nfernal
impudence to enter my room and nose about my desk?"

"Yes, _I_ have!" replied Quint excitedly. "I've been in your room. What
of it? What about it?"

Boomly permitted his heavy-lidded eyes to rest on Quint for a moment,
then, turning to me:

"I want a patent lock put on my door. Will you speak to Professor
Farrago?"

"I want one put on mine, too!" cried Quint. "I want a lock put on my door
which will keep envious, dull-minded, mentally broken-down, impertinent,
and fat people out of my office!"

Boomly flushed heavily:

"Fat?" he repeated, glaring at Quint. "Did you say 'fat?'"

"Yes, fat--intellectually and corporeally fat! I want that kind of
individual kept out. I don't trust them. I'm afraid of them. Their minds
are atrophied. They are unmoral, possibly even criminal! I don't want
them in my room snooping about to see what I have and what I'm doing. I
don't want them to sneak in, eaten up with jealousy and envy, and try to
damage the eggs of the Silver Moon butterfly because the honour and glory
of hatching them would probably procure for me the Carnegie Educational
Medal--"

"Why, you little, dried-up, protoplasmic atom!" burst out Boomly, his
face suffused with passion, "Are you insinuating that I have any designs
on your batch of eggs?"

"It's my belief," shouted Quint, "that you want that medal yourself, and
that you put an ichneumon fly in my breeding-cage in hopes it would sting
the eggs of the Silver Moon."

"If you found an ichneumon fly there," retorted Boomly, "you probably
hatched it in mistake for a butterfly!" And he burst into a peal of
contemptuous laughter, but his little, pig-like eyes under the heavy lids
were furious.

"I now believe," said Quint, trembling with rage, "that you have
criminally substituted a batch of common _Plexippus_ eggs for the Silver
Moon eggs I had in my breeding-cage! I believe you are sufficiently
abandoned to do it!"

"Ha! Ha!" retorted Boomly scornfully. "I don't believe you ever
had anything in your breeding-cage except a few clothes moths and
cockroaches!"

Quint began to dance:

"You _did_ take them!" he yelled; "and you left me a bunch of milkweed
butterflies' eggs! Give me my eggs or I shall violently assault you!"

"Assault your grandmother!" remarked Boomly, with unscientific brevity.
"What do you suppose I want of your ridiculous eggs? Haven't I enough
eggs of _Heliconius salome_ hatching to give me the Carnegie medal if
I want it?"