"Do not interrupt, Mr. Pottle, if you please," said Mrs. Gallup severely. "I'm sure what Mr. Deeley says interests me immensely. Go on, Mr. Deeley."
"Thank you, Mrs. Gallup; thank you," said the brilliant conversationalist. "But don't you think alligators are more interesting than acids?"
"You know about so many interesting things," she smiled. Mr. Pottle's very soul began to curdle.
"Alligators are rather a specialty of mine," remarked Mr. Deeley. "Fascinating little brutes, I think. You know alligators, Mrs. Gallup?"
"Stuffed," said the lady.
"Ah, to be sure," he said. "Perhaps, then, you do not realize that the alligator is of the family Crocodilidœ and the order Eusuchia."
"No? You don't tell me?" Mrs. Gallup's tone was almost reverent.
"Yes," continued Mr. Deeley, in the voice of a lecturer, "there are two kinds of alligators—the lucius, found in the Mississippi; and the sinensis, in the Yang-tse-Kiang. It differs from the caiman by having a bony septum between its nostrils, and its ventral scutes are thinly, if at all, ossified. It is carnivorous and piscivorous——"
"How fascinating!" Mrs. Gallup had edged her chair nearer the speaker. "What does that mean?"
"It means," said Mr. Deeley, "that they eat corn and pigs."