Danner, in some embarrassment, gulped a huge mouthful of meat. "Why not?" he said. "Look at the insects—the ants. Strength a hundred times our own. An ant can carry a large spider—yet an ant is tissue and fiber, like a man. If a man could be given the same sinews—he could walk off with his own house."
"Ha ha! There's a good one. Maybe you'll do it, Abednego."
"Possibly, possibly."
"And you would make a splendid piano-mover."
"Pianos! Pooh! Consider the grasshoppers. Make a man as strong as a grasshopper—and he'll be able to leap over a church. I tell you, there is something that determines the quality of every muscle and nerve. Find it—transplant it—and you have the solution."
Mirth overtook Professor Mudge in a series of paroxysms from which he emerged rubicund and witty. "Probably your grasshopper man will look like a grasshopper—more insect than man. At least, Danner, you have imagination."
"Few people have," Danner said, and considered that he had acquitted himself.
His wife interrupted at that point. "I think this nonsense has gone far enough. It is wicked to tamper with God's creatures. It is wicked to discuss such matters—especially on the Sabbath. Abednego, I wish you would give up your work in the laboratory."
Danner's cranium was overlarge and his neck small; but he stiffened it to hold himself in a posture of dignity. "Never."
His wife gazed from the defiant pose to the locked door visible through the parlour. She stirred angrily in her clothes and speared a morsel of food. "You'll be punished for it."