house, shutting the heavy door with a hollow, echoing clang.

They had some hours to spend in Edinburgh, and got lunch in Princes
Street. It all seemed amazingly big and busy to Marcella, who could not
imagine the use of so many hundreds of people.

"I can't see what they're all here for, doctor," she said as they
sat at a very white and sparkling table in a deep window opposite
the Scott Monument, and the people went to and fro in the absorbed,
uncommunicative Edinburgh way. "They don't seem to be needed."

The doctor laughed.

"Wait till you see London," he said. "You'll wonder more then."

She got up from the table suddenly and stood in the window while the
doctor went on eating philosophically and smiling at her as he wished
he could go all the way to Australia with her and watch her growing
wonderment at the world.

"You know," she said doubtfully, "it seems so queer--all these people,
and then that monument. I don't see the connection, somehow."

"I see you standing there, and a lump of congealing mutton on your plate
here," said the doctor, and she sat down and ate a mouthful hurriedly.

"But what is the connection? What are they for?"

The doctor watched her in his precise way with his eyes twinkling at her
over his glasses, which he wore on the end of his nose.