"If my vocabulary were as warped as some other vocabularies I might mention," said the Idiot, helping himself to another waffle modelled after the six of hearts, "I'd keep it in a cage. A man who observes that I have eaten three fish-cakes and a waffle without opening my mouth hasn't a very good command of language. He simply states as a fact what is in reality an impossibility, granting that I eat with my mouth, which I am told I do."
"You know what I mean," retorted Mr. Pedagog, impatiently. "I am so much in your society that I have acquired the very bad habit of speaking in the vernacular. When I say you haven't opened your mouth I do not refer to the opening you make for the receipt of waffles and fish-cakes, but for those massive openings which you require for your exuberant loquacity. In other words, I mean that you haven't spoken a word for at least three minutes, which is naturally an indication to us that you aren't feeling well. You and talk are synonymous as far as we are concerned."
"I have been known to speak—that is true," said the Idiot. "That I am not feeling very well this morning is also true. I have a headache."
"A what ache?" asked the Doctor, scornfully.
"A very bad headache," returned the Idiot, looking about him for a third waffle.
"How singular!" said the Bibliomaniac. "Reminds me of a story I heard of a man who had lost his foot. He'd had his foot shot off at Gettysburg, and yet for years after he could feel the pangs of rheumatism in that foot from which he had previously suffered."
"Pardon me for repeating," observed the Idiot. "But, as I have already said, and as I expect often to have to say again, Tutt! I can't blame you for thinking that I have no head, however. I find so little use for one here that in most instances I do not obtrude it upon you."
"I haven't noticed any lack of head in the Idiot," put in the School-master. "As a rule, I can agree to almost anything my friend the Bibliomaniac says, but in this case I cannot accept his views. You have a head. I have always said you had a head—in fact, that is what I complain about chiefly, it is such a big head."
"Thank you," said the Idiot, ignoring the shaft. "I shall never forget your kindness in coming to my aid, though I can't say that I think I needed it. Even with a racking headache sustained by these delicious waffles, I believe I can handle the Doctor and my bookish friend without assistance. I am what the mathematicians would call an arithmetical absurdity—I am the one that is equal to the two they represent. At present, however, I prefer to let them talk on. I am too much absorbed in thought and waffles to bandy words."
"If I had a headache," said Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog, without, it must be said, in any way desiring to stem the waffle tide which was slowly but surely eating into the profits of the week—"if I had a headache I should not eat so many waffles, Mr. Idiot."