[Mrs. Rossiter had six months previously bought a dormouse in a cage at a bazaar, and after idolizing it for a week had forgotten all about it. Her husband had rescued it half starved; his assistant had fed it up in the laboratory, and they had tried a few experiments on it with painless drugs with astonishing results.] The recital really was interesting and entirely outside the priggishness of Science, but it was marred in consecutiveness and simplicity by Mrs. Rossiter's interruptions. "Michael dear, Lady Dombey's cup!" Or: "Mike, could you cut that cake and hand it round?" Or, if she didn't interrupt her husband she started stories and side-issues of her own in a voice that was quite distinctly heard, about a new stitch in crochet she had seen in the _Queen_, or her inspection of the East Marrybone soup kitchen. However when all had taken as much tea and cakes and _marrons glaces_ as they cared for--David was so shy that he had only one cup of tea and one piece of tea-cake--the large group broke up into five smaller ones. The few gradually converged, and dropping all nonsense discussed biology like good 'uns, David listening eager-eyed and enthralled at the marvels just beginning to peep out of the dissecting and vivisecting rooms and chemical laboratories in the opening years of the Twentieth century. Then one by one they all departed; but as David was going too Rossiter detained him by a kindly pressure on the arm--a contact which sent a half-pleasant, half-disagreeable thrill through his nerves. "Don't hurry away unless you really _are_ pressed for time. I want to show you some of my specimens and the place where I work." David followed him--after taking his leave of Mrs. Rossiter who accepted his polite sentences--a little stammered--with a slightly pompous acquiescence--followed him to the library and then through a curtained door down some steps into a great studio-laboratory, provided (behind screens) with washing places, and full of mysteries, with cupboards and shelves and further rooms beyond and a smell of chloride of lime combined with alcoholic preservatives and undefined chemicals. After a tour round this domain in which David was only slightly interested--for lack of the right education and imagination--so far he--or--she had only the mind of a mathematician--Rossiter led him back into the library, drew out chairs, indicated cigarettes--even whiskey and soda if he wanted it--David declined--and then began to say what was at the back of his mind:--