“Read it.”
So Patty read aloud:
“‘A headless man had a letter to write
It was read by one who had lost his sight,
The dumb repeated it, word for word,
And he who was deaf both listened and heard.’”
“And you don’t know that?” asked Philip.
“No; the conditions are impossible.”
“Oh, no, they’re not. They only seem so. The answer is, ‘Nothing.’ You see the headless man could write nothing, that’s naught, zero, or the letter O. Then the blind man, of course, could read nothing; the dumb man could repeat nothing; and the deaf man heard nothing.”
“Pooh! I don’t think that’s very clever.”