so that she'll use twice as much lard as she can, and give away three or four times as much to the poor as she ought, but janitors have to be seen to, and elevator-boys, and all that. Groceries come high for the same reason. Oh, no! Flat life isn't the life for anybody, I say. Give me a good, first-class boarding-house. Am I not right, John?"
