tion; just as Miss Graves for the cup of tea--not so
thoughtfully stipulating that it should be good and not too copious.
Statistics are according to their conjurors; they are not independent
bodies, with native colours; they needs must be painted by the different
hands they pass through, and they may be multiplied; a nought or so
counts for nothing with the teller. Skepsey saw that. Yet they can
overcome: even as fictitious battalions, they can overcome. He shrank
from the results of a ciphering match having him for object, and was
ashamed of feeling to Statistics as women to giants; nevertheless he
acknowledged that the badge was upon him, if Miss Graves should beat
her master in her array of figures, to insist on his wearing it, as she
would, she certainly would. And against his internal conviction perhaps;
with the knowledge that the figures were an unfortified display, and his
oath of bondage an unmanly servility, the silliest of ceremonies! He was
shockingly feminine to Statistics.

Mr. Durance despised them: he called them, arguing against Mr. Radnor,
'those emotional things,' not comprehensibly to Skepsey. But Mr.
Durance, a very clever gentleman, could not be right in everything. He
made strange remarks upon his country. Dr. Yatt attributed them to the
state of 'his digestion.

And Mr. Fenellan had said of Mr. Durance that, as 'a barrister wanting
briefs, the speech in him had been bottled too long and was an overripe
wine dripping sour drops through the rotten cork.' Mr. Fenellan said it
laughing, he meant no harm. Skepsey was sure he had the words. He heard
no more than other people hear; he remembered whole sentences, and many:
on one of his runs, this active little machine, quickened by motion to
fire, revived the audible of years back; whatever suited his turn of
mind at the moment rushed to the rapid wheels within him. His master's
business and friends, his country's welfare and advancement, these, with
records, items, anticipations, of the manlier sports to decorate, were
his current themes; all being chopped and tossed and mixed in salad
accordance by his fervour of velocity. And if you would like a further
definition of Genius, think of it as a form of swiftness. It is the
lively young great-grandson, in the brain, of the travelling force which
mathematicians put to paper, in a row of astounding ciphers, for the
motion of earth through space; to the generating of heat, whereof
is multiplication, where