'Why do I wear spectacles?' repeated Kanker; for Oscar had spoken the last sentence aloud. 'To see with, of course! Nobody can see without spectacles; and not only that, but nobody can see with any other spectacles than these I have on.'
'Oh, you are mistaken there,' exclaimed Oscar; 'for I have never worn spectacles, and I have always been able to see.'
'You never saw anything in your life,' replied Kanker, very confidently. 'You only think you see. That is your hallucination. An hallucination is when you think a thing is so, and it isn't. You are blind, and probably deaf and dumb as well. What books do you read?'
'I have only one book,' said Oscar; and then he told what a wonderful book it was; how it could only be opened by repeating certain mystic words, and how its pages were full of living pictures, representing things which had been done in the world, and which were being done now. Kanker burst out laughing.
'I don't believe it,' he said. 'It's an hallucination. There is no such book, in the first place, and if there were, it couldn't be what you say it is.'
This made Oscar angry. 'There is such a book,' said he, 'and if you don't believe it I can show it to you.'
Kanker went on laughing and wagging his great hands up and down. 'Oh! show it to me—show it to me!' he spluttered. 'Let me touch it with my fingers, and then perhaps I'll believe.'
'Come into the house, then, and you shall touch it!' exclaimed Oscar. He sprang up and went into the house, and Kanker followed him readily enough. 'Let me put my fingers on it—that's all I ask,' he kept repeating. 'Let me touch it.'
'There!' said Oscar, 'there it is on that shelf. Do you believe now?'
Kanker took the book down from the shelf, and felt it all over. 'I believe that this is something that feels like a book,' he said at last. 'But I don't believe it is a book until I see it opened; and then I shan't believe it has the pictures you talk about unless I see them, and can put my finger on them; and I don't believe you can open it.'