“I don’t think it’s as bad as it was,” he murmured, obeying. “One gets accustomed to you.” “One gets accustomed to anything in time, even the eccentricities of one’s friends.” “Do you think I’m eccentric?” “Do I think—Have you ever known any one who didn’t think you eccentric?” Upon this he pondered solemnly. “It’s so long since I’ve stopped to consider what people think of me. One hasn’t time, you know.” “Then one is unhuman. _I_ have time.” “Of course. But you haven’t anything else to do.” As this was quite true, she naturally felt annoyed. “Knowing as you do all the secrets of my inner life,” she observed sarcastically, “of course you are in a position to judge.” Her own words recalled Carroll’s charge, and though, with the subject of them before her, it seemed ridiculously impossible, yet the spirit of mischief, ever hovering about her like an attendant sprite, descended and took possession of her speech. She assumed a severely judicial expression. “Mr. Beetle Man, will you lay your hand upon your microscope, or whatever else scientists make oath upon, and answer fully and truly the question about to be put to you?” “As I hope for a blessed release from this abode of lunacy, I will.” “Mr. Beetle Man, have you got an awful secret in your life?” So sharply did he start that the heavy goggles slipped a fraction of an inch along his nose, the first time she had ever seen them in any degree misplaced. She was herself sensibly discountenanced by his perturbation. “Why do you ask that?” he demanded. “Natural interest in a friend,” she answered lightly, but with growing wonder. “I think you’d be altogether irresistible if you were a pirate or a smuggler or a revolutionary. The romantic spirit could lurk so securely behind those gloomy soul-screens that you wear. What do you keep back of them, O dark and shrouded beetle man?” “My eyes,” he grunted. “Basilisk eyes, I’m sure. And what behind the eyes?” “My thoughts.” “You certainly keep them securely. No intruders allowed. But you haven’t answered my question. Have you ever murdered any one in cold blood? Or are you a married man trifling with the affections of poor little me?” “You shall know all,” he began, in the leisurely tone of one who commences a long narrative. “My parents were honest, but poor. At the age of three years and four months, a maternal uncle, who, having been a proofreader of Abyssinian dialect stories for a ladies’ magazine, was considered a literary prophet, foretold that I—” “Help! Wait! Stop!— “‘Oh, skip your dear uncle!’ the bellman exclaimed, And impatiently tinkled his bell.” Her companion promptly capped her verse:— “‘I skip forty years,’ said the baker in tears,”— “You can’t,” she objected. “If you skipped half that, I don’t believe it would leave you much.” “When one is giving one’s life history by request,” he began, with dignity, “interruptions—”