and in his dress, the sort of man whom no
stranger is careless enough to pass without turning round for a second
look. Teresa, eyeing him with reluctant curiosity, drew back a step, and
privately reviled him (in the secrecy of her own language) as an ugly
beast! Even his name startled people by the outlandish sound of it.
Those enemies who called him "the living skeleton" said it revealed his
gipsy origin. In medical and scientific circles he was well and widely
known as--Doctor Benjulia.

Zo ran away with his bamboo stick. After a passing look of gloomy
indifference at the duenna, he called to the child to come back.

She obeyed him in an oddly indirect way, as if she had been returning
against her will. At the same time she looked up in his face, with an
absence of shyness which showed, like the snatching away of his stick,
that she was familiarly acquainted with him, and accustomed to take
liberties. And yet there was an expression of uneasy expectation in her
round attentive eyes. "Do you want it back again?" she asked, offering
the stick.

"Of course I do. What would your mother say to me, if you tumbled over
my big bamboo, and dashed out your brains on this hard gravel walk?"

"Have you been to see Mama?" Zo asked.

"I have _not_ been to see Mama--but I know what she would say to me if
you dashed out your brains, for all that."

"What would she say?"

"She would say--Doctor Benjulia, your name ought to be Herod."'

"Who was Herod?"

"Herod was a Royal Jew, who killed little girls when they took away his
walking-stick. Come here, child. Shall I tickle you?"

"I knew you'd say that," Zo answered.

When men in general thoroughly enjoy the pleasure of talking nonsense
to children, they can no more help smiling than they can help breathing.
The doctor was an extraordinary exception to this rule; his grim face
never relaxed--not even when Zo reminded him that one of his favourite
recreations was tickling her. She obeyed, however, with the curious
appearance of reluctant submission showing itself once more. He put two
of his soft big finger-tips on her spine, just below the back of her
neck, and pressed on the place. Zo started and wriggled under his touch.
He observed her with as serious an interest as if he had been conducting
a medical experiment. "That's how you make our dog kick with his leg,"
said Zo, recalling her experience of the doctor in the society of the
dog. "How do you do it?"

"I touch the