"Poor little darlings!" Dorothy exclaimed compassionately by and by--Katie had been relating some anecdote in which Corin and Bonniebell had played a part. "I _do_ think it's wrong to dress children ridiculously! The other day _I_ saw a little girl--she must have been quite six or seven--and _she'd_ knickers like a little boy, and long golden hair all down her back! What _is_ the good of pretending that girls are boys?" "Awful rot," Stan remarked with a mighty stretch. "I say, I'm off to bed; I shall be yawning in Miss Deedes' face if I don't. Is there any arnica in the house, Dot?... Good night----" "Good night," said Katie; and as the door closed behind the master of the house she settled more comfortably in her chair. "Now that he's stopped not-looking at me we can have a good talk," her gesture seemed to say; "how _does_ he expect I can get any other clothes till I've saved the money?"... They did talk. They talked of the old days at the McGrath, and who'd married who, and who hadn't married who after all, and, in this connection, of Laura Beamish and Walter Wyron, whom they had both known.... And it just showed how little glory and fame were really worth in the world. For Dorothy, who had been living in London all this time, had not heard as much as a whisper of that memorable revolt of the Wyrons against the Marriage Service, and, though she did know vaguely that Walter lectured, had not the ghost of an idea of what his lectures were about. She had been too busy minding her own petty and private and selfish affairs. Katie couldn't believe it. She thought Dorothy was joking. "You've never heard of Walter's Lecture on '_Heads or Tails in the Trying Time_,' nor his '_Address on the Chromosome_'?" she gasped.... "No; do tell me. What is a Chromosome?" "A Chromosome? Why, it's a--it's a--well, you know when you've a cell--or a nucleus--or a gland or something--but it isn't a gland--it's the--but you _do_ astonish me, Dorothy!" "But surely you're joking about Walter and Laura?" Dorothy exclaimed in her turn. "Indeed I'm not! Why, I thought _every_body knew!..." "(It's all right--he won't come in again). But _why_ did they pretend not to be married?" Dorothy asked in amazement. "I don't know--I mean I forget for the moment--it seemed perfectly clear the way Walter explained it--you ought to go and hear him----" "But what difference could being married--I mean not being married--make?" "Ah!" said Katie, with satisfaction at having found her bearings again. "Walter's got a whole Lecture on that. It always thrills everybody. Amory thinks it's almost his best--after the '_Synthetic Protoplasm_' one, of course--that's admitted by everybody to be quite _the_ best!"[1] [1] I have been charged with the invention of these facetiæ. Here is the Synthetic Protoplasm idea:--