A Matter of Interest | Page 4

unpleasant-looking mud. He glanced up as we approached, shading his
eyes with a sunburnt hand.
"Papa, dear," said Miss Holroyd, "here is Jack's friend, whom you
bailed out of Mazas."
The introduction was startling. I turned crimson with mortification. The
professor was very decent about it; he called me by name at once.
When he said this he looked at his spade. It was clear that he

considered me a nuisance and wished to go on with his digging.
"I suppose," he said, "you are still writing?"
"A little," I replied, trying 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 subpœnaed 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