"Man!" said McCurdie, bending across the carriage, and speaking with a
curious intensity of voice, "d'ye know I'd give a hundred pounds to be
able to answer that question?"

"What do you mean?" asked the Professor, startled.

"I should like to know why I'm sitting in this damned train and going to
visit a couple of addle-headed society people whom I'm scarcely
acquainted with, when I might be at home in my own good company
furthering the progress of science."

"I myself," said the Professor, "am not acquainted with them at all."

It was Sir Angus McCurdie's turn to look surprised.

"Then why are you spending Christmas with them?"

"I reviewed a ridiculous blank-verse tragedy written by Deverill on the
Death of Sennacherib. Historically it was puerile. I said so in no
measured terms. He wrote a letter claiming to be a poet and not an
archaeologist. I replied that the day had passed when poets could with
impunity commit the abominable crime of distorting history. He retorted
with some futile argument, and we went on exchanging letters, until his
invitation and my acceptance concluded the correspondence."

McCurdie, still bending his black brows on him, asked him why he had not
declined. The Professor screwed up his face till it looked more like a
cuneiform than ever. He, too, found the question difficult to answer,
but he showed a bold front.

"I felt it my duty," said he, "to teach that preposterous ignoramus
something worth knowing about Sennacherib. Besides I am a bachelor and
would sooner spend Christmas, as to whose irritating and meaningless
annoyance I cordially agree with you, among strangers than among my
married sisters' numerous and nerve-racking families."

Sir Angus McCurdie, the hard, metallic apostle of radio-activity,
glanced for a moment out of the window at the grey, frost-bitten fields.
Then he said:

"I'm a widower. My wife died many years ago and, thank God, we had no
children. I generally spend Christmas alone."

He looked out of the window again. Professor Biggleswade suddenly
remembered the popular story of the great scientist's antecedents, and
reflected that as McCurdie had once run, a barefoot urchin, through the
Glasgow mud, he was likely to have little kith or kin. He himself envied
McCurdie. He was always praying to be delivered from his sisters and
nephews and nieces, whose embarrassing demands no calculated coldness
could repress.

"Children are the root of all evil," said