Chapter 1 - Page 2

took the bishop's
umbrella," said Mr. Whitechoker, blushing slightly.

"But you returned it, of course?" said the Idiot.

"I intended to, but I left it on the train on my way back home the next
day," replied the clergyman, visibly embarrassed by the Idiot's
unexpected cross-examination.

"It's the same way with books," put in the Bibliomaniac, an unfortunate
being whose love of rare first editions had brought him down from
affluence to boarding. "Many a man who wouldn't steal a dollar would run
off with a book. I had a friend once who had a rare copy of _Through
Africa by Daylight_. It was a beautiful book. Only twenty-five copies
printed. The margins of the pages were four inches wide, and the
title-page was rubricated; the frontispiece was colored by hand, and the
seventeenth page had one of the most amusing typographical errors on
it--"

"Was there any reading-matter in the book?" queried the Idiot, blowing
softly on a hot potato that was nicely balanced on the end of his fork.

[Illustration: "ALARMED THE COOK"]

"Yes, a little; but it didn't amount to much," returned the
Bibliomaniac. "But, you know, it isn't as reading-matter that men like
myself care for books. We have a higher notion than that. It is as a
specimen of book-making that we admire a chaste bit of literature like
_Through Africa by Daylight_. But, as I was saying, my friend had this
book, and he'd extra-illustrated it. He had pictures from all parts of
the world in it, and the book had grown from a volume of one hundred
pages to four volumes of two hundred pages each."

"And it was stolen by a highly honorable friend, I suppose?" queried the
Idiot.

"Yes, it was stolen--and my friend never knew by whom," said the
Bibliomaniac.

"What?" asked the Idiot, in much surprise. "Did you never confess?"

It was very fortunate for the Idiot that the buckwheat cakes were
brought on at this moment. Had there not been some diversion of that
kind, it is certain that the Bibliomaniac would have assaulted him.

"It is very kind of Mrs. Smithers, I think," said the School-master, "to
provide us with such delightful cakes as these free of charge."

"Yes," said the Idiot, helping himself to six cakes. "Very kind indeed,
although I must say they are extremely economical from an architectural
point of view--which is to say, they are rather fuller of pores than of
buckwheat. I wonder why it is," he continued, possibly to avert the
landlady's retaliatory comments--"I wonder why it is that porous
plasters and buckwheat cakes are so similar in