. I shall speak of the
recurrences of memory that come to me, as too confused for repetition.
I shall tell lies about them if I think it politic. Because I can't
have Rosey made miserable on any terms. As for the chick, you'll have
to manage the best you can."

"I'll do my best," the doctor says, without a particle of confidence
in his voice. "But about yourself, Fenwick?"

"I shall do very well, as long as I can have a chat with you now and
again. You've no idea what a lot of good it has done me, this talking
to you. And, of course, I haven't told you one-tenth of the things
I remember. There was one thing I wanted to say though just now, and
we got off the line--what was it now? Oh, I know, about my name. It
wasn't really Harrisson."

"Not really Harrisson? What was it then?" What next, and next?--is
the import of the speaker's face.

"I'll be hanged if I know! But it's true, rum as it seems. I know I
knew it wasn't Harrisson every time I signed a cheque in America. But
as for what it _was_, that all belongs to the dim time before. Isn't
that them coming to meet us?"

Yes, it was. And there was something else also the doctor had had it
on his tongue to say, and it had got away on a siding. But it didn't
matter--it was only about whether the return of memory had or had not
been due to the galvanic battery on the pier.

CHAPTER XXXVII

OF THE DOCTOR'S CAUTIOUS RESERVE, AND MRS. FENWICK'S STRONG COMMON-SENSE.
AND OF A LADY AT BUDA-PESTH. HOW HARRISSON WAS ONLY PAST FORGOTTEN
NEWSPAPERS TO DR. VEREKER. OF THE OCTOPUS'S PULSE, HOW THE HABERDASHER'S
BRIDE WOULD TRY ON AT TWO GUAS. A WEEK, AND OF A PLEASANT WALK BACK
FROM THE RAILWAY STATION

"You never mean to say you've been in the water?"

It was quite clear, from the bluish finger-tips of the gloveless
merpussy--for at St. Sennans sixes are not _de rigueur_ in the
morning--that she _has_ been in, and has only just come out. But
Fenwick, who asked the question, grasped a handful of loose black hair
for confirmation, and found it wet.

"Haven't I?" says the incorrigible one. "And you should have heard the
rumpus over getting a machine down."

"She's a selfish little monkey," her mother says, but forgivingly,
too. "She'll drown herself, and not care a penny about all the trouble
she gives." You see, Rosalind wouldn't throw her words into this
callous form if she was really thinking about the merpussy. But just
now she is too anxious about Gerr