"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 them as on fuel for a perishing fire. Heedless of the frivolous interruption, the little gentleman was working himself into a second intellectual fury. "Take hypnotism again--there's another abstraction for you----" Here Mrs. Fazakerly threw up her hands. "My dear Colonel, _de grace!_ If it's an abstraction, why get into a passion about it? Life isn't long enough. You're worrying your brain into fiddlesticks--fiddlestrings I mean, of course. This child doesn't look after you. You ought to have something tied over your head to keep it down; it's like a Jack-in-the-box, a candle blazing away at both ends, a sword wearing out its what's-his-name; it's wearing out your friends, too. _We_ can't live at intellectual high pressure, if you can." The Colonel softened visibly under the delicious flattery of her appeal; he smiled at her and at Durant; he came down from his heights and made a concession to the popular taste. "Well, then, take influenza----" "We'd very much rather not take it, if it's all the same to you." "Take what?" "Why, the influenza--the bacilli, or whatever they are. Or do the bacilli take _you_?" "My dear lady, you don't know what you're talking about. The bacilli theory is--is--is a silly theory."