"You know," she said suddenly, putting down her fork and brushing back a tendril of dark, glossy hair, "you sure don’t look like a world-renowned anthropologist." She’d been studying him too; the thought was absurdly pleasing.

"I’m not a world-renowned anthropologist."

"Yes, you are. You told me; twice, at least. And you’re certainly the world’s best-known skeleton detective." This referred to an unfortunate label that had appeared in a magazine article about his identification of some human remains that had been buried for thirty years. The sobriquet had clung, and Gideon spent considerable effort among his colleagues at Northern California State University trying to live it down.

"Bite your tongue," he said. Then, after a moment:

"What’s a world-renowned anthropologist supposed to look like?"

"Not like you. He’s not supposed to be big and broad-shouldered, with a prizefighter’s nose and a beautiful, warm, hairy chest, and-"

"Hey, finish your tea," he said, ridiculously happy. "I think we’d better do some sightseeing."

They went back out into the venerable and bustling High Street with its pleasing jumble of old cottages, staid Georgian bow windows, ancient, lichen-stained church walls, and twentieth-century facades. Inside of an hour they’d visited the Thomas Hardy statue at Top o’Town, admired the remains of the Roman wall, crossed a stone bridge on which a notice informed them that it was off-limits to "locomotive traction engines and other ponderous carriages," and looked at various sites purported to be models for the settings in Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge.