"Certainly I have," returned the Bibliomaniac.
"What does it look like?" was the calmly put question.
The Bibliomaniac's impatience was here almost too great for safety, and the manner in which his face colored aroused considerable interest in the breast of the Doctor, who was a good deal of a specialist in apoplexy.
"Was it a whole day you saw, or only a half-day?" persisted the Idiot.
"You may think you are very funny," retorted the Bibliomaniac. "I think you are—"
"Now don't get angry," returned the Idiot. "There are two or three things I do not know, and I'm anxious to learn. I'd like to know how a day looks to one to whom it is a visible object. If it is visible, is it tangible? and, if so, how does it feel?"
"The visible is always tangible," asserted the School-master, recklessly.[Pg 110]
"How about a red-hot stove, or manifest indignation, or a view from a mountain-top, or, as in the case of the young man in the novel who 'suddenly waked,' and, 'looking anxiously about him, saw no one?'" returned the Idiot, imperturbably.
"Tut!" ejaculated the Bibliomaniac. "If I had brains like yours, I'd blow them out."
"Yes, I think you would," observed the Idiot, folding up his napkin. "You're just the man to do a thing like that. I believe you'd blow out the gas in your bedroom if there wasn't a sign over it requesting you not to." And filling his match-box from the landlady's mantel supply, the Idiot hurried from the room, and soon after left the house.[Pg 111]