significantly:

"Perhaps he knows too much."

"Too much of what?" asked Sophy, looking up.

"Oh, there are many secrets in Rangoon," said Fuchsia, nodding her
head; "I have grasped that, although I have only been here two months,
and you a whole year. Have you never noticed anything? Have you no
suspicions about people?"

"No--not of anything that matters. I suspect that the eldest Miss
Wiggin rouges and darkens her eyebrows, that Lady Puffle wears a wig,
and that the Grahams are thoroughly sick of their paying guest. But
you are ten times cleverer than I am, Fuchsia, and, according to Mr.
Gregory, singularly intelligent and acute."

"Acute--rubbish!" Fuchsia dismissed the idea with a gesture of her
tiny hand. "I'm not thinking of wigs, or paint, or such piffle. Say,
have you never heard of the cocaine business?"

"Oh, yes; Mr. Shafto is tremendously keen on the subject."

"Pat FitzGerald is mad about it, too, and is having a great big try to
rope in the boss smugglers. He has told me the most terrible tales.
Once the drug--it's cocaine and morphia mixed--gets a fast hold of a
man, or woman, he or she is doomed!"

"Oh, Fuchsia, surely not so bad as that!"

"It's true; the poor thieve to get a few annas to spend in the dens;
the rich and educated buy it by stealth, and absorb it at home in
secret."

"What are the symptoms?" inquired Sophy. "Have you ever seen anyone
who took those drugs?"

"Well, I could not say," she answered evasively; "but I am aware that
the symptoms are unaccountable drowsiness and lethargy, followed by a
deathlike sleep, and, they say, the most _heavenly_ dreams. Later, the
dreamer wakes up, haggard, feverish, and miserable; the skin has a
dried, shrunken look. And you can always tell a drug-taker by the
eyes; the pupil is either as small as a pin's point or else enormously
enlarged."

Fuchsia glanced sharply at Sophy, who was carefully manipulating a
large bow.

Was she recalling a domestic picture? Did any suspicion sink into her
simple mind? If such was the case the girl gave no sign.

"These drug-maniacs' lives are a real burden," continued Fuchsia; "they
become indolent and slovenly; all they want in the whole world is more,
and more, and more--cocaine. The effect on some is to clear and
stimulate the brain and, for a short time, they seem superhuman; but
soon this marvellous illumination that has flared up dies down like a
fire of straw, and leaves them nothin