"My wife, of course. You must remember her—she made your breakfast when you arrived."
"Didn't make my breakfast. Made my own breakfast. And you said you weren't married!"
"Now you're being silly, Mr. Gallagher. I've been married for twenty-five years and I know how futile it is to deny it. I couldn't have said any such thing."
"Name's not Gallagher—it's McCarthy, Gooseneck McCarthy," the tramp told him querulously. "What's happened here? You can't even remember my last name now, let alone my first, you change your own name, you shave your head, you get married in a hurry and—and you try 'n tell me that I let some female woman cook my breakfast when I can rassle up a better-tastin', better-eatin'—"
"Hold it!" The little man had approached and was plucking at his sleeve eagerly. "Hold it, Mr. Gallagher or Gooseneck or whatever your name is. Suppose you tell me exactly what you consider this place to have been like before you left."
Gooseneck told him. "And that thingumajig was layin' on that whatchamacallit instead of under it," he finished lamely.
The professor thought. "And all you did—when you went back into the past—was to move a rock?"
"That's all. One hell of a big centipede jumped out, but I didn't touch it. Just moved the rock and headed back like you said."
"Yes, of course. H'mmm. That may have been it. The centipede jumping out of the rock may have altered subsequent events sufficiently to make me a married man instead of a blissful single one, to have changed my name from Ruddle to Guggles. Or the rock itself. Such an intrinsically simple act as moving the rock must have had much larger consequences than I had imagined. Just think, if that rock had not been moved, I might not be married! Gallagher—"
"McCarthy," the tramp corrected resignedly.