had peculiar theories, and one of them was, as he would tell you,
that if you overheard a remark apparently not intended for you,
you were to make yourself quite easy, as it was "a point of
predestination" that you should at that particular moment,
consciously or unconsciously, play the eavesdropper. The reason of
it would, he always averred, be explained to you later on in your
career. The well-known saying "listeners never hear any good of
themselves" was, he declared, a most ridiculous aphorism. "You
overhear persons talking and you listen. Very well. It may chance
that you hear yourself abused. What then? Nothing can be so good
for you as such abuse; the instruction given is twofold; it warns
you against foes whom you have perhaps considered friends, and it
tones down any overweening conceit you may have had concerning
your own importance or ability. Listen to everything if you are
wise--I always do. I am an old and practised listener. And I have
never listened in vain. All the information I have gained through
listening, though apparently at first disconnected and
unclassified, has fitted into my work like the stray pieces of a
puzzle, and has proved eminently useful. Wherever I am I always
keep my ears well open."

With such views as he thus entertained, life was always enormously
interesting to Dr. Dean--he found nothing tiresome, not even the
conversation of the type known as Noodle. The Noodle was as
curious a specimen of nature to him as the emu or the crocodile.
And as he turned up his intellectual little physiognomy to the
deep, warm Egyptian sky and inhaled the air sniffingly, as though
it were a monster scent-bottle just uncorked for his special
gratification, he smiled as he observed Muriel Chetwynd Lyle
standing entirely alone at the end of the terrace, attired as a