Smithers to keep up the
extraordinarily high standard of this house by means of the hard-earned
stipend I pay to her every Monday morning."
"Every Monday?" queried the School-master.
"Every Monday," returned the Idiot. "That is, of course, every Monday
that I pay. The things one gets to eat in the country, the air one
breathes, the utter freedom from restraint, the thousand and more things
one enjoys in the suburbs that are not attainable here--it is these that
make my heart yearn for the open."
[Illustration: "'A LITTLE GARDEN OF MY OWN, WHERE I COULD RAISE AN
OCCASIONAL CAN OF TOMATOES'"]
"Well, it's all rot," said the School-master, impatiently. "Country life
is ideal only in books. Books do not tell of running for trains through
blinding snowstorms; writers do not expatiate on the delights of
waking on cold winter nights and finding your piano and parlor furniture
afloat because of bursted pipes, with the plumber, like Sheridan at
Winchester, twenty miles away. They are dumb on the subject of the
ecstasy one feels when pushing a twenty-pound lawn-mower up and down a
weed patch at the end of a wearisome hot summer's day. They are
silent--"
"Don't get excited, Mr. Pedagog, please," interrupted the Idiot. "I am
not contemplating leaving you and Mrs. Smithers, but I do pine for a
little garden of my own, where I could raise an occasional can of
tomatoes. I dream sometimes of getting milk fresh from the pump, instead
of twenty-four hours after it has been drawn, as we do here.
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