“Hmm. Well, that’s fine”—the typewriter still clicked rapidly. “I suppose you’ll have them skinned at once?”
Bob and Joe could not help breaking out in laughter, and the naturalists joined them. Professor Bigelow looked up in surprise.
“I must confess I wish I could see something humorous,” he said, stopping his writing for a moment and looking at his companions in wonder.
The others were laughing all the harder now, and poor Professor Bigelow was bewildered beyond words. Only an explanation would satisfy him.
As soon as Mr. Holton could regain his breath he hastened to assure the professor that it was nothing about his person that caused the laugh, but only his intense scientific enthusiasm. He joined in the merriment also when the joke was told.
“That’s one on me,” he said mirthfully. “I guess I was too deeply engrossed in this manuscript.”
The remainder of that day was spent rather idly, for, hot as it had previously been, it seemed to grow all the more stifling. Bob remarked that he did not feel like doing anything but loafing, and the others were none different.
The next day Bob, Joe, and their fathers again started out on a collecting trip and added many new specimens to the already large assemblage. They brought in gorgeously colored macaws, screamers, woodpeckers, trumpeters, finfoots, waxbills, and many other birds. They shot many small animals, including a type of opossum, a large lizard, and an armadillo. It was indeed a large number of specimens that the naturalists prepared that night.
“So far, everything is working out fine,” smiled Mr. Lewis, as he put the fauna up for exhibition.
Meanwhile the chief, Otari, was helping Professor Bigelow as best he could and gave him several articles of daily use as a present, in return for which the professor gave the Indian beads and mirrors and other objects dear to all primitive people.