Page:Carroll - Tangled Tale.djvu/83

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
X. Chelsea Buns.
67

leg, and all the others watching? I think it was a plan of a battle——"

"The battle of Trafalgar, no doubt," her aunt interrupted, briskly.

"Hardly that, I think," Clara ventured to say. "You see, in that case, he couldn't well be alive——"

"Couldn't well be alive!" the old lady contemptuously repeated. "He's as lively as you and me put together! Why, if drawing a map in the dust—with one's wooden leg—doesn't prove one to be alive, perhaps you'll kindly mention what does prove it!"

Clara did not see her way out of it. Logic had never been her forte.

"To return to the arithmetic," Mad Mathesis resumed—the eccentric old lady never let slip an opportunity of driving her niece into a calculation—"what percentage do you suppose must have lost all four—a leg, an arm, an eye, and an ear?"

"How can I tell?" gasped the terrified girl. She knew well what was coming.

"You can't, of course, without data," her aunt replied: "but I'm just going to give you——"

"Give her a Chelsea bun, Miss! That's what