“O Thud, Thud, you are joking!” cried Io.
“I am not joking at all; I scorn jokes!” said Thucydides Thorn. “You women understand nothing about development. Man can alter the shapes of living organizations to an indefinite extent. Look at China: did nature form the tiny feet of its women? See how English ladies can gradually, by tight-lacing, alter their figures till they resemble wasps. I tell you, science can work unimagined wonders. Man saw that elephants would be far more useful creatures if possessing something like a hand, something that could hold and pull—not a mere snout that could only grub in the ground. Gradually, slowly no doubt, the transformation was effected; I will make it my business to find out in what way.”
“How is your theory to be reconciled with the fact that the wild elephant possesses a proboscis?” asked Mr. Lawrence with a smile.
“I deny the fact,” said Thud. “I believe the elephant to be only a large species of a highly-developed pig, and that the wild one has only a good long snout.”
“You can easily test your theory,” observed the chaplain, “for one of the elephants of the rajah is quite untamed; it was caught in the jungle only last week.”
“I’ll be off and see it at once,” said Thud, moving more quickly than he usually did, for he desired no repetition of the conversation regarding putting him into harness.
“I shall send the boy to the warehouse to-morrowmorning,” said Oscar Coldstream. “I will place him under my clerk Smith, appoint Thud a certain task to perform before dinner-time, and let him understand that he is not expected back here until the task is finished.”
“I rather pity Smith,” thought the chaplain; “it is no easy task to bring such a born philosopher to submit to being harnessed.”