There were three men in the hotel office that Monday evening: Jared
Parker, the proprietor; Seth Wilber, town authority on all things past
and present; and John Fletcher, known in Collingsville as "The
Squire"--possibly because of his smattering of Blackstone; probably
because of his silk hat and five-thousand-dollar bank account. Each of
the three men eyed with unabashed curiosity the stranger in the doorway.
"Good-evening, gentlemen," began a deprecatory voice. "I--er--this is
the hotel?"
In a trice Jared Parker was behind the short counter.
"Certainly, sir. Room, sir?" he said suavely, pushing an open book and
a pen halfway across the counter.
"H'm, yes, I--I suppose so," murmured the stranger, as he hesitatingly
crossed the floor. "H'm; one must sleep, you know," he added, as he
examined the point of the pen.
"Certainly, sir, certainly," agreed Jared, whose face was somewhat
twisted in his endeavors to smile on the prospective guest and frown at
the two men winking and gesticulating over by the stove.
"H'm," murmured the stranger a third time, as he signed his name with
painstaking care. "There, that's settled! Now where shall I find
Professor Marvin, please?"
"Professor Marvin!" repeated Jared stupidly.
"Yes; Professor George Marvin," bowed the stranger.
"Why, there ain't no Professor Marvin, that I know of."
"Mebbe he means old Marvin's son," interposed Seth Wilber with a
chuckle.
The stranger turned inquiringly.
"His name's 'George,' all right," continued Seth, with another chuckle,
"but I never heard of his professin' anythin'--'nless 't was laziness."
The stranger's face showed a puzzled frown.
"Oh--but--I mean the man who discovered that ants and--"
"Good gorry!" interrupted Seth, with a groan. "If it's anythin' about
bugs an' snakes, he's yer man! Ain't he?" he added, turning to his
friends for confirmation.
Jared nodded, and Squire Fletcher cleared his throat.
"He's done nothing but play with bugs ever since he came into the
world," said the Squire ponderously. "A most unfortunate case of an
utterly worthless son born to honest, hard-working parents. He'll
bring up in the poor-house yet--or in a worse place. Only think of
it--a grown man spending his time flat on his stomach in the woods
counting ants' legs and bugs' eyes!"
"Oh, but--" The stranger stopped. The hotel-keeper had the floor.
"It began when he wa'n't more'n a baby. He pestered the life out of
his mother bringing snakes into the sittin'-room, and carrying worms in
his pockets. The poor woman was most mortified to death about it.
Why, once when the parson was there, George used his hat to catch
butterflies with--smashed it, too."
"Humph!" snapped the Squire. "The little beast filled one of my
overshoes once, to make a swimming-tank for his dirty little fish."
"They could n't do nothin' with him," chimed in Seth Wilber. "An' when
he was older, 'twas worse. If his father set him ter hoein' pertaters,
the little scamp would be found h'istin' up old rocks an' boards ter
see the critters under 'em crawl."
"Yes, but--" Again the stranger was silenced.
"And in school he did n't care nothing about 'rithmetic nor jography,"
interrupted Jared. "He was forever scarin' the teacher into fits
bringin' in spiders an' caterpillars, an' asking questions about 'em."
"Gorry! I guess ye can't tell me no news about George Marvin's
schoolin'," snarled Seth Wilber--"me, that's got a son Tim what was in
the same class with him. Why, once the teacher set 'em in the same
seat; but Tim could n't stand that--what with the worms an'
spiders--an' he kicked so hard the teacher swapped 'round."
"Yes; well--er--extraordinary, extraordinary--very!--so it is,"
murmured the stranger, backing toward the door. The next moment he was
out on the street asking the first person he met for the way to George
Marvin's.
On Tuesday night a second stranger stopped at the hotel and asked where
he could find Professor Marvin. Jared, Seth, and Squire Fletcher were
there as before; but this time their derisive stories--such as they
managed to tell--fell on deaf ears. The stranger signed his name with
a flourish, engaged his room, laughed good-naturedly at the three
men--and left them still talking.
On Wednesday two more strangers arrived, and on Thursday, another one.
All, with varying manner but unvarying promptitude, called for
Professor George Marvin.
Jared, Seth, and the Squire were dumfounded. Their mystification
culminated in one grand chorus of amazement when, on Friday, the Squire
came to the hotel hugging under his arm a daily newspaper.
"Just listen to this!" he blurted out, banging his paper down on the
desk and spreading it open with shaking hands. As he read, he ran his
finger down the column, singling out a phrase here and there, and
stumbling a little over unfamiliar words.
The recent ento-mo-logical discoveries of Professor George Marvin have
set the scientific world in a flurry. . . . Professor Marvin is now
unanimously conceded to be the greatest entomologist living. He knows
his Hex-a-poda and Myri-a-poda as the most of us know our
alphabet. . . . The humble home of the learned man has become a Mecca,
toward which both great and small of the scientific world are bending
eager steps. . . . The career of Marvin reads like a romance, and he
has fought his way to his present enviable position by sheer grit, and
ability, having had to combat with all the narrow criticism and
misconceptions usual in the case of a progressive thinker in a small
town. Indeed, it is said that even now his native village fails to
recognize the honor that is hers.
