ust going to take off my hat," and she left the room, followed by
the astonishingly transfigured spinster.

She returned almost immediately as Mr. Bellingham was in the midst of a
profound yawn, and sat down to her frugal meal, when her father
mystified me considerably by remarking:

"You're late to-night, chick. Have the Shepherd Kings been giving
trouble?"

"No," she replied; "but I thought I might as well get them done. So I
dropped in at the Ormond Street library on my way home and finished
them."

"Then they are ready for stuffing now?"

"Yes." As she answered she caught my astonished eye (for a stuffed
Shepherd King is undoubtedly a somewhat surprising phenomenon) and
laughed softly.

"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----"

"And didn't know anything about him," interrupted Mr. Bellingham, "and
got tripped up by a specialist who did, and then got shirty----"

"Nothing of the kind," said Miss