Chapter 1

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?"

"Because they are the sort of views to which suffocation is the most
appropriate end," snapped the School-Master. "Any man who asserts, as you
have asserted, that life on a canal-boat has its advantages, ought to go
further, and prove his sincerity by living on one."

"I can't afford it," said the Idiot, meekly. "It isn't cheap by any
manner of means. In the first place, you can't live happily on a
canal-boat unless you can afford to keep horses. In fact, canal-boat life
is a combination of the most expensive luxuries, since it combines
yachting and driving with domesticity. Nevertheless, if you will put your
mind on it, you will find that with a canal-boat for your home you can do
a great many things that you can't do with a house."

"I decline to put my mind on a canal-boat," said Mr. Pedagog, sharply,
passing his coffee back to Mrs. Pedagog for another lump of sugar,
thereby contributing to that good lady's discomfiture, since before their
marriage the mere fact that the coffee had been poured by her fair hand
had given it all the sweetness it needed; or at least that was what the
School-Master had said, and more than once at that.

"You are under no obligation to do so," the Idiot returned. "Though if I
had a mind like yours I'd put it on a canal-boat and have it towed away
somewhere out of sight.