The professor stared now in turn, passed one hand across his forehead, stared again, and then said gravely—
“I say, you two, has this glorious news sent you both out of your minds?”
“No,” cried both heartily. “It only sounded so comical and so different from your ordinary way,” continued the younger man, “when you called my German friend a sausage.”
The professor’s face was so full of perplexity that in the reaction after the pain of the sudden good news, his friends began to laugh again, making the clever scientist turn his eyes inquiringly upon the doctor.
“Well, it’s a fact,” said the latter. “You did.”
“What!” cried the professor indignantly. “That I didn’t! I said that German gentleman was a fool.”
“No, no, no,” cried Frank, half hysterically. “You said sausage.”
“Frank, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, I do,” cried the young man. “Sausage, sausage, sausage.”
The professor drew lines horizontally across his forehead from his eyebrows to the roots of his hair, and shook his head slowly and piteously at the speaker.