rescriptions. Only they don't do
you any good. ("Ungrateful child!"... "Well, they _don't_.") You see,
he hasn't any one to go to to ask about things except me. Of course
_I_ can tell him, if you come to that!"

"There's his mother."

"His mother! That old dianthus! Oh, mammy darling, what different
sorts of mothers do crop up when you think of it!" And Sally is so
moved by this scientific marvel that she suddenly kisses her mother,
there out on the public parade with a gentleman in check trousers
and an eye-glass coming along!

"Why do you call the old lady a dianthus, chick? Really, the way you
treat that poor old body!..."

"Not when Prosy's there. I know my place.... We-ell, you know what
a dianthus's figure is like? When the tentacles are in, I mean."

But Rosalind tacitly condemns the analogy. Is she not herself a
mother, and bound to take part with her kind, however obese? "What
were you and the doctor talking about in the boat all that long time
yesterday?" she asks, skipping an interval which might easily have
contained a review of Mrs. Vereker inside-out like a sea-anemone.
Sally is quite equal to it.

"Resuscitation after drowning. Prosy says death is really due to
carbonic acid poisoning. Anybody would think it was choking, but it's
nothing of the sort. The arterial blood is insufficiently fed with
oxygen, and death ensues."

"How long did you talk about that?"

"Ever so long. Till I asked him what he should do if a visitor were
drowned and couldn't be brought to. Not at the hotel; down here. Me,
for instance."

"What did he say?"

"He was jolly solemn over it, Prosy was. Said he should try his
best, and as soon as he was sure it was no go, put an end to his own
existence. I said that would be wrong, and besides, he couldn't do
it. He said, oh yes, he could--he could inject air into a vein, and
lots of things. He went on a physiological tack, so I quoted Hamlet."

"What did he make of Hamlet?"

"Said the researches of modern science all tended to prove that
extinction awaited us at death, and he would take his chance. He was
quite serious over it."

"And then you said?..."

"I said, suppose it turned out that modern science was tommy-rot,
wouldn't he feel like a fool when all was said and done? He admitted
that he might, in that case. But he would take his chance, he said.
And then we had a long argument, Prosy and I."

"Has he ever resuscitated a drowned person?"

"Oh yes, two or thre