The melancholy tone became a wail: the wail became a chant: the chant became a song—though whether it was Mein Herr that was singing, this time, or somebody else, I could not feel certain.
“And, now the mischief’s done, perhaps
You’ll kindly go and pack your traps?
Since two (your daughter and your son)
Are Company, but three are none.
A course of saving we’ll begin:
When change is needed, I’ll invent it:
Don’t think to put your finger in
This pie!” cried Tottles (and he meant it).
The music seemed to die away. Mein Herr was again speaking in his ordinary voice. “Now tell me one thing more,” he said. “Am I right in thinking that in your Universities, though a man may reside some thirty or forty years, you examine him, once for all, at the end of the first three or four?”
“That is so, undoubtedly,” I admitted.
“Practically, then, you examine a man at the beginning of his career!” the old man said to himself rather than to me. “And what guarantee have you that he retains the knowledge for which you have rewarded him—beforehand, as we should say?”
“None,” I admitted, feeling a little puzzled at the drift of his remarks. “How do you secure that object?”
“By examining him at the end of his thirty or forty years—not at the beginning,” he gently replied. “On an average, the knowledge then found is about one-fifth of what it was at first—the process of forgetting going on at a very steady uniform rate—and he, who forgets least, gets most honour, and most rewards.”
“Then you give him the money when he needs it no longer? And you make him live most of his life on nothing!”
“Hardly that. He gives his orders to the tradesmen: they supply him, for forty, sometimes fifty, years, at their own risk: then he gets his Fellowship—which pays him in one year as much as your Fellowships pay in fifty—and then he can easily pay all his bills, with interest.”
“But suppose he fails to get his Fellowship? That must occasionally happen.”
“That occasionally happens.” It was Mein Herr’s turn, now, to make admissions.
“And what becomes of the tradesmen?”
“They calculate accordingly. When a man appears to be getting alarmingly ignorant, or stupid, they will sometimes refuse to supply him any longer. You have no idea with what enthusiasm a man will begin to rub up his forgotten sciences or languages, when his butcher has cut off the supply of beef and mutton!”
“And who are the Examiners?”
“The young men who have just come, brimming over with knowledge. You would think it a curious sight,” he went on, “to see mere boys examining such old men. I have known a man set to examine his own grandfather. It was a little painful for both of them, no doubt. The old gentleman was as bald as a coot—”
“How bald would that be?” I’ve no idea why I asked this question. I felt I was getting foolish.
XIV
Bruno’s Picnic
“As bald as bald,” was the bewildering reply. “Now, Bruno, I’ll tell you a story.”
“And I’ll tell oo a story,” said Bruno, beginning in a great hurry for fear of Sylvie getting the start of him: “once there were a Mouse—a little tiny Mouse—such a tiny little Mouse! Oo never saw such a tiny Mouse—”
“Did nothing ever happen to it, Bruno?” I asked. “Haven’t you anything more to tell us, besides its being so tiny?”
“Nothing never happened to it,” Bruno solemnly replied.
“Why did nothing never happen to it?” said Sylvie, who was sitting, with her head on Bruno’s shoulder, patiently waiting for a chance of beginning her story.
“It were too tiny,” Bruno explained.
“That’s no reason!” I said. “However tiny it was, things might happen to it.”
Bruno looked pityingly at me, as if he thought me very stupid. “It were too tiny,” he repeated. “If anything happened to it, it would die—it were so very tiny!”
“Really that’s enough about its being tiny!” Sylvie put in. “Haven’t you invented any more about it?”
“Haven’t invented no more yet.”
“Well then, you shouldn’t begin a story till you’ve invented more! Now be quiet, there’s a good boy, and listen to my story.”
And Bruno, having quite exhausted all his inventive faculty, by beginning in too great a hurry, quietly resigned himself to listening. “Tell about the other Bruno, please,” he said coaxingly.
Sylvie put her arms round his neck, and began:⸺
“The wind was whispering among the trees,” (“That wasn’t good manners!” Bruno interrupted. “Never mind about manners,” said Sylvie) “and it was evening—a nice moony evening, and the Owls were hooting—”
“Pretend they weren’t Owls!” Bruno pleaded, stroking her cheek with his fat little hand. “I don’t like Owls. Owls have such great big eyes. Pretend they were Chickens!”
“Are you afraid of their great big eyes, Bruno?” I said.
“Aren’t ’fraid of nothing,” Bruno answered in as careless a tone as he could manage: “they’re ugly with their great big eyes. I think if they cried, the tears would be as big—oh, as big as the moon!” And he laughed merrily. “Doos Owls cry ever, Mister Sir?”
“Owls cry never,” I said gravely, trying to copy Bruno’s way of speaking: “they’ve got nothing to be sorry for, you know.”
“Oh, but they have!” Bruno exclaimed. “They’re ever so sorry, ’cause they killed the poor little Mouses!”
“But they’re not sorry when they’re hungry, I suppose?”
“Oo don’t know nothing about Owls!” Bruno scornfully remarked. “When they’re hungry, they’re very, very sorry they killed the little Mouses, ’cause if they hadn’t killed them there’d be sumfin for supper, oo know!”
Bruno was evidently getting into a dangerously inventive state of mind, so Sylvie broke in with “Now I’m going on with the story. So the Owls—the Chickens, I mean—were
