"Do you, really?" interrupted the School-master, looking up from his book with an air of mock surprise. "I am sure I never should have suspected it."
"Indeed?" returned the Idiot, undisturbed by this reflection upon his intellect. "I don't really know whether that is due to your generally unsuspicious nature, or to your shortcomings as a mind-reader."
"There are some minds," put in the landlady at this point, "that are so small that it would certainly ruin the eyes to read them."[Pg 18]
"I have seen many such," observed the Idiot, suavely. "Even our friend the Bibliomaniac at times has seemed to me to be very absent-minded. And that reminds me, Doctor," he continued, addressing himself to the medical boarder. "What is the cause of absent-mindedness?"
"That," returned the Doctor, ponderously, "is a very large question. Absent-mindedness, generally speaking, is the result of the projection of the intellect into surroundings other than those which for want of a better term I might call the corporeally immediate."
"So I have understood," said the Idiot, approvingly. "And is absent-mindedness acquired or inherent?"
Here the Idiot appropriated the roll of his neighbor.
"That depends largely upon the case," replied the Doctor, nervously. "Some are born absent-minded, some achieve absent-mindedness, and some have absent-mindedness thrust upon them."
