"I don't want to make you talk shop if you don't care to, Granthope, but I'd like to know if you ever heard of reading the character by thumb-prints. I don't know exactly what you'd call it—papilamancy, perhaps."
"I don't think it has ever been done, but I don't see why it shouldn't be," said Granthope, amused.
"What is necessary to make it a science?"
Granthope, quicker with women than with men, was at a loss to see what Cayley was driving at, but he suspected a trap, and foresaw that his science was to be impugned. He countermined:
"Oh, first of all, a classification and a terminology," he suggested. Cayley was caught neatly. He was more ignorant than he knew.
"Why don't you classify the markings then? I should think it might be considered a logical development of chiromancy."
"One reason is, because they have already been classified by Galton. I've forgotten most of it, but I remember some of the primary divisions. Have you a pencil?"
Cayley unbuttoned and threw open his plum-colored, long-sleeved 'dun,' disclosing evening dress underneath, and produced a pencil which he gave to the palmist. Granthope smoothed out his paper napkin, and, as he talked, drew illustrative diagrams upon it.
"You see, the identification of thumb-prints is made by means of the characteristic involution of the nucleus and its envelope. One needs only a few square millimeters of area. There are three primary nuclei—arches, whorls and loops. Each has variously formed cores. The arch, for instance, may be tented or forked—so. The whorls may be circular or spiral. The loops may be nascent, invaded or crested, and may contain either a single or several rods, as they are called. Let me see your thumb, please. You have a banded, duplex, spiral whorl. It was there when you were born, it will be the same in form when you die. Mine is an invaded loop with three rods."
He saw by Cayley's face that he had scored. Such technical detail was, in point of fact, Cayley's penchant, and he was interested. Granthope proceeded: