“It would not,” said the Philosopher. “Throughout nature the female tends to polygamy.”
“If,” said Meehawl, “that unfortunate daughter of mine is lying dead in a ditch—”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the Philosopher. “Many races have endeavoured to place some limits to this increase in females. Certain Oriental peoples have conferred the titles of divinity on crocodiles, serpents, and tigers of the jungle, and have fed these with their surplusage of daughters. In China, likewise, such sacrifices are defended as honourable and economic practices. But, broadly speaking, if daughters have to be curtailed I prefer your method of losing them rather than the religio-hysterical compromises of the Orient.”
“I give you my word, sir,” said Meehawl, “that I don’t know what you are talking about at all.”
“That,” said the Philosopher, “may be accounted for in three ways—firstly, there is a lack of cerebral continuity: that is, faulty attention; secondly, it might be due to a local peculiarity in the conformation of the skull, or, perhaps, a superficial instead of a deep indenting of the cerebral coil; and thirdly—”
“Did you ever hear,” said Meehawl, “of the man that had the scalp of his head blown off by a gun, and they soldered the bottom of a tin dish to the top of his skull the way you could hear his brains ticking inside of it for all the world like a Waterbury watch?”
“I did not,” said the Philosopher. “Thirdly, it may—”
“It’s my daughter, Caitilin, sir,” said Meehawl humbly. “Maybe she is lying in the butt of a ditch and the crows picking her eyes out.”
“What did she die of?” said the Philosopher.
“My wife only put it that maybe she was dead, and that maybe she was taken by the fairies, and that maybe she went away with the travelling man that had the musical instrument. She said it was a concertina, but I think myself it was a flute he had.”