"But Phil isn't a fair instance. Can't you do any better than Phil? Never mind Cain and Abel."
"H'm—no, I can't! Phil's not a bad instance. It's longer ago—but the same thing in principle. If I were to hear that Phil was really resuscitated, and some other boy was buried by mistake for him, I should ... I should...." The General hung fire.
"What should you do? That's what I want to know.... Come now, confess—it's not so easy to say, after all!"
"No—it's not easy. But it would depend on the way how. If it was like the Day of Judgement, and he rose from the grave, as we are taught in the Bible, just the same as he was buried.... Well—you know—it wouldn't be fair play! I should know him, though I expect I should think him jolly small."
"But he wouldn't know you?"
"No. He would be saying to himself, who the dooce is this superannuated old cock? And it would be no use my saying I was his little brother, or he was my big one."
"But suppose it wasn't like the Day of Judgement at all, but real, like my old ladies. Suppose he was another superannuated old cock! My old ladies are superannuated old hens, I suppose."
"I suppose so. But I understand from what you tell me that they have come to know one another again. They talk together and recall old times? Isn't that so?"
"Oh dear yes, and each knows the other quite well by now. Only I believe they are still quite bewildered about what has happened."
"Then I suppose it would be the same with me and my redivivus brother—on the superannuated-old-cock theory, not the Day of Judgement one."