‘I do not follow you, as yet.’
‘I dare say, but you will come to it. How about all the beasts of the field and the rest of them being created for the service of man?’
‘How about it!’ I was still only half awake.
‘Well, they skulk their work, that’s all. Half of them do nothing for their keep; do you begin to follow me now?’
‘How should they?’
‘Set them to work; that’s the idea.’
I was wide awake now. It seemed like a disclosure of some new invention in crime; and, so far, it was appropriate to the midnight hour, the darkness, and the deadly quiet of the scene.
‘You surely never mean to say that you want to put the song birds into factories?’
‘That is just what I do mean. It is only a fad of mine at present, but I shall work it out to something by-and-by. Did you ever see the performing fleas?’
‘No; it is the only thing I have not seen.’