Tom had his whole face under water, and did not hear, till Elsley had repeated the question.
"Only a rare zoophyte," said he at last, lifting his dripping visage, and gasping for breath; and then he dived again.
"Inexplicable pedantry of science!" thought Elsley to himself, while Tom worked on steadfastly, and at last rose, and, taking out a phial from his basket, was about to deposit in it something invisible.
"Stay a moment; you really have roused my curiosity by your earnestness. May I see what it is for which you have taken so much trouble?"
Tom held out on his finger a piece of slimy crust the size of a halfpenny. Elsley could only shrug his shoulders.
"Nothing to you, sir, I doubt not; but worth a guinea to me, even if it be only to mount bits of it as microscopic objects."
"So you mingle business with science?" said Elsley, rather in a contemptuous tone.
"Why not? I must live, and my father too; and it is as honest a way of making money as any other: I poach in no man's manor for my game."
"But what is your game! What possible attraction in that bit of dirt can make men spend their money on it?"
"You shall see," said Tom, dropping it into the phial of salt water, and offering it to Elsley, with his pocket magnifier.