“Nay, Ellen, you confer with a friend. Of the genus, homo, child?”
“Whatever else I may have had in view, I have not seen the vespertilio horribi—”
“Hush, Nelly, thy vivacity will betray us! Tell me, girl, have you not seen certain bipeds, called men, wandering about the prairies?”
“Surely. My uncle and his sons have been hunting the buffaloe, since the sun began to fall.”
“I must speak in the vernacular, to be comprehended. Ellen, I would say of the species, Kentucky.”
Though Ellen reddened like the rose, her blushes were concealed by the darkness. She hesitated an instant, and then summoned sufficient spirit to say, decidedly—
“If you wish to speak in parables, Doctor Battius, you must find another listener. Put your questions plainly in English, and I will answer them honestly in the same tongue.”
“I have been journeying in this desert, as thou knowest, Nelly, in quest of animals that have been hidden from the eyes of science, until now. Among others, I have discovered a primates, of the genus, homo; species, Kentucky; which I term, Paul—”
“Hist, for the sake of mercy!” said Ellen; “speak lower, Doctor, or we shall be ruined.”
“Hover; by profession a collector of the apes, or bee,” continued the other. “Do I use the vernacular now,—am I understood?”