“On behalf of my poor traduced features, I thank you humbly. Did they prove as bad as you feared?”
“Worse. I’ve hardly forgotten yet what you look like. Your kind of face is bad for business.”
“What is business?”
“Haven’t I told you? I’m a scientist.”
“Well, I’m a specimen. No beetle that crawls or creeps or hobbles, or does whatever beetles are supposed to do, shows any greater variation from type—I heard a man say that in a lecture once—than I do. Can’t I interest you in my case, O learned one? The proper study of mankind is—”
“Woman. Yes, I know all about that. But I’m a groundling.”
“Mr. Beetle Man,” she said, in a tremulous voice, “the rock is moving.”
“I don’t feel it. Though it might be a touch of earthquake. We have ’em often.”
“Not your rock. The tarantula rock, I mean.”
“Nonsense! A hundred tarantulas couldn’t stir it.”