"I don't see," said Mr. Brief, dryly--"I don't see but that what you ought to devote your time to, my dear Idiot, is the invention of an intelligent cook." "Humph!" laughed the Idiot. "I may be an idiot, Mr. Brief, but I'm not an ass. There are some things that man may reasonably hope to accomplish--such as setting fire to the Hudson River, or growing butternuts on the summit of Mont Blanc--but as for trying to invent an intelligent cook who would stay in the country for more than two weeks for less than ten thousand dollars a year, that, sir, is beyond all the conceptions of the human mind." "Ain't Bridget intelligent, pa?" asked Tommy. Here was a complication, for Tommy liked to retail to Bridget the gossip of the day, and especially what "pa said." "H'm--ah--oh yes, indeed, she is, Tommy," the Idiot replied, with some embarrassment. "Very; she's been with us three months." "How much do you pay her, pa?" asked the boy. "Well," said the Idiot, "not more than fifteen hundred dollars a month. Just take another griddle-cake, my son, and remember that there are some things little boys should not talk about." "Like tumpany's bald heads?" lisped Mollie, complacently, her eye fixed upon Mr. Pedagog's shining dome. "Precisely," observed Mr. Pedagog, appreciating the situation. And while everybody else laughed the Idiot looked upon his children with a sternly affectionate face. "My dear," said he to Mrs. Idiot, "I think it is time the babies got ready for Sunday-school." XIII A SUBURBAN COMPLICATION "Well, old chap," said the Poet some weeks later, when he happened to be spending the night off in the suburbs with his old friend, "how goes the noble art of inventing? Has your horseless cauliflower bloomed as yet?" "Horseless cauliflower is good, but tautological," said the Idiot. "The cauliflower is an automobile in itself, without the intervention of man. Who told you I was inventing instead of broking these days?" "Mr. Pedagog said something about it the last time I met him," said the Poet. "He's a mighty good friend of yours. He says you are the most perfect Idiot he ever met." "He's a bully good fellow," said the Idiot, affectionately. "You know I used to think Pedagog wasn't of any earthly use except to teach people things, but as I look back upon my experience with him he has never taught me anything that was worth forgetting. So he told you I was going into invention, did he?" "Yes; and he said he thought you were going about it in the right way," rejoined the Poet. "You weren't spending ten thousand dollars to get a four-dollar invention on the market, he said, but were inventing things that you knew at the outset weren't worth risking your money on." The Idiot smiled broadly.