"We mustn't talk in riddles like this," she said, "before Doctor Berkeley, or he will turn us both into pillars of salt. My father is referring to my work," she explained to me.
"Are you a taxidermist, then?" I asked.
She hastily set down the cup that she was raising to her lips and broke into a ripple of quiet laughter.
"I am afraid my father has misled you with his irreverent expressions.
He will have to atone by explaining."
"You see, Doctor," said Mr. Bellingham, "Ruth is a literary searcher——"
"Oh, don't call me a searcher!" Miss Bellingham protested. "It suggests the female searcher at a police station. Say investigator."
"Very well, investigator or investigatrix, if you like. She hunts up references and bibliographies at the Museum for people who are writing books. She looks up everything that has been written on a given subject, and then, when she has crammed herself to a bursting-point with facts, she goes to her client and disgorges and crams him or her, and he or she finally disgorges into the Press."
"What a disgusting way to put it!" said his daughter. "However, that is what it amounts to. I am a literary jackal, a collector of provender for the literary lions. Is that quite clear?"
"Perfectly. But I don't think that, even now, I quite understand about the stuffed Shepherd Kings."
"Oh, it was not the Shepherd Kings who were to be stuffed. It was the author! That was mere obscurity of speech on the part of my father. The position is this: A venerable Archdeacon wrote an article on the patriarch Joseph——"