Shearwater looked round the table with raised eyebrows and a wrinkled forehead. “This conversation is rather beyond me,” he said gravely. Under the formidable moustache, under the thick, tufted eyebrows, the mouth was small and ingenuous, the mild grey eyes full of an almost childish inquiry. “What does the word ‘beaver’ signify in this context? You don’t refer, I suppose, to the rodent, Castor fiber?”
“But this is a very great man,” said Coleman, raising his bowler. “Tell me who he is?”
“Our friend Shearwater,” said Gumbril, “the physiologist.”
Coleman bowed. “Physiological Shearwater,” he said. “Accept my homage. To one who doesn’t know what a beaver is, I resign all my claims to superiority. There’s nothing else but beavers in all the papers. Tell me, do you never read the Daily Express?”
“No.”
“Nor the Daily Mail?”
Shearwater shook his head.
“Nor the Mirror? nor the Sketch? nor the Graphic? nor even (for I was forgetting that physiologists must surely have Liberal opinions)—even the Daily News?”
Shearwater continued to shake his large spherical head.
“Nor any of the evening papers?”