ou. I have never known Jellicoe to be so
inquisitive before. What did you think of him?"

"A quaint old cock. I found him highly amusing. We entertained one
another for quite a long time with cross-questions and crooked answers;
I affecting eager curiosity, he replying with a defensive attitude of
universal ignorance. It was a most diverting encounter."

"He needn't have been so close," Miss Bellingham remarked, "seeing that
all the world will be regaled with our affairs before long."

"They are proposing to take the case into Court, then?" said Thorndyke.

"Yes," said Mr. Bellingham. "Jellicoe came to tell me that my cousin,
Hurst, has instructed his solicitors to make the application and to
invite me to join him. Actually he came to deliver an ultimatum from
Hurst--but I mustn't disturb the harmony of this festive gathering with
litigious discords."

"Now, why mustn't you?" asked Thorndyke. "Why is a subject in which we
are all keenly interested to be taboo? You don't mind telling us about
it, do you?"

"No, of course not. But what do you think of a man who button-holes a
doctor at a dinner-party to retail a list of ailments?"

"It depends on what his ailments are," replied Thorndyke. "If he is a
chronic dyspeptic and wishes to expound the virtues of Doctor
Snaffler's Purple Pills for Pimply People, he is merely a bore. But if
he chances to suffer from some rare and choice disease such as
Trypanosomiasis or Acromegaly, the doctor will be delighted to listen."

"Then are we to understand," Miss Bellingham asked, "that we are rare
and choice products, in a legal sense?"

"Undoubtedly," replied Thorndyke. "The case of John Bellingham is, in
many respects, unique. It will be followed with the deepest interest
by the profession at large, and especially by medical jurists."

"How gratifying that should be to us!" said Miss Bellingham. "We may
even attain undying fame in textbooks and treatises; and yet we are not
so very much puffed up with our importance."

"No," said her father; "we could do without the fame quite well, and
so, I think, could Hurst. Did Berkeley tell you of the proposal that
he made?"

"Yes," said Thorndyke; "and I gather from what you say that he has
repeated it."

"Yes. He sent Jellicoe to give me another chance, and I was tempted to
take it; but my daughter was strongly against any compromise, and
probably she is right. At any rate, she is more concerned than I am."