🎧 342: In the spring . . .

Chapter 14

In Which Lorna’s Soap Carvings Entertain a Hundred Calculating Women

IN THE SPRING of Ella’s sixteenth year (Herb’s forty-first, Lorna’s thirty-ninth), when Ella began to look more like a pretty young woman than a pretty young girl, Dudley Beaker, a bachelor for whom this was the spring of his twenty-eighth year, bought the house next door. Dudley was, for the neighborhood into which he had moved, something of an exotic. He was slim and clever, worked in an office, and had been to college. Whenever he visited the Pipers, he spent some time chatting with Mrs. Stolz about the day’s news, and since he listened to what she had to say, Mrs. Stolz decided that Dudley Beaker was a man of sophistication and taste. He asked Herb’s advice about repairs and improvements to his house, and he always took the advice that Herb gave. He bought a Studebaker from Herb, one of the striking Loewy-designed Commander coupes, and he was a willing audience for demonstrations of Herb’s gadgets. Herb thought Dudley was a swell guy.
     Dudley was an amateur student of logic, and he loved springing “puzzlers” and “posers” on Herb and Lorna. The first he ever sprang was the familiar “Brothers and sisters have I none.”
     “Here’s a puzzler for you,” he said one Saturday morning while he was seated at the kitchen table, trying not to watch while Herb dunked one of Lorna’s fresh doughnuts.
     “A what?” asked Herb.
     “A puzzler. An interesting little problem in logic. Ready?”
     “I guess,” said Herb. Lorna dropped another ring of dough into the fat.
     “All right. You’re introduced to a man at a party. You ask him who he is, and instead of telling you his name, he winks and says, ‘Brothers and sisters have I none, but that man’s father is my father’s son.’ When he says, ‘that man,’ he points to a man across the room. Now are you ready for the question? Who is he?”
     “Mm, I’m not sure,” said Herb, “but he’s perfect for a President convertible sedan — something snappy, peppy. He’s a fellow who doesn’t take life too seriously, a guy who likes to tell a joke, a guy who winks his eye. Perfect for a President convertible.”
     Dudley chuckled. “Herb,” he said, “I’ve put this poser to many people, and I’ve never heard an answer like that before. I’m sure I never will again.”
     With the end of a wooden spoon, Lorna lifted a doughnut from the fat. “He’s the father of the man across the room,” she said.
     “Noooo,” said Dudley, smiling and shaking his head, “that’s what everyone — ” He stopped. “Did you say he’s the father of the man across the room?” he asked.
     “Yes.”
     “That’s right. That’s right! Look, here’s another one. Stand up, Herb.” Herb stood, and Dudley stood beside him. “Herb and I live on an island where everybody is either a Liar or a Truth-teller. All right? Liars always lie, and Truth-tellers always tell the truth. Okay? Now, I want you to ask us, ‘Is either of you a Truth-teller?’ I’ll answer, Herb. Go ahead, Lorna.”
     “Is either of you a Truth-teller?”
     “No,” said Dudley.
     “You’re a Liar,” said Lorna.
     “Lorna!” said Dudley. “You’re wonderful!”
     “What about me?” asked Herb.
     Lorna smiled. “You’re a Truth-teller, of course,” she said. “You always have been.” A teasing pause. “Haven’t you?”
     “Well, sure,” said Herb. He chuckled. His face felt warm. He hoped it didn’t show.
     Dudley was delighted to find someone with a talent for logic, and he began developing it at once. Lorna took to the logical puzzles and problems that Dudley supplied her as quickly as she had taken to modeling in papier-mâché or carving ivory. She discovered that she enjoyed doing something that required as much from her intellect as the little ivory figures required from her imagination and her fingers. Lorna decided that Dudley was an “intellectual,” and once she had decided that he was an intellectual she endowed him, in her perception of him, with the attributes she considered part and parcel of an intellectual. She thought of him as distracted, forgetful, fussy, and fey.

In Topical Guide 342, Mark Dorset considers Thinking: Logic and Games: Puzzles: Logic Puzzles from this episode.

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