A Matter of Interest | Page 4

not to speak sarcastically. My output had rivaled that of "The Duchess"--in quantity, I mean.
"I seldom read--fiction," he said, looking restlessly at the hole in the ground.
Miss Holroyd came to my rescue.
"That was a charming story you wrote last," she said. "Papa should read it--you should, papa; it's all about a fossil."
We both looked narrowly at Miss Holroyd. Her smile was guileless.
"Fossils!" repeated the professor. "Do you care for fossils?"
"Very much," said I.
Now I am not perfectly sure what my object was in lying. I looked at Daisy Holroyd's dark- fringed eyes. They were very grave.
"Fossils," said I, "are my hobby."
I think Miss Holroyd winced a little at this. I did not care. I went on:
"I have seldom had the opportunity to study the subject, but, as a boy, I collected flint arrow- heads
"Flint arrow-heads!" said the professor coldly.
"Yes; they were the nearest things to fossils obtainable," I replied, marvelling at my own mendacity.
The professor looked into the hole. I also looked. I could see nothing in it. "He's digging for fossils," thought I to myself.
"Perhaps," said the professor cautiously, "you might wish to aid me in a little research-- that is to say, if you have an inclination for fossils." The double-entendre was not lost upon me.
"I have read all your books so eagerly," said I, "that to join you, to be of service to you in any research, however difficult and trying, would be an honour and a privilege that I never dared to hope for."
"That," thought I to myself, "will do its own work."
But the professor was still suspicious. How could he help it, when he remembered Jack's escapades, in which my name was always blended! Doubtless he was satisfied that my influence on Jack was evil. The contrary was the case, too.
"Fossils," he said, worrying the edges of the excavation with his spade, "fossils are not things to be lightly considered."
"No, indeed!" I protested.
"Fossils are the most interesting as well as puzzling things in the world," said he.
"They are!" I cried enthusiastically.
"But I am not looking for fossils," observed the professor mildly.
This was a facer. I looked at Daisy Holroyd. She bit her lip and fixed her eyes on the sea. Her eyes were wonderful eyes.
"Did you think I was digging for fossils in a salt meadow?" queried the professor. "You can have read very little about the subject. I am digging for something quite different."
I was silent. I knew that my face was a trifle flushed. I longed to say, "Well, what the devil are you digging for?" but I only stared into the hole as though hypnotized.
"Captain McPeek and Frisby ought to be here," he said, looking first at Daisy and then across the meadows.
I ached to ask him why he had subp?��naed Captain McPeek and Frisby.
"They are coming," said Daisy, shading her eyes. "Do you see the speck on the meadows?"
"It may be a mud hen," said the professor.
"Miss Holroyd is right," I said. "A wagon and team and two men are coming from the north. There is a dog beside the wagon--it's that miserable yellow dog of Frisby's."
"Good gracious!" cried the professor, "you don't mean to tell me that you see all that at such a distance?"
"Why not?" I said.
"I see nothing," he insisted.
"You will see that I'm right, presently," I laughed.
The professor removed his blue goggles and rubbed them, glancing obliquely at me.
"Haven't you heard what extraordinary eyesight duck shooters have?" said his daughter, looking back at her father. "Jack says that they can tell exactly what kind of a duck is flying before most people could see anything at all in the sky."
"It's true," I said; "it comes to anybody, I fancy, who has had practice."
The professor regarded me with a new interest. There was inspiration in his eyes. He turned toward the ocean. For a long time he stared at the tossing waves on the beach, then he looked far out to where the horizon met the sea.
"Are there any ducks out there?" he asked at last.
"Yes," said I, scanning the sea, "there are."
He produced a pair of binoculars from his coat-tail pocket, adjusted them, and raised them to his eyes.
"H'm! What sort of ducks?"
I looked more carefully, holding both hands over my forehead.
"Surf ducks--scoters and widgeon. There is one bufflehead among them--no, two; the rest are coots," I replied.
"This," cried the professor, "is most astonishing. I have good eyes, but I can't see a blessed thing without these binoculars!"
"It's not extraordinary," said I; "the surf ducks and coots any novice might recognise; the widgeon and buffleheads I should not have been able to name unless they had risen from the water. It is easy to tell any duck when it is flying, even though it looks no bigger than a black pin-point."
But the professor insisted that it was