reached Dr. Skinner's.
    On their arrival first they had lunch, with Dr. and Mrs. Skinner; then Mrs.
Skinner took Christina over the bedrooms, and shewed her where her own dear
little boy was to sleep. Whatever men may think about the study of man, women do
really believe the noblest study for womankind to be woman, and Christina was
too much engrossed with Mrs. Skinner herself to pay much attention to anything
else; I daresay Mrs. Skinner, too, was taking pretty accurate stock of
Christina. Christina was charmed - as indeed she generally was with any new
acquaintance, for she found in them (and so must we all) something of the nature
of a cross. As for Mrs. Skinner, I imagine she had seen too many Christinas to
find much regeneration in the sample now before her; I believe her private
opinion echoed the dictum of a well-known headmaster who declared that all
parents were fools, but more especially mothers; she was, however, all smiles
and sweetness, and Christina devoured these graciously as tributes paid more
particularly to herself, and such as no other mother would have been at all
likely to have won.
    In the meantime Theobald and Ernest were with Dr. Skinner in Dr. Skinner's
library - the room where new boys were examined, and old ones had up for rebuke
or chastisement. If the walls of that room could speak what an amount of
blundering and capricious cruelty would they bear witness to!
    Like all houses, Dr. Skinner's had its peculiar smell. In this case the
prevailing odour was one of Russia leather, but along with it there was a
subordinate savour as of a chemist's shop. This came from a small laboratory in
one corner of the room - the possession of which, together with the free
chattery and smattery use of such words as carbonate, hyposulphite, phosphate,
and affinity, were enough to convince even the most skeptical that Dr. Skinner
had a profound knowledge of chemistry.
    I may say in passing that Dr. Skinner had dabbled in a great many other
things as well as chemistry. He was a man of many small knowledges, and each one
of them dangerous. I remember Alethæa Pontifex once said in her wicked way to
me, that Dr. Skinner put her in mind of the Bourbon princes on their return from
exile after the battle of Waterloo, only that he was their exact converse; for
whereas they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing, Dr. Skinner had learned
everything and forgotten everything. And this puts me in mind of another of