blankly but I found Billings was
looking at me the same way.

Every once in a while he had been lifting the pajamas. He would cough
and open his mouth, but just then the professor would start off again.
Once Billings, with an awfully savage expression, shook his fist at our
visitor's back and danced up and down upon the rug.

"The indifference, not to say prejudice, of the public upon the matter
of human vivisection is heartrending," went on the professor sadly.
"Sir, I have advertised in the 'help wanted' columns of the daily press,
and have interviewed scores without arousing one spark of ambition or
awakening one thrill of gratitude over the opportunity offered to assist
me in the investigation of scientific phenomena. I pleaded, sir; I
reproached; I even showed them the demonstration upon the frog. Did I
move them? Were they affected, do you think?"

I shook my head sympathetically. Seemed the safe thing to do.

"A lot of pikers, by George!" said Billings with an air of indignation.
"Must have been shameless!"

"Deuced indifferent," I ventured. "I should have been regularly cut up."

"Ah! of course you would," cried the professor, lifting another pinch.
"There speaks the intelligent devotee of science! But did they see it
that way? Not at all, sir; they were only indifferent and
ungrateful--they were rude and--ah--boisterous! One savage primate
assaulted me with his bare knuckles. A blow, gentlemen, a blow from the
boasted family of anthropina!"

"Beastly outrage, Professor," growled Billings. "Leave it to me; I know
a chap who's got a pull with the police commissioner, and I'll just tip
him off, by George. It's no matter what family they are or how much they
boasted. It'll be the hurry wagon and the cooler for them, eh, Dicky?"

He gestured to me wildly, nodding his head like a man with the
what's-it-name dance.

"Deuced good idea. Awful rotters, I say," was my comment.

The professor seemed affected by our sympathy. He withdrew from his
pocket a folded handkerchief, slowly opened it and pressed it lightly to
each eye. Then he carefully refolded and replaced it.

"Strange thing, the persistence of the primitive emotions," he said,
sniffing thoughtfully. "Singular how they affect the lachrymal
_apparati_. Peculiarly disagreeable taste, gentlemen, that of tears,
despite their simple elementary composition--ninety-nine and six-tenths
per cent. water, you remember, and the rest a modicum of chloride of
sod