"Then if we wentited far enough off, you could tell me why his nime was Dr. Spiderophel, too." She dashed intrepidly at the name, and nearly captured it.
"Of course I could, and he wouldn't hear one word."
"And what should you sye?" Lizarann gave a slight leap in bed, from pleasant anticipation. She was told to lie quiet, and she should hear.
And that is how it was that when Miss Caldecott came in, dressed cap-à-pie for public worship, a prayer-book in a gloved hand—for it was Sunday morning—to remind her brother-in-law that the bells were going to begin, and arouse him to his duties, she found him telling how Sidrophel was an astronomer who took a fly in his telescope for an elephant on the moon; and that this legend was only partly cleared up by its narrator. Telescopes and stethoscopes remained imperfectly differentiated in Lizarann's mind. And Mr. Yorick's temporary acceptance of her pronunciation led to a misapprehension about spiders and flies. Did this astronomer catch that fly, or did the fly get away? Lizarann treasured hopes on its behalf, for the next chapter in the story.
But she felt it her duty to look alive, and lie quite quiet in bed, although—law bless you!—she had nothing the matter with her. So she lay and watched a greedy bee, who seemed bent on leaving no honey in that jessamine, at any rate, that came across the open lattice, and had its say in the mixed scents of hay and roses that came in out of the sunshine for Lizarann to get her share of them. She lay and listened to the bells, and wondered why the sound rose and fell, and decided at first that it was done for the purpose, and was the right way. But then, how did Nonconformity afar manage to do it so exactly like? For the Chapel tinkle rose and fell, too. Then came the footsteps on the garden-gravel; one big one, the Rector's, and many small ones. And Lizarann was so sorry she wasn't to go to Church, where it was her Sunday-wont, in these days, to drive a coach-and-six through the first Commandment, and worship Athelstan Taylor on his pulpit-altar in a heart-felt way, while admitting official obligations elsewhere.
But she couldn't go this time, and, what was more, she had to go on looking alive and lying quiet while Phœbe and Joan shouted good-byes up at the window, as though they were off to New Zealand; because, you see, Lizarann had solemnly promised, if they did so, not to shout back and make herself cough.
"She hardly coughed at all when I was with her," said the Rector, on his way to his weekly pièce de résistance—his Sunday sermon. "I can't help thinking Dr. Sidrophel may be making his fly out an elephant this time."
"Perhaps, dear! But the fly may become an elephant. He's really very clever, although you do make such game of him. You see, he was quite right about poor Gus."
"Ah, dear, dear!—yes. But then he says, if Gus got into a better climate, he might make old bones yet."
"So Gus will, by God's mercy, dear! But I mean, Dr. Pordage said—and I do not see that I am bound to call him out of his name—that in the end Gus would have to give in, and go. You see, he was right! Joan!"