At first glance, the hand was no different from any other skeleton hand one might see any day in any place where they sold anatomical specimens for the use of members of the medical profession; but as Mr.Bawdrey, holding it on the palm of his right hand, flattened it out with the fingers of his left, the abnormality at once became apparent.

Springing from the base of the fourth finger, a perfectly developed fifth appeared, curling inward toward what had once been the palm of the hand, as though, in life, it had been the owner's habit of screening it from observation by holding it in that position.

It was, however, perfectly flexible, and Mr.
Bawdrey had no difficulty in making it lie out flat after the manner of its mates.
The sight was not inspiring--the freaks of mother Nature rarely are.

No one but a doctor would have cared to accept the thing as a gift, and no one but a man as mad on the subject of curiosities and with as little sense of discrimination as Mr.Bawdrey would have dreamt for a moment of adding it to a collection.
"It's rather uncanny," said Cleek, who had no palate for the abnormal in Nature.

"For myself, I may frankly admit that I don't like things of that sort about me." "You are very much like my wife in that," responded the old man.