"He talked to us about the thyroid gland--I don't believe poor Bob's got one, between ourselves--and how if you enlarged it or reduced it you'd adjust people's characters to suit the needs of Society; and all about chimpanzi's blood--I believe he _vivisects_ half through the night in that studio behind the house--being the same as ours; and then Ray Lankester and Chalmers Mitchell argued about the caeca--caecums, you know--something to do with appendicitis--of the mammalia, and altogether we had a high old time--I _always_ learn something on their Thursdays." Well: Rossiter resumed his description of an experiment he was making--quite an everyday one, of course, for there were at least three men present to whom he wasn't going to give away clues prematurely.

An experiment on the motor biallaxis of dormice.
[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.