fect gentleman there would
have been significance in the look. As it was, it remained
unconscious.

"The Colonel," Mrs. Fazakerly explained, "is studying the
meteorology of Wickshire."

It seemed that Mrs. Fazakerly was studying the Colonel, that it was
her business to expound and defend him. She had implied, if it were
only by the motion of an eyelid, that all they had heard hitherto
was by way of prologue; that the Colonel had not yet put forth his
full powers. Her effervescent remark was, as it were, the breaking
of the champagne bottle, the signal that launched him.

Meteorology apart, the Colonel, like more than one great
philosopher, held that science was but another name for ignorance.

"But with meteorology," he maintained, "you are safe. You've got
down to the bed-rock of fact, and it's observation all along the
line. I've got fifteen little memorandum books packed with
observations. Taken by myself. It's the only way to keep clear of
fads and theories. Look at the nonsense that's talked in other
departments, about microbes, for instance. Fiddlesticks! A microbe's
an abstraction, a fad. But take a man like myself, take a man of
even ordinary intelligence, who has faced the facts, don't tell me
that he hasn't a better working knowledge of the subject than a
fellow who calls himself a bacteriologist, or some other absurd
name."

Durant remarked meekly that he didn't know, he was sure. But the
Colonel remained implacable; his shirt-front dilated with his wrath;
it was wonderful how so gentle a voice as the Colonel's contrived to
convey so much passion. Meanwhile Miss Tancred sat absorbed in her
dinner and let the storm pass over her head. Perhaps she was used to
it.

"Fiddlesticks! If you don't know, you ought to know; you should make
it your business to know. If I've got cholera I want to be told
what'll cure me. I don't care a hang whether I'm killed by a comma
bacillus or----"

"A full-stop bacillus," suggested Mrs. Fazakerly.

"The full-stop bacillus for choice--put you sooner out of your
agony."

"For shame, Mr. Durant; you encourage him."

"I, Mrs. Fazakerly?"

"Yes, you. It was you who brought the _Nineteenth Century_ into the
house, wasn't it? Depend upon it, he's been reading something that
he's disagreed with, or that's disagreed with him."

Durant remembered. There were things about bacteriology in that
_Nineteenth Century_, and about hypnotism; the Colonel had
apparently seized on th