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to drink, she regarded his solicitude for distinction in learned
societies as an excellent substitute for the coarser form of depravity.
But any sort of living things in quantity, "wriggly" as they were bound
to be alive and "smelly" dead, she could not and would not abide. She
said these things were certain to be unhealthy, and Bensington was
notoriously a delicate man--it was nonsense to say he wasn't. And when
Bensington tried to make the enormous importance of this possible
discovery clear, she said that it was all very well, but if she
consented to his making everything nasty and unwholesome in the place
(and that was what it all came to) then she was certain he would be the
first to complain.
And Mr. Bensington went up and down the room, regardless of his corns,
and spoke to her quite firmly and angrily without the slightest effect.
He said that nothing ought to stand in the way of the Advancement of
Science, and she said that the Advancement of Science was one thing and
having a lot of tadpoles in a flat was another; he said that in Germany
it was an ascertained fact that a man with an idea like his would at
once have twenty thousand properly-fitted cubic feet of laboratory
placed at his disposal, and she said she was glad and always had been
glad that she was not a German; he said that it would make him famous
for ever, and she said it was much more likely to make him ill to have a
lot of tadpoles in a flat like theirs; he said he was master in his own
house, and she said that rather than wait on a lot of tadpoles she'd go
as matron to a school; and then he asked her to be reasonable, and she
asked him to be reasonable then and give up all this about tadpoles;
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