“Shut up,” says the perfessor, real quiet. “I'll tend to you in a minute or two. _You_ don't count for much. This thing is mostly between me and my wife.” When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that perfessor has got something into him beside science after all. Jane, she looks kind o' surprised herself. But she says nothing, except: “What are you going to do, Frederick?” And she laughs one of them mean kind of laughs, and looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a little more, and says: “What _can_ you do, Frederick?” Frederick, he says, not excited a bit: “There's quite a number of things I _could_ do that would look bad when they got into the newspapers. But it's none of them, unless one of you forces it on to me.” Then he says: “You _did_ want to see the children, Jane?” She nodded. “Jane,” he says, “can't you see I'm the better man?” The perfessor, he was woke up after all them years of scientifics, and he didn't want to see her go. “Look at him,” he says, pointing to the feller with the brown beard, “he's scared stiff right now.” Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been ketched that-a-way like Henry was, and the perfessor's voice sounding like you was chopping ice every time he spoke. I seen the perfessor didn't want to have no blood on the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making up his mind about something, too. Jane, she says: “_You_ a better man? _You?_ You think you've been a model husband just because you've never beaten me, don't you?” “No,” says the perfessor, “I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been a worse fool, maybe, than if I _had_ beaten you.” Then he turns to Henry and he says: “Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in the papers, doesn't it? Well, you just wait for me.” With which he gets up and trots out, and I heard him running down stairs to his labertory. Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane a-looking at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some kind of a strong action now to show Jane he is a great man. But he don't do it. And Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects it. And me, I'm getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, “What is that there perfessor up to now? Whatever it is, it ain't like no one else. He is looney, that perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too. I wonder if they is anyone that ain't looney sometimes? I been around the country a good 'eal, too, and seen and hearn of some awful remarkable things, and I never seen no one that wasn't more or less looney when the _search us the femm_ comes into the case. Which is a Dago word I got out'n a newspaper and it means: Who was the dead gent's lady friend?' And we all set and sweat and got the fidgets waiting fur that perfessor to come back.