ad to study the case together and have long
confabulations over poisons in the Lab'rat'ry...!" (This last
detestable word was a great worry to Mrs. Rossiter. Sometimes she
succeeded in suppressing as many vowels as possible; at others she
felt impelled to give them fuller values and call it "laboratorry.")
And so on, for an hour or so till dinner was announced.

David sat silent all through this meal, under Mrs. Rossiter's
mixture of mirthless badinage: "We shall have you now proposing to
Lady Shillito after saving her life! I expect her husband won't have
altered his will as she didn't poison him, and she must have had
quite thirty thousand pounds settled on her.... They do say however
she's a great _flirt_..." Indiscreet questions: "How much will you
make out of this case? You don't know? I thought barristers had all
that marked on their briefs? And didn't she give you 'refreshers,'
as they call them, from time to time? What was it like seeing her in
prison? Was she handcuffed? Or chained? What did she wear when she
was tried?" And inconsequent remarks: "I remember my mamma--she died
when I was only fourteen--used to dream she was being tried for
murder. It distressed her very much because, as she said, she
couldn't have hurt a fly. What do _you_ dream about, Mr. Williams?
Some pretty young lady, I'll be bound. I dream about such _funny_
things, but I nearly always forget what they were just as I am going
to tell Michael. But I did remember one dream just before Michael
went down to Newcastle to join you ... was it about mermaids? No. It
was about _you_--wasn't that funny? And you seemed to be dressed as
a mermaid--no, I suppose it must have been a mer_man_--and you were
trying to follow Michael up the rocks by walking on your tail; and
it seemed to hurt you awfully. Of course I know what it all came
from. Michael had wanted me to read Hans Andersen's fairy
stories--don't you think they're pretty? I do; but sometimes they
are about rather silly things, skewers and lucifer matches ... and I
had spent the afternoon at the Zoo. Michael's a fellow, of course,
and I use his ticket and always feel quite at home there ... and at
the Zoo that day I had seen one of the sea-lions trying to walk on
his tail.... Oh, _how_ I laughed! But what made me associate the
sea-lion with you and mermaids, I cannot say, but then as poor papa
used to say, 'Dreams are funny things'..."

David's replies were hardly audible, and to his hostess