“Look here,” I suggested, “why not put a tank in here and let me do some of my diving stunts? It would be a novelty—there really doesn’t seem to be much to the show as it stands.”
“Say, I haven’t pulled a greenhorn into camp, have I?” inquired Mr. Dawlin with a good deal of tartness. “Show? Good gad! who ever said we wanted a show?”
I did not know what to say to that and so I did not answer.
“What do you think I would be doing, or the ‘prof’ would be doing, while the jethros were crowded around you? We wouldn’t be doing a thing in the line of the regular graft. The main idea of this concern is to get ’em in here where there’s nothing to take up their minds after they’ve had one look around the place. Then they begin to feel that they want to get something for their money. So the ‘prof’ hands ’em the dome dope—feels their bumps—and I feed ’em the gazara stuff. How many times have I got to tell you what this place is?”
“Oh, I’m wise,” I said, trying hard to look that way. “But of course I’m anxious to do all I can to help.”
“The zeal of youth! The zeal of youth!” prattled the professor. He seemed to me to be pretty much of an old fool. He had that smug, cooing way with him—all put on like the airs of a country undertaker. He came across to me before I could understand what he was about and stuck his thumb onto a spot on the top of my head and pressed with his forefinger a little lower down. “Yes, approbativeness well developed and conscientiousness—this where my finger—”
“Oh, shut up!” snorted Mr. Dawlin. “Don’t cry to put that stuff over among friends.”
“However,” the professor went on, continuing to fondle my head, “the development of the brain upward, forward, and backward, from the medulla—”
“Save it for the cud-wallopers, I tell you!”
“If this young man is going to have his say about me in front, I want him to know that the science of phrenology has a good exponent here,” said the professor.