"Jehoshaphat!" exclaimed Seth Wilber faintly.
Fletcher folded the paper and brought his fist down hard upon it.
"There's more--a heap more," he cried excitedly.
"But how--what--" stammered Jared, whose wits were slow on untrodden
paths.
"It's old Marvin's son--don't you see?" interrupted Squire Fletcher
impatiently. "He 's big!--famous!"
"'Famous'! What for?"
"Zounds, man!--did n't you hear?" snarled the Squire. "He's a famous
entomologist. It's his bugs and spiders."
"Gosh!" ejaculated Jared, his hand seeking the bald spot on the back of
his head. "Who'd ever have thought it? Gorry! Let's have a look at
it." And he opened the paper and peered at the print with near-sighted
eyes.
It was on Monday, three days later, that Jared, Seth, and the Squire
were once more accosted in the hotel office by a man they did not know.
"Good-evening, gentlemen, I--"
"You don't even have to say it," cut in Jared, with a nourish of both
hands. "We know why you're here without your telling."
"An' you've come ter the right place, sir--the right place," declared
Seth Wilber, pompously. "What Professor Marvin don't know about bugs
an' spiders ain't wuth knowin'. I tell ye, sir, he's the biggest
entymollygist that there is ter be found."
"That he is," affirmed the Squire, with an indulgently superior smile
toward Wilber--"the very greatest _entomologist_ living," he corrected
carefully. "And no wonder, sir; he's studied bugs from babyhood.
_I've known him all his life--all his life, sir_, and I always said
he'd make his mark in the world."
"Oh, but--" began the stranger.
"'Member when he took the parson's hat to catch butterflies in?"
chuckled Jared, speaking to the Squire, but throwing furtive glances
toward the stranger to make sure of his attention. "Gorry--but he was
a cute one! Wish 't had been my hat. I 'd 'a' had it framed an'
labeled, an' hung up on the wall there."
"Yes, I remember," nodded the Squire; then he added with a complacent
smile: "The mischievous little lad used my overshoe for a fish-pond
once--I have that overshoe yet."
"Have ye now?" asked Seth Wilber enviously. "I want ter know! Well,
anyhow, my Tim, he went ter school with him, an' set in the same seat,"
continued Seth, turning toward the stranger. "Tim's got an old
writin'-book with one leaf all sp'iled 'cause one of young Marvin's
spiders got into the inkwell an' then did a cake-walk across the page.
Tim, he got a lickin' fur it then, but he says he would n't give up
that page now fur forty lickin's."
The stranger shifted from one foot to the other.
"Yes, yes," he began, "but--"
"You'd oughter seen him when old Marvin used ter send him put to hoe
pertaters," cut in Jared gleefully. "Gorry!--young as he was, he was
all bugs then. He was smart enough to know that there was lots of
curious critters under sticks an' stones that had laid still for a long
time. I tell yer, there wa'n't much that got away from his bright
eyes--except the pertaters!--he did n't bother them none."
A prolonged chuckle and a loud laugh greeted this sally. In the pause
that followed the stranger cleared his throat determinedly.
"See here, gentlemen," he began pompously, with more than a shade of
irritation in his voice. "_Will_ you allow me to speak? And _will_
you inform me what all this is about?"
"About? Why, it's about Professor George Marvin, to be sure," rejoined
Squire Fletcher. "Pray, what else should it be about?"
"I guess you know what it's about all right, stranger," chuckled Seth
Wilber, with a shrewd wink. "You can't fool us. Mebbe you're one o'
them fellers what thinks we don't know enough ter 'preciate a big man
when we've got him. No, sir-ree! We ain't that kind. Come, ye need
n't play off no longer. We know why you're here, an' we're glad ter
see ye, an' we're proud ter show ye the way ter our Professor's. Come
on--'t ain't fur."
The stranger drew back. His face grew red, then purple.
"I should like to know," he sputtered thickly, "I should like to know
if you really think that I--I have come 'way up here to see this old
bug man. Why, man alive, I never even heard of him!"
"What!" ejaculated three disbelieving voices, their owners too
dumfounded to take exceptions to the sneer in tone and words. "Zounds,
man!--what did you come for, then?" demanded the Squire.
The stranger raised his chin.
"See here, who do you think I am?" he demanded pompously, as he squared
himself before them in all his glory of checkered trousers, tall hat,
and flaunting watch-chain. "Who do you think I am? I am Theophilus
Augustus Smythe, sir, advance agent and head manager of the Kalamazoo
None-Like-It Salve Company. I came, sir, to make arrangements for
their arrival to-morrow morning. They show in this town to-morrow
night. Now perhaps you understand, sir, that my business is rather
more important than hunting up any old bug man that ever lived!" And
he strode to the desk and picked up the pen.
For a moment there was absolute silence; then Seth Wilber spoke.
"Well, by ginger!--you--you'd oughter have come ter see the Professor,
anyhow," he muttered, weakly, as he fell back in his chair. "Say,
Squire, 'member when Marvin--"
Over at the desk Theophilus Augustus Smythe crossed his _t_ with so
violent an energy that the pen sputtered and made two blots.