Chapter 12

"I wonder what it costs to run a flat?" said the Idiot, stirring his
coffee with the salt-spoon--a proceeding which seemed to indicate that he
was thinking of something else.

"Don't you keep an expense account?" asked the Bibliomaniac, slyly.

"Hee-hee!" laughed Mrs. Pedagog.

"First-rate joke," said the Idiot, with a smile. "But really, now,
I should like to know for how little an apartment could be run. I am
interested."

Mrs. Pedagog stopped laughing at once. The Idiot's words were ominous.
She did not always like his views, but she did like his money, and she
was not at all anxious to lose him as a boarder.

"It's very expensive," she said, firmly. "I shouldn't ever advise any
one to undertake living in a flat. Rents are high. Butcher bills are
enormous, because the butchers have to pay commissions, not only to the
cook, so that she'll use twice as much lard as she can, and give away
three or four times as much to the poor as she ought, but janitors have
to be seen to, and elevator-boys, and all that. Groceries come high for
the same reason. Oh, no! Flat life isn't the life for anybody, I say.
Give me a good, first-class boarding-house. Am I not right, John?"

[Illustration: "JANITORS HAVE TO BE SEEN TO"]

"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Pedagog. "Every time. I lived in a flat once,
and it was an awful nuisance. Above me lived a dancing-master who gave
lessons at every hour of the day in the room directly over my study,
so that I was always being disturbed at my work, while below me was a
music-teacher who was practising all night, so that I could hardly sleep.
Worst of all, on the same floor with me was a miserable person of
convivial tendencies, who always mistook my door for his when he came
home after midnight, and who gave some quite estimable people two
floors below to believe that it was I, and not he, who sang comic songs
between three and four o'clock in the morning. There has not been too
much love lost between the Idiot and myself, but I cannot be so
vindictive as to recommend him to live in a flat."

"I can bear testimony to the same effect," put in Mr. Brief, who was two
weeks in arrears, and anxious to conciliate his landlady.

"Testimony to the effect that Mr. Pedagog sang comic songs in the early
morning?" said the Idiot. "Nonsense! I don't believe it. I have lived in
this house for two years with Mr. Pedagog, and I've never heard him raise
his voice in song yet."

"I didn't mean anything of the sort," retorted Mr. Brief. "You know I
didn't."

"Don't apologize to me," said the Idiot.