lying in his arms looking up at the sky, where I counted four stars, when he asked, “What will you do with the money I have given your family, Mary?” “Pay off our debts and buy a new table.” Colonel Birch chuckled “That is very practical of you Will you not something for yourself?” “I suppose I could buy a new bonnet.” Mine had just been crushed under our coupling “What about something more ambitious?” I was silent “For example,” Colonel Birch continued, “you could move to a house with a bigger shop Up Broad Street, for example, to where there’s a good shop front, with a big window and more light in which to display your fossils That way you would get more trade.” “So you’re expecting me to keep on finding and selling curies, are you, sir? That I’ll never marry, but run a shop.” “I did not say that.” “It’s all right, sir I know I won’t marry No one wants someone like me for a wife.” “That is not what I meant, Mary You misunderstand me.” “Do I, sir?” I rolled off his shoulder and lay flat on the ground Even since we had been talking it seemed the sky had got darker, and more and more stars had joined the first scattering Colonel Birch sat up stiffly, for he was old, and lying on the ground must hurt him He looked down at me It was too dark to see his expression “I was thinking about your future as a fossil hunter, not as a wife There are many women—most women, in fact—who can be perfectly good wives But there is only one of you Do you know, when I set up the auction in London I met many people who professed to know a great deal about fossils: what they are, how they came to be here, what they mean But none of them knows even half of what you understand.” “Mr Buckland does And Henry De La Beche And what about Cuvier? They say that Frenchman knows more than any of us.” “That may be But the others don’t have the instinct for it that you do, Mary Your knowledge may be self-taught and come from experience rather than from books, but it is no less valuable for that You have spent a great deal of time with specimens; you have studied their anatomies and seen their variations and subtleties You recognise the uniqueness of the ichthyosaurus, for example, that it is not like anything we have ever imagined.” But I didn’t want to talk about me, or about curies There were so many