They had some hours to spend in Edinburgh, and got lunch in Princes Street.  It all seemed amazingly big and busy to Marcella, who could not imagine the use of so many hundreds of people.

“I can’t see what they’re all here for, doctor,” she said as they sat at a very white and sparkling table in a deep window opposite the Scott Monument, and the people went to and fro in the absorbed, uncommunicative Edinburgh way.  “They don’t seem to be needed.”

The doctor laughed.

“Wait till you see London,” he said.  “You’ll wonder more then.”

She got up from the table suddenly and stood in the window while the doctor went on eating philosophically and smiling at her as he wished he could go all the way to Australia with her and watch her growing wonderment at the world.

“You know,” she said doubtfully, “it seems so queer—­all these people, and then that monument.  I don’t see the connection, somehow.”

“I see you standing there, and a lump of congealing mutton on your plate here,” said the doctor, and she sat down and ate a mouthful hurriedly.

“But what is the connection?  What are they for?”

The doctor watched her in his precise way with his eyes twinkling at her over his glasses, which he wore on the end of his nose.

“I thought you were such a learned biologist, Marcella.  Kraill would tell you they were the caskets of questing cells—­seeking about for complementary cells that some day will themselves become the caskets of cells.”

“Ugh!  That reminds me of all the clouds of flies on the dead fish in summer,” she said, pushing her plate away.  “Flies—­then maggots.”

“Exactly!” said the doctor, chuckling.

“But—­” she began, and broke off, frowning.

“Don’t you see any connection between all yon little people and the monument, though?  A crawling mass of folks—­and one or two stand out.  The others show they realize how these big ones stand out by making monuments for them.  It infers, I think, that they’d all like to tower if they could.”

“Ah, that’s better.  But so few tower.”

“And that, Marcella, is just what I told you yon day we drove to Pitleathy.  They’re all patched—­or I should say we’re all patched.  Either bodily, mentally or spiritually there are holes torn in us, and we’ve to be so busy patching them up from collapsing that we’ve no time to grow.  As time goes on and we learn better there’ll be less patching.  There’ll be more growing up tall and straight—­everyone—­there’ll be giants in those days, Marcella.”

“Yes,” she said slowly, and saw herself as one of them some day as she drew on her gloves rather awkwardly, for they were the first pair she had ever possessed.  “Oh, well—­I’m not going to be patched at all, doctor.  I simply won’t have things tearing holes in me.”

London, of course, was even more amazing than Edinburgh.  They had a day to spend there, and the doctor took her to Regent Street and Bond Street in the morning.  He was enjoying himself in a melancholy sort of fashion.  Marcella was tabula rasa.  It was interesting to watch the impressions registered on her surface.