“You may,” returned the School-master, pained at the lady’s grammar, but too courteous to call attention to it save by the emphasis with which he spoke the word “may.”

“That’s one view to take of it,” said the Idiot.  “But in case we got a Sunday breakfast every day in the week, we, on the other hand, would get approximately what we pay for.  You may fill my cup too, Mrs. Smithers.”

“The coffee is all gone,” returned the landlady, with a snap.

“Then, Mary,” said the Idiot, gracefully, turning to the maid, “you may give me a glass of ice-water.  It is quite as warm, after all, as the coffee, and not quite so weak.  A perpetual Sunday, though, would have its drawbacks,” he added, unconscious of the venomous glances of the landlady.  “You, Mr. Whitechoker, for instance, would be preaching all the time, and in consequence would soon break down.  Then the effect upon our eyes from habitually reading the Sunday newspapers day after day would be extremely bad; nor must we forget that an eternity of Sundays means the elimination ‘from our midst,’ as the novelists say, of baseball, of circuses, of horse-racing, and other necessities of life, unless we are prepared to cast over the Puritanical view of Sunday which now prevails.  It would substitute Dr. Watts for ‘Annie Rooney.’  We should lose ‘Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay’ entirely, which is a point in its favor.”

“I don’t know about that,” said the genial old gentleman.  “I rather like that song.”

“Did you ever hear me sing it?” asked the Idiot.

“Never mind,” returned the genial old gentleman, hastily.  “Perhaps you are right, after all.”

[Illustration:  BOBBO]

The Idiot smiled, and resumed:  “Our shops would be perpetually closed, and an enormous loss to the shopkeepers would be sure to follow.  Mr. Pedagog’s theory that we should have Sunday breakfasts every day is not tenable, for the reason that with a perpetual day of rest agriculture would die out, food products would be killed off by unpulled weeds; in fact, we should go back to that really unfortunate period when women were without dress-makers, and man’s chief object in life was to christen animals as he met them, and to abstain from apples, wisdom, and full dress.”

“The Idiot is right,” said the Bibliomaniac.  “It would not be a very good thing for the world if every day were Sunday.  Wash-day is a necessity of life.  I am willing to admit this, in the face of the fact that wash-day meals are invariably atrocious.  Contracts would be void, as a rule, because Sunday is a dies non.”

“A what?” asked the Idiot.

“A non-existent day in a business sense,” put in the School-master.

“Of course,” said the landlady, scornfully.  “Any person who knows anything knows that.”

“Then, madame,” returned the Idiot, rising from his chair, and putting a handful of sweet crackers in his pocket—­“then I must put in a claim for $104 from you, having been charged, at the rate of one dollar a day for 104 dies nons in the two years I have been with you.”