Then he waited, and after a moment was given audience with the Professor of Natural History.
“You wished to see me?” said the kindly voice of a kind-faced man, and Fibsy looked at him appraisingly.
“Yessir. Most important. And please, if you don’t want to tell me what I ask, don’t laugh at me, will you?”
“No, my lad, I rarely laugh at anything.”
The serious face of the speaker bore out this assertion, and Fibsy plunged at once into his subject.
“Is there a bug, sir, named something like Stephanotis?”
“Well, my child, there is the Scaphinotus. Do you mean that?”
“Oh, I guess I do! I think maybe, perhaps, most likely, that’s the trick! What sort of a bug is it?”
“It’s a beetle, a purplish black ground-beetle, of the genus Carabidæ,——”
“What! Say that again—please!”