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Now here's a gum-twister," and he painfully spelled out m-o-n-o-d-a-c-t-y-l, breathing hard all the while. "Monodactyl," I said, "means a single-toed creature." He turned the page with alacrity. "Is that the beast he's talkin' about?" he asked. The illustration he pointed out was a wood-cut representing Darwin's reconstruction of the dingue from the fossil bones in the British Museum.
It has but a single toe!" "Bosh!" she retorted; "it's got four!" "Four!" I repeated, blankly. "Yes; one on each foot!" "Of course," I said; "you didn't suppose a monodactyl meant a beast with one leg and one toe!" But she laughed hatefully and declared it was a woodchuck. We squabbled for a while until I saw the significance of her attitude.
We were still mutely adoring the dingue when Professor Smawl burst into the tent at a hand-gallop, bawling hoarsely for her kodak and note-book. Dorothy seized her triumphantly by the arm and pointed at the dingue, which appeared to be frightened to death. "What!" cried Professor Smawl, scornfully; "that a dingue? Rubbish!" "Madam," I said, firmly, "it is a dingue! It's a monodactyl! See!
Hearing me beside him, he turned around and blinked over his shabby shoulder, and the movement uncovered the page he had been silently conning. The volume in his hands was Darwin's famous monograph on the monodactyl. He noticed the astonishment on my face and smiled uneasily, shifting the short clay pipe in his mouth. "I guess," he observed, "that this here book is too much for me, mister."
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