interest grew to such a pitch of quiet excitement that by the appointed day my stomach was fizzing with nerves We waited for him for two hours, Bessy harrumphing and tossing pots about in the kitchen, before we gave in and sat down to a ruined meal that I forced myself to eat If nothing else, I was obliged to Bessy for making the special effort She was already on the verge of giving notice once more, and certainly would if I refused to eat I would also not display disappointment to my sisters, though every bite was lead in my mouth The next day I did not seek him out, but nonetheless came upon William Buckland on the beach, for once without Mary He greeted me heartily, but when I mentioned being disappointed that we had not seen him the day before, he looked surprised “Was I meant to dine with you, Miss Philpot? Are you sure? Because, you see, yesterday I heard a man had found part of a long sequence of vertebrae down at Seatown, and I had to go and see for myself And you know, I’m glad I did, for they are well preserved and yet quite different from Mary’s creature’s vertebrae I am wondering if they might be from a different animal altogether.” Unrepentant at his social error, he also did not sense that I was upset To him it was perfectly normal that going to see a set of unusual vertebrae would take precedence over dining with ladies I said nothing but “Good day, sir,” and turned away It was then I understood that only a woman beautiful enough to distract him or patient enough to put up with him would manage to marry William Buckland I thought that was the end of my new regard for men I had never imagined there would be a Colonel Birch The summer Colonel Birch arrived in Lyme, Mary was in a peculiar state, pulled this way and that On the one hand, the creature she and Joseph had discovered had become quite famous Charles Konig bought the original specimen from Bullock’s and put it on display at the British Museum He named it an ichthyosaurus, which means “fish lizard”, for its anatomy falls somewhere between the two He and others studied it and published articles in which they speculated that the ichthyosaurus was a marine reptile, for it breathed in air like a mammal but swam like a fish I read these papers, lent to me by William Buckland, with great curiosity, noting that none of them discussed the thorny questions of extinction or God’s hand in the creature’s disappearance Indeed, they did not bring up religious issues at all Perhaps they were copying Cuvier, who never mentioned God’s intentions in his writings It was a relief to me to