"Joking aside," said the military man. It was a stock phrase in his domestic experiences. "Joking aside, I am sure our man of science will admit the importance of the—ah, the cephalic index?"
"Sir George, I look to you for protection."
"Head measurements, Lady Stuckley, that's all," explained Sir George with a smile. "Well, as to that," he went on, rising and coming to the library table, "a fellow by the name of Parchappe, who went in for that sort of thing, found 'the head of an intelligent woman to be perceptibly inferior to the dimensions of the head of an idiot.' Now, Stuckley, justify that to your wife if you can."
Lady Winifred laughed heartily.
"For Lord Kerhill," added the doctor to Winifred as he put a prescription on the corner of the table before her.
"It pleases Sir George to treat facts as jests," said the discomfited Gordon.
"Facts?" queried Winifred. "Facts? Why that is ground for divorce."
"Facts?" echoed the man of science gravely. "I wonder what are facts? The conviction of to-day is the derision of to-morrow. We have long used the skull and the brain to assign hopeless inferiority to various peoples, now comes along Finot and says: 'The skull and the brain furnish no argument in favor of organic inequality.' Lamarck—I think it's Lamarck—puts it better. He affirms that 'Nature has created neither classes nor orders, nor families, nor kinds, nor permanent species, but only individuals!'"
"That's the answer to the problem, Gordon," cried Lady Winifred triumphantly—"the Individual!"
Down the stairs came the Individual and lounged into the room. Hal knew at once from the suggestion of an embarrassed pause that he had been the subject of the conversation.