The Signature of All Things

have seen carnival mules that can be taught to count.”
    “As have I,” Prudence replied, again in that same pale, unruffled tone. “But I have never yet encountered a carnival mule, sir, that could be taught to calculate leap years.”
    Professor Peck started a bit at this bold comment, but then nodded curtly and carried on. “Very well, then. To answer your question, there are idiot individuals, and even savant individuals, to be found within every species. Such is not the norm, however, in either direction. I have been collecting and measuring the skulls of white men and Negroes for years, and my research thus far concludes without question that the white man’s skull, when filled with water, holds on average four more ounces than the skull of the Negro—thus proving greater intellectual capacity.”
    “I wonder,” Prudence said mildly, “what might have happened if you’d attempted to pour knowledge into the skull of a living Negro, rather than water into the skull of a dead one?”
    The table fell into rigid silence. George Hawkes had not yet spoken this evening and clearly he was not about to begin now. Arthur Dixon was doing an excellent imitation of a corpse. Professor Peck’s face had taken on a distinctly purplish hue. Prudence, who, as ever, looked porcelain and unimpeachable, waited for a response. Henry stared at his adopted daughter with the beginnings of astonishment, yet for some reason elected not to speak—perhaps feeling too sickly to engage directly, or perhaps simply curious to see where this most unexpected conversation would lead next. Alma, likewise, contributed nothing. Frankly, Alma had nothing to add. Never hadshe found herself with so little to say, and never had Prudence been so loquacious. So the duty fell to Beatrix to put words back upon the dinner table, and she did so with her typical stalwart sense of Dutch responsibility.
    “I would be fascinated, Professor Peck,” Beatrix said, “to see the research you mentioned earlier, about the varietal difference in head lice and intestinal parasites, between the Negro and the white man. Perhaps you have the documentation with you? I would enjoy looking it over. Biology at the parasitic level is most compelling to me.”
    “I do not carry the documentation with me, madam,” the professor said, pulling himself back slowly toward dignity. “Nor do I need it. Documentation in this case is not necessary. The differentiation in head lice and intestinal parasites between Negroes and the white man is a well-known fact.”
    It was almost not to be believed, but Prudence spoke again.
    “What a pity,” she murmured, cool as marble. “Forgive us, sir, but in this household we are never permitted to rest upon the assumption that any fact is well known enough to evade the necessity of accurate documentation.”
    Henry—sick and weary as he was—exploded into laughter.
    “And that , sir,” he boomed at the professor, “is a well-known fact!”
    Beatrix, as though none of this was occurring, turned her attention to the butler and said, “It seems we are now ready for the pudding.”
----
    T heir guests were meant to have stayed the night at White Acre, but Professor Peck, flummoxed and irritated, elected instead to take his carriage back to the city, announcing that he would prefer to stay in a downtown hotel and start his arduous journey back to Princeton the next day at dawn. Nobody was sorry to see him go. George Hawkes requested if he might share the carriage back to the center of Philadelphia with Professor Peck, and the scholar gruffly agreed. But before George departed, he asked if he might have a brief moment alone with Alma and Prudence. He had scarcely spoken a word this evening, but now he wanted to say something—and he wanted, apparently, to say it to both girls. So the three of them—Alma, Prudence, and George—all stepped into the drawing room together, while the others milled about in the atrium, gathering up cloaks and parcels.
    George directed his comments to Alma, after receiving an almost imperceptible nod from Prudence.
    “Miss Whittaker,” he said, “your sister tells me that you have written, merely to satisfy your own curiosity, a most interesting paper on the Monotropa plant. If you’re not too weary, I wonder if you might share with me your central findings?”
    Alma was puzzled. This was an odd request, and at such an odd time of day. “Surely you are too weary to speak of my botanical hobbies