"What I say sir. I can't speak different, nor mean other."

"But can't you explain, Fancy?"

"Oh, Master Hennessey, the lives that have been wrecked, the homes that
have been broke up by explainings!"

Her eye seemed suddenly lit from within by some fever of sad, worldly
knowledge.

"Well, but--" the Prophet began.

"I know it, Master Hennessey, and I can't know other."

She sighed, and her gaze became fixed like that of a typhoid patient in
a dream.

"Them that knows other let them declare it," she ejaculated. "I
say again, as I did afore--the homes that have been broken up by
explainings!"

She tatted. The Prophet bowed before her decision and left the apartment
feeling rather hungry. Fancy Quinglet's crumbs were not always crumbs
of comfort. He resolved to apply again to Mr. Malkiel, and this time to
make the application in person. But before he did so he thought it
right to tell Mrs. Merillia, who was still steeped in bandages, of his
intention. He therefore went straight to her room from Fancy Quinglet's.
Mrs. Merillia was lying upon a couch reading a Russian novel. A cup of
tea stood beside her upon a table near a bowl of red and yellow tulips,
a canary was singing in its cage amid a shower of bird-seed, and "the