Part 6 (2/2)

That afternoon in June I left my office in the Administration Building in Bronx Park and strolled out under the trees for a breath of air.

But the heat of the sun soon drove me to seek shelter under a little square arbor, a shady retreat covered with purple wistaria and honeysuckle. As I entered the arbor I noticed that there were three other people seated there--an elderly lady with masculine features and short hair, a younger lady sitting beside her, and, farther away, a rough-looking young man reading a book.

For a moment I had an indistinct impression of having met the elder lady somewhere, and under circ.u.mstances not entirely agreeable, but beyond a stony and indifferent glance she paid no attention to me. As for the younger lady, she did not look at me at all. She was very young, with pretty eyes, a ma.s.s of silky brown hair, and a skin as fresh as a rose which had just been rained on.

With that delicacy peculiar to lonely scientific bachelors, I modestly sat down beside the rough young man, although there was more room beside the younger lady. ”Some lazy loafer reading a penny dreadful,”

I thought, glancing at him, then at the t.i.tle of his book. Hearing me beside him, he turned around and blinked over his shabby shoulder, and the movement uncovered the page he had been silently conning. The volume in his hands was Darwin's famous monograph on the monodactyl.

He noticed the astonishment on my face and smiled uneasily, s.h.i.+fting the short clay pipe in his mouth.

”I guess,” he observed, ”that this here book is too much for me, mister.”

”It's rather technical,” I replied, smiling.

”Yes,” he said, in vague admiration; ”it's fierce, ain't it?”

After a silence I asked him if he would tell me why he had chosen Darwin as a literary pastime.

”Well,” he said, placidly, ”I was tryin' to read about annermals, but I'm up against a word-slinger this time all right. Now here's a gum-twister,” and he painfully spelled out m-o-n-o-d-a-c-t-y-l, breathing hard all the while.

”Monodactyl,” I said, ”means a single-toed creature.”

He turned the page with alacrity. ”Is that the beast he's talkin'

about?” he asked.

The ill.u.s.tration he pointed out was a wood-cut representing Darwin's reconstruction of the dingue from the fossil bones in the British Museum. It was a well-executed wood-cut, showing a dingue in the foreground and, to give scale, a mammoth in the middle distance.

”Yes,” I replied, ”that is the dingue.”

”I've seen one,” he observed, calmly.

I smiled and explained that the dingue had been extinct for some thousands of years.

”Oh, I guess not,” he replied, with cool optimism. Then he placed a grimy forefinger on the mammoth.

”I've seen them things, too,” he remarked.

Again I patiently pointed out his error, and suggested that he referred to the elephant.

”Elephant be blowed!” he replied, scornfully. ”I guess I know what I seen. An' I seen that there thing you call a dingue, too.”

Not wis.h.i.+ng to prolong a futile discussion, I remained silent. After a moment he wheeled around, removing his pipe from his hard mouth.

”Did you ever hear tell of Graham's Glacier?” he demanded.

<script>