“Music and dancing to-day!” said the Doctor, stopping short, and speaking to himself, “I thought they dreaded to-day. But it’s a world of contradictions. Why, Grace; why, Marion!” he added, aloud, “is the world more mad than usual this morning?”
“Make some allowance for it, father, if it be,” replied his younger daughter, Marion, going close to him, and looking into his face, “for it’s somebody’s birth-day.”
“Somebody’s birth-day, Puss,” replied the Doctor. “Don’t you know it’s always somebody’s birth-day? Did you never hear how many new performers enter on this—ha! ha! ha!—it’s impossible to speak gravely of it—on this preposterous and ridiculous business called Life, every minute?”
“No, not you, of course; you’re a woman—almost,” said the Doctor. “By the bye,” and he looked into the pretty face, still close to his, “I suppose it’s your birth-day.”
“No! Do you really, father?” cried his pet daughter, pursing up her red lips to be kissed.
“There! Take my love with it,” said the Doctor, imprinting his upon them; “and many happy returns of the—the idea!—of the day. The notion of wishing happy returns in such a farce as this,” said the Doctor to himself, “is good! Ha! ha! ha!”
Doctor Jeddler was, as I have said, a great philosopher; and the heart and mystery of his philosophy was, to look upon the world as a gigantic practical joke: as something too absurd to be considered seriously, by any rational man. His system of belief had been, in the beginning, part and parcel of the battle-ground on which he lived; as you shall presently understand.
“Well! But how did you get the music?” asked the Doctor. “Poultry-stealers, of course. Where did the minstrels come from?”
“Alfred sent the music,” said his daughter Grace, adjusting a few simple flowers in her sister’s hair, with which, in her admiration of that youthful beauty, she had herself adorned it half-an-hour before, and which the dancing had disarranged.