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Zo took the offer quite seriously. She looked with longing eyes at the specimen, three times as tall as herself and shook her head. "I'm not big enough for it, yet," she said. "Look at it, papa! Benjulia's stick is nothing to this." That name on the child's lips had a sound revolting to Ovid. "Don't speak of him!" he said irritably.
Ovid was not disposed to allow himself to be kept in the dark in this way. "I suppose you are going on with your experiments?" he said. The gloom of Benjulia's grave eyes deepened: they stared with a stern fixedness into vacancy. His great head bent slowly over his broad breast. The whole man seemed to be shut up in himself. "I go on a way of my own," he growled. "Let nobody cross it."
As the clock struck the hour, he rang the bell. The man-servant appeared, without the dinner. Benjulia's astonishing amiability on his holiday was even equal to this demand on its resources. "I ordered roast mutton at three," he said, with terrifying tranquillity. "Where is it?" "The dinner will be ready in ten minutes, sir." "Why is it not ready now?" "The cook hopes you will excuse her, sir.
Gallilee now occupied, Carmina was hidden, for the moment, from Benjulia's view. Biding his time at the window, he looked out. A cab, with luggage on it, had just drawn up at the house. Was this the old nurse who had been expected to arrive at six o'clock? The footman came out to open the cab-door. He was followed by Mr. Gallilee, eager to help the person inside to alight.
Hearing that Benjulia's place of abode was now within half a mile of him, Ovid set forth on foot; leaving the driver and the horses to take their ease at their inn. He arrived at an iron gate, opening out of a lonely lane. There, in the middle of a barren little field, he saw Benjulia's house a hideous square building of yellow brick, with a slate roof.
As he descended the steps, a carriage appeared in the lane. A footman opened the gate of the enclosure. The carriage approached the house, with a lady in it. Lemuel ran back to his brother. "Here's a lady coming!" he said. "You're in a nice state to see her! Pull yourself together, Nathan and, damn it, wash your hands!" He took Benjulia's arm, and led him upstairs.
This was Doctor Benjulia's regular weekly supply of medical literature; and here, again, the mysterious man presented an incomprehensible problem to his fellow-creatures. He subscribed to every medical publication in England and he never read one of them!
Here, at last, was Benjulia's reward for sacrificing the precious hours which might otherwise have been employed in the laboratory! From that day, Carmina was destined to receive unknown honour: she was to take her place, along with the other animals, in his note-book of experiments. He turned quietly to Mr. Null, and finished the consultation in two words. "All right!"
"Does the Law forbid you to make your experiments on a man?" he asked. "Of course it does!" "Why doesn't the Law forbid you to make your experiments on a dog?" Benjulia's face cleared again. The one penetrable point in his ironclad nature had not been reached yet. That apparently childish question about the dog appeared, not only to have interested him, but to have taken him by surprise.
"I have forgotten them." "Haven't you got children?" "No." "Haven't you got a wife?" "No." "Haven't you got a friend?" "No." "Well, you are a miserable chap!" Thanks to Zo, Carmina's sense of nervous oppression burst its way into relief. She laughed loudly and wildly she was on the verge of hysterics, when Benjulia's eyes, silently questioning her again, controlled her at the critical moment.
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