“You keep harping on her age, Dodd. Do you know her age? If you do, you have the advantage of me. I have not seen her baptismal register. Have you?”
“No, sir, but I know what she says is her age.”
“That is only evidence of what is not her age.”
“But there is her face, sir; that is evidence.”
“You have never seen her face; it is always got up to deceive the public.”
“I have seen it at the dawn, before any of you were up.”
“What is that? Halo! the deuce—where?”
“In the garden.”
“In the garden? Oh, she does not jump off her down-bed on to a flowerbed. She had been an hour at work on that face before ever the sun or you got leave to look on it.”
“I'll stake my head I tell her age within a year, Mr. Bazalgette.”