The Unspeakable Perk. Samuel Hopkins Adams

them off!”

      “Wh—wh—why should I?”

      “So that you can see me better.”

      “I don't want to see you better.”

      “Yes, you do. I'm much more interesting than a scarab.”

      “But I know about scarabs and I don't know about—about—”

      “Girls. So one might suspect. Do you know what I'm doing, Mr. Beetle Man?”

      “N-n-no.”

      “I'm flirting with you. I never flirted with a scientific person before. It's awfully one-sided, difficult, uphill work.”

      This last was all but drowned out in his flood of panicky instructions, from which she disentangled such phrases as “first to left”—“dry river-bed-hundred-yards”—“dead tree—can't miss it.”

      “If you send me away now, I'll cry. Really, truly cry, this time.”

      “No, you won't! I mean I won't! I—I'll do anything! I'll talk! I'll make conversation! How old are you? That's what the Chinese ask. I used to have a Chinese cook, but he lost all my shirt studs, playing fan-tan. Can you play fan-tan? Two can't play, though. They have funny cards in this country, like the Spanish. Have you seen a bullfight yet? Don't do it. It's dull and brutal. The bull has no more chance than—than—”

      “Than an unprotected man with a conscienceless flirt, who falls on his neck and then threatens to submerge him in tears.”

      “Now you're beginning again!” he wailed. “What did you jump for, anyway?”

      “I slipped. An awful, red-eyed, scrambly fiend scared me—a real, live, hairy devilkin on stilts. He ran at me across the rock. Was that one of your pet scarabs, Mr. Beetle Man?”

      “That was a tarantula, I suppose, from the description.”

      “They're deadly, aren't they?”

      “Of course not. Unscientific nonsense. I'll go up and chase him off.”

      “Flying from perils that you know not of to more familiar dangers?” she taunted.

      “Well, you see, with the tarantula out of the way, there's no reason why you shouldn't—er—”

      “Go, and leave you in peace? What do you think of that for gallantry, Birdie?”

      The gay-feathered inquisitor had come quite near.

      “Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?” he queried, cocking his curious head.

      “He says he doesn't like me one little, wee, teeny bit, and he wishes I'd go home and stay there. And so I'm going, with my poor little feelings all hurted and ruffled up like anything.”

      “Nothing of the sort,” protested the badgered spectacle-wearer.

      “Then why such unseemly haste to make my path clear?”

      “I just thought that maybe you'd go back on the top of the rock, where you came from, and—and be a voice again. If you won't go, I will.”

      He made three jumps of it up the boulder, bearing a stick in his hand. Presently his face, preternaturally solemn and gnomish behind the goggles, protruded over the rim. The girl was sitting with her hands folded in her lap, contemplating the scenery as if she'd never had another interest in her life. Apparently she had forgotten his very existence.

      “Ahem!” he began nervously.

      “Ahem!” she retorted so promptly that he almost fell off his precarious perch. “Did you ring? Number, please.”

      “I wish I knew whether you were laughing at me or not,” he said ruefully.

      “When?”

      “All the time.”

      “I am. Your darkest suspicions are correct. Did you abolish my devilkin?”

      “I drove him back into his trapdoor home and put a rock over it.”

      “Why didn't you destroy him?”

      “Because I've appointed him guardian of the rock, with strict instructions to bite any one that ever comes there after this except you.”

      “Bravo! You're progressing. As soon as you're free from the blight of my regard, you become quite human. But I'll never come again.”

      “No, I suppose not,” he said dismally. “I shan't hear you again, unless, perhaps, the echoes have kept your voice to play with.”

      “Oh, oh! Is this the language of science? You know I almost think I should like to come—if I could. But I can't.”

      “Why not?”

      “Because we leave to-morrow.”

      “Not across to the southern coast? It isn't safe. Fever—”

      “No; by Puerto del Norte.”

      “There's no boat.”

      “Yes, there is. You can just see her funnel over that white slope. It's our yacht.”

      “And you think you are going in her to-morrow?”

      “Think? I know it.”

      “No,” he contradicted.

      “Yes,” she asserted, quite as concisely.

      “No,” he repeated. “You're mistaken.”

      “Don't be absurd. Why?”

      “Look out there, over that tree to the horizon.”

      “I'm looking.”

      “Do you see anything?”

      “Yes; a sort of little smudge.”

      “That's why.”

      “It's a very shadowy sort of why.”

      “There's substance enough under it.”

      “A riddle? I'll give it up.”

      “No; a bet. I'll bet you the treasures of my mountain-side. Orchids of gold and white and purple and pink, butterflies that dart on wings of fire opal—”

      “Beetles, to know which is to love them, and love but them forever,” she laughed. “And my side of the wager—what is that to be?”

      “That you will come to the rock day after to-morrow at this hour and stand on the top and be a voice again and talk to me.”

      “Done! Send your treasures to the pier, for you'll surely lose. And now take me to the road.”

      It was a single-file trail, and he walked in advance, silent as an Indian. As they emerged from a thicket into the highway, above the red-tiled city in its setting of emerald fields strung on the silver thread of the Santa Clara River, she turned and gave him her hand.

      “Be at your rock to-morrow, and when you see the yacht steam out, you'll know I'll be saying good-bye, and thank you for your mountain treasures. Send them to Miss Brewster, care of the yacht Polly. She's named after me. Is there anything the matter with my shoes?” she broke off to inquire solicitously.

      “Er—what? No.” He lifted his eyes, startled, and looked out across the quaint old city.

      “Then is there anything the matter with my face?”

      “Yes.”

      “Yes? Well, what?”

      “It's going to be hard to forget,” complained he of the goggles.

      “Then look away before it's too late,” she cried merrily; but her color deepened a little. “Good-bye, O friend of the lowly scarab!”