"Ahem!" said the Professor. "That's not starting badly."
"If you imply by that that we're to see more of each other——" began Stamford gallantly—and went crimson with wonder at the strange things his tongue was saying.
"Ahem again!" said the Professor slyly. "Isabel, I have always thought, has such a strange effect——"
"I'm sure Mr. Stamford has other uses for his time, Amos, and so have we." Isabel Bulkeley was blushing a little herself.
"I forgot," apologised the Professor. "This is strictly business. I'm here—we're here in the interests of the Smithsonian Institute. You may not suspect it, but you have history embedded in you—in the form of fossils that should have disappeared when your much-removed grandpa was scuttling through the tree-tops by his tail. I'm in hopes that the geanticlinal discoveries of my predecessors among the argillaceous cliffs of the Red Deer River will support my contention that somewhere the course of the river to the north of you may yield up the secrets of the Triassic, or at least the Jurassic stage of the Mesozoic period. Perhaps the Palæozoic. Who knows?"
"I confess I don't," said Stamford. "In fact, except that you seem to be using the language my mother taught me, I wouldn't know what you're talking about, were it not that I happen to be aware of the palæontological discoveries on the Red Deer. But that was three hundred miles west of here."
"I'm anxious to get beyond their tracks," said the Professor. "It was the New York fellows worked there—our deadly rivals. I contend that the Red Deer River did not in those days boast of circumscribed summer resorts. Why, a megatherium could lunch at Red Deer town and dine in Medicine Hat—at least the one I want to find could."
"And how can I help you?" asked Stamford.
"We don't know a thing—how we get there, where we can stay, what we can do."
"At last," sighed Stamford, "there's a tenderer tenderfoot than myself. For two long months I've been the baby of the Western family. Now I'm ousted from the cradle."