He looked at her. "I am said to have some scholarly aptitude. I understand that's why I was chosen as an exchange professor. It does seem reasonable, doesn't it?"
She turned pink—a sign of embarrassment with these creatures, he had learned. "I didn't mean to—to question your ability, Professor. It's just that—well, you don't look like a professor."
"Indeed?" he said frostily. "And what do I look like, then?"
She turned even rosier. "Oh—I—I don't know exactly. It's just that—well...." And she fled.
He couldn't resist flicking his antennae forward to catch her sotto voce conversation with the co-pilot; it was so seldom you got the chance to learn what others were saying about you behind your back. "But I could hardly tell him he looks like a teddy bear, could I?"
"He probably doesn't even know what a teddy bear is."
"Perhaps I don't," Narli thought resentfully, "but I can guess."
With low cunning, the Terrestrials seemed to have ferreted out the identity of all his favorite dishes and kept serving them to him incessantly. By the time the ship made planetfall on Earth, he had gained ten grisbuts.
"Oh, well," he thought, "I suppose it's all just part of the regular diplomatic service. On Earth, I'll have to eat crude native foods, so I'll lose all the weight again."
President Purrington of North America came himself to meet Narli at the airfield because Narli was the first interplanetary exchange professor in history.