"I thank you from the bottom of my heart!" I cried; "—from the depths of a heart the emotions of which are entirely and exclusively of scientific origin!"
In the impulse of the moment I held out my hand; she laid hers in it with charming diffidence.
"Yours is the discovery," I said. "Yours shall be the glory. Fame shall crown you; and perhaps if there remains any reflected light in the form of a by-product, some modest and negligible little ray may chance to illuminate me."
Surprised and deeply moved by my eloquence, I bent over her hand and saluted it with my lips.
She thanked me. Her pretty face was rosy.
It appeared that she had three cows to milk, new-laid eggs to gather, and the construction of some fresh butter to be accomplished.
At the bars of the grassy pasture slope she dropped me a curtsey, declining very shyly to let me carry her lacteal paraphernalia.
So I continued on to the bungalow garden, where Blythe sat on a camp stool under a green umbrella, painting a picture of something or other.
"Mr. Blythe!" I cried, striving to subdue my enthusiasm. "The eyes of the scientific world are now open upon this house! The searchlight of Fame is about to be turned upon you—"
"I prefer privacy," he interrupted. "That's why I came here. I'll be obliged if you'll turn off that searchlight."