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The
Idiot
For some weeks
after the happy event which transformed the
popular Mrs. Smithers into the charming Mrs.
John Pedagog all went well at that lady's select
home for single gentlemen. It was only proper
that during the honey-moon, at least, of the
happy couple hostilities between the Idiot and
his fellow-boarders should cease. It was
expecting too much of mankind, however, to look
for a continued armistice, and the morning
arrived when Nature once more reasserted herself,
and trouble began. Just what it was that
prompted the remark no one knows, but it
happened that the Idiot did say that he thought
that, after all, life on a canal-boat had its
advantages. Mr. Pedagog, who had come into the
dining-room in a slightly irritable frame of
mind, induced perhaps by Mrs. Pedagog's
insistence that as he was now part proprietor of
the house he should be a little more prompt in
making his contributions towards its maintenance,
chose to take the remark as implying a
reflection upon the way things were managed in
the household.
"Humph!" he said. "I had hoped that your habit
of airing your idiotic views had been put aside
for once and for all."
"Very absurd hope, my dear sir," observed the
Idiot. "Views that are not aired become musty.
Why shouldn't I give them an atmospheric
opportunity once in a while?"...
 The
Inventions of the Idiot
“What we want,” said Harris, “is a change.”
At this moment the door opened, and Mrs. Harris
put her head in to say that Ethelbertha had sent
her to remind me that we must not be late
getting home because of Clarence. Ethelbertha, I
am inclined to think, is unnecessarily nervous
about the children. As a matter of fact, there
was nothing wrong with the child whatever. He
had been out with his aunt that morning; and if
he looks wistfully at a pastrycook’s window she
takes him inside and buys him cream buns and
“maids-of-honour” until he insists that he has
had enough, and politely, but firmly, refuses to
eat another anything. Then, of course, he wants
only one helping of pudding at lunch, and
Ethelbertha thinks he is sickening for something.
Mrs. Harris added that it would be as well for
us to come upstairs soon, on our own account
also, as otherwise we should miss Muriel’s
rendering of “The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party,” out
of Alice in Wonderland. Muriel is Harris’s
second, age eight: she is a bright, intelligent
child; but I prefer her myself in serious pieces.
We said we would finish our cigarettes and
follow almost immediately; we also begged her
not to let Muriel begin until we arrived. She
promised to hold the child back as long as
possible, and went. Harris, as soon as the door
was closed, resumed his interrupted sentence.
“You know what I mean,” he said, “a complete
change.”
The question was how to get it.
George suggested “business.” It was the sort of
suggestion George would make. A bachelor thinks
a married woman doesn’t know enough to get out
of the way of a steam-roller. I knew a young
fellow once, an engineer, who thought he would
go to Vienna “on business.” His wife wanted to
know “what business?” He told her it would be
his duty to visit the mines in the neighbourhood
of the Austrian capital, and to make reports.
She said she would go with him; she was that
sort of woman. He tried to dissuade her: he told
her that a mine was no place for a beautiful
woman...

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