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"It was at that time half an hour too late to be of any use to me, if I
wanted to go and meet my people--which was the case--for by the wording
of the message you can see that they were to arrive at the station at
1
1.45. Why did, your h. c. send me this useless message? Can't he read?
Is he dead?"
"It's the rules."
"No, that does not account for it. Would he have sent it if it had been
three years old, I in the meantime deceased, and he aware of it?"
The boy didn't know.
"Because, you know, a rule which required him to forward to the cemetery
to-day a dispatch due three years ago, would be as good a rule as one
which should require him to forward a telegram to me to-day which he
knew had lost all its value an hour or two before he started it.
The construction of such a rule would discredit an idiot; in fact an
idiot--I mean a common ordinary Christian idiot, you understand--would
be ashamed of it, and for the sake of his reputation wouldn't make it.
What do you think?"
He replied with much natural brilliancy that he wasn't paid for
thinking.
1070
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