She is a little behindhand to-day." "What has hindered her, if you please ?" The silent servant--on all other occasions the most impenetrable of human beings--began to tremble.

The doctor had, literally, kicked a man out of the house who had tried to look through the laboratory skylight.
He had turned away a female servant at half an hour's notice, for forgetting to shut the door, a second time in one day.

But what were these highhanded proceedings, compared with the awful composure which, being kept waiting for dinner, only asked what had hindered the cook, and put the question politely, by saying, "if you please"?
"Perhaps you were making love to her ?" the doctor suggested, as gently as ever.
This outrageous insinuation stung the silent servant into speech.

"I'm incapable of the action, sir!" he answered indignantly; "the woman was reading a story." Benjulia bent his head, as if in acknowledgment of a highly satisfactory explanation.

"Oh?
reading a story?
People who read stories are said to have excitable brains.