"It's hard to explain," I turned again to the negative, feeling too serious for his asinine humor. "But I'll honestly try to before night. This girl needs me. I don't know why or how, but she does. What's more, I'm going to find her. It's the most unheard-of situation, old man."
"I'd be ashamed to belittle a situation like this by the mere term 'unheard-of,'" he now laughed outright. "Anyhow, she doesn't need you at present quite as much as you need scientific attention—and I hear the professor moving around!"
Stepping to the companionway door he bawled some nonsense to our guest about bringing up his medicine chest and a rope, then turned back to me.
"You see, Jack, I consider this to be serious. As long as I've known you that lady in the porthole is the first female you've ever thought of with any sign of, what I might call, ardeur. Where you met her is your business, but how you're going to get her must naturally concern us all. Hence Monsieur to consult with!"
We could hear Monsieur's grunts and wheezes before he appeared, and on catching sight of me he actually skipped to us. It was a grotesque exhibition that made me burst out laughing. His hair was tousled, his eyes were half closed, and he looked about as much like a scrambled egg as anything I could think of.
"We lost you last night," he cried. "You ran away from us?"
"He was poisoned," Tommy blandly answered, "and now his heart's kind of upside-down and twisty."
"Upside-down and twisty?" he gasped.
"Tommy doesn't mean it's anything dangerous, just an affection; a kind of—a kind of——"
"A kind of affectionate affection," Tommy put in. "You see, he was stung there, and it itches, and he can't scratch it."