"'SPEND A WHOLE DAY ON ONE WINDOW'"
"It isn't quite," said the Idiot. "He really does exert himself in window-cleaning. I have frequently seen him spend a whole day on one window. His window-washing system is a very ingenious one, nevertheless."
"It is, indeed," said Mrs. Idiot, with a show of feeling.
"A new window-washing system?" grinned Mr. Pedagog.
"Yes," said the Idiot. "It is his own invention. He washes them on the outside in summer and on the inside in winter. The result is this opalescent glass which you see. You would hardly guess that these windows are of French plate. Still, we don't mind so much. I couldn't ask him to wash them on the outside in winter, it is so dreadfully cold, and in the summer, of course, they are always open, and no one, unless he were disagreeable enough to go snooping about after unpleasant details, would notice that they are not immaculate."
"And you pay this man forty dollars for this?" demanded Mr. Brief.
"Oh, for this and other things. I pay him two dollars a month for the work he does. I pay him ten dollars a month because he's good to the children. I pay him ten dollars more for his civility, which is unvarying—he always puts his hat on when he comes into the house, having noticed, perhaps, that only those who are my social equals are entitled to appear bareheaded in my presence."
"And the other eighteen?" persisted the lawyer, by nature a cross-examiner.
"Well, I don't grudge him that because—" a sort of a fond light lit up the Idiot's eyes as he gazed down upon Mike, still sitting on the tennis-court—"I don't grudge him that other eighteen dollars because it costs Mike twenty dollars a month to live; and he uses the rest of it to put his boy through college, so that when he grows up to be a man he will be something more than a hired man."