"No," said the Bibliomaniac; "that's the great trouble with the Idiot. Even with all his idiocy he is not always a perfect idiot." II HE DISCUSSES THE IDEAL HUSBAND "Well, I see the Ideal Husband has broken out again," said the Idiot, after reading a short essay on that interesting but rare individual by Gladys Waterbury Shrivelton of the Woman's Page of the Squehawkett _Gazoo_. "I'd hoped they had him locked up for good, he's been so little in evidence of late years." "Why should you wish so estimable an individual to be locked up?" demanded Mr. Pedagog, who, somehow or other, seemed to take the Idiot's suggestion as personal. "To keep his idealness from being shattered," said the Idiot. "Nothing against the gentleman himself, I can assure you. It would be a pity, I think, once you have really found an Ideal Husband, to subject him to the coarse influences of the world; to let him go forth into the madding crowd and have the sweet idyllic bloom rubbed off by the attritions of the vulgar. I feel about the Ideal Husband just as I do about a beautiful peachblow vase which is too fragile, too delicate to be brought into contact with the ordinary earthen-ware of society. The earthen-ware isn't harmed by bumping into the peachblow, but the peachblow will inevitably turn up with a crack here and a nick there and a hole somewhere else after such an encounter. If I were a woman and suddenly discovered that I had an Ideal Husband, I think at my personal sacrifice I'd present him to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or immure him in some other retreat where his perfection would remain forever secure--say, up among the Egyptian mummies of the British Museum. We cannot be too careful, Mr. Pedagog, of these rarely beautiful things that are now and again vouchsafed to us." "What is an Ideal Husband, anyhow?" asked Mr. Brief. "Has the recipe for such an individual at last been discovered?" "Yes," put in Mrs. Pedagog, before the Idiot had a chance to reply, and here the dear old landlady fixed her eyes firmly and affectionately upon her spouse, the school-master. "I can tell you the recipe for the Ideal Husband. Years, sixty-three--" "Sixty-two, my dear," smiled Mr. Pedagog, "and--er--a fraction--verging on sixty-three." "Years, verging on sixty-three," said Mrs. Pedagog, accepting the correction. "Character developed by time and made secure. Eyes, blue; disposition when vexed, vexatious; disposition when pleased, happy; irritable from just cause; considerate always; calm exterior, heart of gold; prompt in anger and quick in forgiveness; and only one old woman in the world for him." "A trifle bald-headed, but a true friend when needed, eh?" said the Idiot. "I try to be," said Mr. Pedagog, pleasantly complacent. "Well, you succeed in both," said the Idiot.