“I found that Maha knows nothing at all about our Saviour,” observed Io, “and Christians would assuredly have spoken of Him.”
Thud was not easily put down. “Then the Karens got their old stories from Jews,” he said authoritatively. “Jews are always wandering about, and turning up in every country under the sun.”
“Permit me again to correct you,” said the chaplain. “I happen to have made some researches amongst Karen traditions, and I find that they do not contain the slightest allusion to either Abraham or Moses. This shows that the ancestor whose accounts they rehearse must have lived at a yet more remote period. No son of Abraham would have omitted all mention of the father of the faithful, or of the great lawgiver Moses. The traditions cannot have come from the Jews.”
Thud was not yet beaten from his ground. “The traditions came from Jews who were not descended from Abraham,” he boldly asserted.
The clergyman and Oscar exchanged glances; Io smiled; Dr. Pinfold burst into a roar of laughter. “You’re a rare scholar, you are,” he exclaimed to Thud.
“I’m glad that you’ve found that out at last,” said Thud with perfect gravity, as if he had received a well-merited compliment. This misapprehension of the doctor’s playful satire made Pinfold throw himself back in his chair with a louder explosion of mirth than the first.
“Thucydides Thorn, if I die of apoplexy from a fit of laughing, my death will lie at your door!” cried the doctor as soon as he had recovered some amount of gravity. He pushed back his chair and rose from the table. “Excuse me, Io. I must be off to a patient; I’ve a leg to cut off while the daylight lasts.—Mr. Coldstream, look after that sage brother-in-law of yours; if you don’t get him into regular harness quickly, he’ll die of theories on the brain.” As Dr. Pinfold walked along the veranda he was heard laughing to himself still, though the words which he muttered did not reach their subject—“O Thucydides Thorn, thou art indeed an incomparable owl!”
“Dr. Pinfold gives sound advice, Thud,” said Oscar; “it is high time that you should be harnessed to regular work. I am afraid that you have not even begun to study the language.”
“Oh! no need to study it; I’ll drink it in,” replied Thud, with sublime indifference to anything like reproof. “I’ve a theory that language floats about in the air in invisible globules, like cholera or small-pox. We don’t set babies to learn grammar or idioms; they catch them exactly as they catch measles.”
“It is a pity that Dr. Pinfold is not here to benefit by your medical theory,” said Io playfully.