"You would have but for my scheme," said the Idiot. "I'd have a pack of cards at the table, and I'd deal them out just as you do in whist. Each card would represent the corresponding waffle. We'd begin breakfast by playing one hand after the manner of whist. Each man would keep his tricks, and when the waffles were served he would receive those, and those only, represented by the cards in the tricks he had taken. If you took a trick with the king of diamonds in it, you'd get the waffle with the king of diamonds on it, and so on. Every man would be clearly entitled through his skill in the game to the waffles that he ate." "Very good," said Mr. Whitechoker. "But suppose you had bad luck and took no tricks?" "Then," said the Idiot, "you'd have bad luck and get no waffles." "Tutt!" said Mr. Pedagog. And that was the sole criticism any of the boarders had to make, although there is reason to believe that the scheme had objectionable features to the majority of them, for as yet Progressive Waffles has not been played at Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog's. IX A Clearing-house for Poets "How is your Muse these days, Mr. Idiot?" asked the Bibliomaniac one Sunday morning while the mush was being served. "Flourishing," said the Idiot. "Just flourishing--and no more." "I should think you'd be pleased if she is flourishing," said the Doctor. "I'd rather she'd stop flourishing and do a little writing," said the Idiot. "She's a queer Muse, that one of mine. She has all the airs and graces of an ordinary type-writer with an unconquerable aversion to work." "You look upon your Muse as you would upon your type-writer, eh?" said Mr. Pedagog. "Yes," said the Idiot. "That's all my Muse is, and she isn't even a capable type-writer. The general run of type-writers make sense of what you write, but my Muse won't. You may not believe it, but out of ten inspirations I had last week not one of them is fit for publication anywhere but in a magazine or a puzzle column. I don't know what is the matter with her, but when I sit down to dictate a comic sonnet she turns it into a serious jingle, and _vice versa_. We can't seem to get our moods to fit. When I want to be serious she's flippant, and when I become flippant she's serious." "She must be very serious most of the time," said the Doctor. "She is," said the Idiot, innocently. "But that's only because I'm flippant most of the time. I'm going to give her warning. If she doesn't brace up and take more interest in her work I'm going to get another Muse, that's all. I can't afford to have my income cut down fifty per cent. just because she happens to be fickle." "Maybe she is flirting with somebody else," suggested the Poet. "My Muse does that occasionally."