"Glad to see you, Venning. Sit down anywhere."
Compton sat down between the horns of a bleached buffalo skull, but Venning stood like one in a trance. His hand had been swallowed up by a huge palm and thick iron-like fingers, and he was staring down on a pair of the broadest shoulders he had seen, with an arching chest to match. This was the pigmy he had imagined—this man with the shoulders of a giant and the chest of a Hercules. Then his eyes ranged over the walls, gradually recovering their animation.
"Know 'em," said Mr. Hume, waving a bronzed hand towards the wall.
"I think so, sir."
"Just reel off the names."
Venning reeled off the names of a score or more of animals without hesitation, and Mr. Hume looked pleased.
"There are some men," he said, "who come in here and talk over me and round me and under me about fur and feather, and they can't tell a bighorn from a koodoo by the horns on the wall. Now, my friend, you knew those over there in the corner were the horns of a koodoo, but do you know his habits?"
"No, sir; but I spent a month watching a Dartmoor deer."
"A month! Can't learn anything in a month, boy; but you've struck the right book. The pages that are spread out under the sky hold the right teaching, for those who wish to learn about animals. There are writers who make a study of structure; they argue from bones, and classify; but bones don't tell us about the living flesh and blood. You take my meaning?"
"You make a difference between the structure of animals and their habits."