“This is a worthy inquiry, O brother. It may be your mind is at last becoming capable of thought? But how shall I answer. Is there a difference? Should I not answer that there is none?”
“There can't be, Ram Nad, there can't be!” I exclaimed. “Reason proves it. Then, see here! Why can't you, then, restore Georgiana and Dolores? It's all the same, for reason proves it.”
If there did, as I fancied, for an instant pass over Ram Nad's patriarchal face, into his meditative eyes, an expression, if not of cunning, at least of a certain pleasant humanity, it vanished quickly.
“You have yourself answered,” he said.
“The difference is this: if the cat and hen of inquiry had been generalised here by me, I could so restore them; but because they are drowned, I am not able. Therefore the question is answered.”
“I see. That was the point. I thought maybe you could—a pardonable mistake—your talents are so extraordinary. I thought you might be a resurrectionist on the side. You'll excuse me, I'm sure.”
Ram Nad withdrew again behind the whites of his eyes, and I returned to the awning, reflecting. Ram Nad had lacked hypnotic subjects since Mrs. Ulswater put her foot down on his fixing any human inhabitant of the Violetta that way.
But it struck me I'd never known a man with so fine an outfit for casuistry as Ram Nad, such a liquid and euphuistic term for slaughter and theft, such philosophic refinement in the practical process. Thus: you generalise your neighbour's watch. It becomes an abstract idea, and belongs to the original nebulous unity of pure conception. You go around the corner and concentrate your mind on the idea till it's particular again. You get about the same watch. Maybe not. Pretty similar. It seemed so to me.
“I pass,” I said to Mrs. Ulswater. “Who plays next? Ram Nad's got 'em, that's my penetrative opinion; but he can bluff like a fire engine.”
“I'm going to give him a piece of my mind,” said Mrs. Ulswater, indignantly.