"Mr. Abernethy is no idiot," I replied warmly : "he knows more than any man I ever talked with."
"He doesn't know an earthly thing out of books," asserted Miss Dayton. "He hasn't a grain of out-door sense. Miss Burritt says he always strips the towel off the washstand to wipe with, and leaves the others hanging on the rack, and that when he goes to bed he never takes off the hypocrites, as I call them—those things, you know, that folks put over pillows to hide the dirty cases. I don't believe he'd know what to eat if I didn't sit here and pass things to him. I actually think he doesn't know the taste of a thing he eats. He is the queerest mortal!"
"Hush!" I said anxiously, for Mr. Abernethy was taking his seat by her side.
"He doesn't know a thing we're saying," she declared. "We might talk about him till midnight and he'd never hear a word."
"Please stop!" I whispered nervously.
"Well, to oblige you I will, but your anxieties are quite unnecessary."
"Mr. Abernethy," shouted a servant, "have tea or coffee?"
The student was sensitive to the sound of his name. It acted like a pinch on the arm to arouse his attention. The servants had discovered this. "Have tea or coffee?" repeated the servant. "Coffee," he answered.
"Don't you mean tea, Mr. Abernethy?" Miss Dayton asked. "You told me you never drank coffee."
"I don't: yes, yes, I mean tea." He helped himself to a hot biscuit.
"Mr. Abernethy, here's bread," Miss Dayton said, setting it before him.
"Yes, thank you—I prefer the bread."
"Hand Mr. Abernethy the butter, and bring him a plate of apple-sauce," Miss Dayton said to a servant, as though she were caring for a child. "I've got him fixed now," she continued, turning to we and proceeding to sweeten her tea.
Across the table from us sat Mr. Dimick, a rotund, ruddy man, who always emitted odors of the barber-shop. Though inclined to baldness, he had a heavy moustache, which he twirled incessantly when his hands were at leisure for twirling.
"Mr. Abernethy," said Mr. Dimick (before the speaker continued he administered a vigorous bite to his bread, which, by the way, had the buttered side turned down out of the way of his moustache), "what do you think of this Paraguayan war?" The boarders went to Mr. Abernethy, not for companionship, but for information, as to a dictionary or encyclopædia.
"Your question is very general," replied the gentleman appealed to, laying down his knife and fork.
"Of course, but what do you think will be the upshot of the matter? That's what I mean."
"I think it will end in the extermination of the Paraguayan people."
"That's just what I think; but what in the world are they fighting about? I can't make head or tail of the thing."
"To find the head of this quarrel one must go back to within a year of the discovery of America, when a papal bull of Alexander VI. divided the New World between the crowns of Spain and Portugal. The question of the boundary-line between their respective territories has never been permanently closed."
"Now, he'll forget to eat his supper," said Miss Dayton quite audibly. She treated Mr. Abernethy as a sleeper who could neither see nor hear till she had shaken him up.
"The proximate cause of the war between Paraguay and the allies," continued Mr. Abernethy, "is undoubtedly the ambition of Lopez to make Paraguay a great military power, with a view to the ultimate enlargement of her boundaries."
"Just my opinion," said Mr. Dimick.
"The events that occurred in 1864 in Uruguay, as you remember" (Mr. Dimick, quickly recovering from a yawn, intimated by repeated nods that he did remember: I was sure he didn't), "furnished him with the ostensible pretext for entering upon his long-cherished plan."
"Miss Dayton, are you going to the opera this evening?" asked Mr. Dimick,
