Judge Emery broke in, impatient of this fantastic word-bandying. “Oh, come, Melton, I can’t stand here while you spin your paradoxes. I’ve got to get home before young Hollister leaves or my wife won’t like it.”
“I’ll go with you, then,” cried the little doctor, clapping on his hat. “You sha’n’t escape me that way. I’m in full cry after the best figure of speech I’ve hit on in months.”
“Good Lord!” The lawyer looked down laughingly at his friend as the two set off, a stork beside a sparrow. “You and your figures!”
“It came over me with a bang the other day that in Lydia we have in our midst that society-destroying child in The Kaiser’s New Clothes.”
“Eh?” said Lydia’s father blankly.
“You remember the last scene in that inimitable tale? Where the Kaiser walks abroad with all the people shouting and hurrahing for the new clothes, and not daring to trust their own eyes, and suddenly a little child’s voice is heard, ‘But the Kaiser has nothing on!’”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the Judge with a patient indifference.
“Well, you will know when you hear Lydia say that some day. She knows—she’ll know! Perhaps you’ve done well to send her to that idiotic finishing school.”
“Don’t lay it to me!” cried the Judge, laughing; “I didn’t send her—or not send her. If you were married you’d know that fathers never have anything to say about what their daughters do.”
“More fools they!” rejoined the doctor pointedly. “But in this case maybe it’s all right. She’s as ignorant as a Hottentot, of course, but perhaps any real education might have spoiled her innate capacity to—”