If Professor Rayburn had continued along this interesting and fruitful line of conversation, all would have been well.

“But it came just like a clap of thunder in the sunshine,” said Prudence to Fairy dramatically, as they sat in their room talking things over that night.  “We were having a perfectly grand time, and I was just thinking he was as nice and interesting as if he didn’t know one thing to his name, when—­Crash!  That’s how it happened.”

Fairy wiped her eyes, and lay back weakly on the bed.  “Go on,” she urged.  “What happened?”

“He stopped right in the middle of a sentence about me, something real nice, too, that I was awfully interested in, and said, ’Look, Miss Starr!’ Then he got down on his knees and began cautiously scraping away the sticks and leaves.  Then he fished out the most horrible, woolly, many-legged little animal I ever saw in my life.  He said it was a giminythoraticus billyancibus, and he was as tickled over it as though he had just picked up a million-dollar diamond.  And what do you suppose the weird creature did with it?  He wrapped it in a couple of leaves, and put his handkerchief around it and put it in his pocket!—­Do you remember when we were eating by the creek, and I got jam on my fingers?  He offered me his handkerchief to wipe it off?  Do you remember how I shoved him away, and shuddered?  I saw you look reprovingly at me!  That’s why!  Do you suppose I could wipe my fingers with a handkerchief that had been in one of his pockets?”

“It wasn’t the one that had the giminy billibus, was it?”

“No, but goodness only knows what had been in this one,—­an alligator, maybe, or a snake.  He’s very fond of snakes.  He says some of them are so useful.  I try to be charitable, Fairy, and I believe I would give even Satan credit for any good there was in him,—­but it is too much to ask me to be fond of a man who is fond of snakes.  But that is not the worst.  He put the giminy thing in his pocket,—­his left pocket!  Then he came on walking with me, on my right side.  On my right side, Fairy, do you understand what that means?  It means that the giminy billibus, as you call it—­oh, I wouldn’t swear to the name, Fairy, I do not claim to be smart, but I know how it looked!  Well, anyhow, name and all, it was on the side next to me.  I stopped to look at a little stick, and switched around on the other side.  Then he stooped to look at a bunch of dirt, and got on the wrong side again.  Then I stopped, and then he did, and so we kept zig-zagging down the road.  A body would have thought we were drunk, I suppose.  Four times that man stopped to pick up some wriggling little animal, and four times he deposited his treasure in one of his various pockets.  Don’t ask why it is impossible for me to be friends with such a being,—­spare me that humiliation!”