“Generations of guinea pigs succeed each other in less than three months. In less than ten months, a pair of guinea pigs become great-grandfather and great-grandmother. In a few years, heredity could here do what a century of breeding horses could not. I treated a pair of young guinea pigs with the elixir. Their growth was wonderful. Their children inherited the size of their parents and to this the elixir added, and so on, cumulatively, for successive generations. I kept only a single pair out of each brood and disposed of that pair as soon as the next generation became grown. I did this partly because I could thus conduct my experiment with greater secrecy. Besides, after the guinea pigs were large enough, I found considerable profit in selling their hides for leather. Unfortunately, the animal is unfit for food. My labors, therefore, were bent upon creating a breed of draught animals, creatures greater than elephants and with the agility of guinea pigs. A team of these guinea pigs would outstrip the fastest horse, though hauling a load of tons. The hide, too, would be extremely valuable. I had at last reached a size beyond which I did not care to go. Ribot and his mate were twice the bulk of elephants. I was now ready to establish a herd. But alas! Two days ago, the mate died. All my labors were for nothing. I had only the one enormous male left. All the connecting links between him and the first small ancestors are gone. But worse. As is often the case with male elephants when the mate dies, Ribot went mad, ran amuck. Hitherto docile and kind, as is the nature of the Cavia cobaya, vulgarly called guinea pig, this evening Ribot became as you have seen him. I have lost my labors. Momentarily I expect to lose my life.”
“What’s the matter with it now? Look at it, look at it,” exclaimed Nora.
Ribot had rolled on his back and after giving a few feeble twitches of his great legs, remained without life, his legs pointing stiffly into the air.
“He is dead,” said Klingenspiel, and Nora was unable to tell whether relief and joy or regret and despair predominated in this utterance. “Ribot is dead. Our lives are saved, my experiment is ruined.”
Turning toward Nora and scrutinizing her attentively for the first time, he remarked, “How white your face is. The strain has been a dreadful one. It has driven all the color away from you.” And then letting his eyes wander over her person until they paused upon her hands resting in the moonlight upon the top of the sash, “and how green your hands are. What can it be? Paris green,” he said after a close examination. “It was that which killed Ribot.”
“I remember now. Father was sprinkling something on them. It is cabbage worm time.”
“I hope you will allow me to call,” said Klingenspiel, and Nora graciously assenting, he continued: “I admire your beauty, I admire your many admirable qualities of head and heart, but above all, your decision, your great decision.”
“Oh, I don’t think I showed much decision just because I threw the cabbage out.”
“I referred to your taking my ear and learning, out of its due order in the thesis I was expounding, what manner of beast Ribot was. Ribot killed two of my best African geese. They are, however, still fit for food. I am going to beg your acceptance of one.”
“We will have it for dinner to-morrow,” said Nora, “and you must come over.”