“My dear George, don’t be so peppery,” said his wife, with her hand on the black mane that drooped over the microscope.  “What can it matter whether the amoeba is alive or not?”

“It matters a great deal,” said Challenger gruffly.

“Well, let’s hear about it,” said Lord John with a good-humoured smile.  “We may as well talk about that as anything else.  If you think I’ve been too off-hand with the thing, or hurt its feelin’s in any way, I’ll apologize.”

“For my part,” remarked Summerlee in his creaky, argumentative voice, “I can’t see why you should attach such importance to the creature being alive.  It is in the same atmosphere as ourselves, so naturally the poison does not act upon it.  If it were outside of this room it would be dead, like all other animal life.”

“Your remarks, my good Summerlee,” said Challenger with enormous condescension (oh, if I could paint that over-bearing, arrogant face in the vivid circle of reflection from the microscope mirror!)—­“your remarks show that you imperfectly appreciate the situation.  This specimen was mounted yesterday and is hermetically sealed.  None of our oxygen can reach it.  But the ether, of course, has penetrated to it, as to every other point upon the universe.  Therefore, it has survived the poison.  Hence, we may argue that every amoeba outside this room, instead of being dead, as you have erroneously stated, has really survived the catastrophe.”

“Well, even now I don’t feel inclined to hip-hurrah about it,” said Lord John.  “What does it matter?”

“It just matters this, that the world is a living instead of a dead one.  If you had the scientific imagination, you would cast your mind forward from this one fact, and you would see some few millions of years hence—­a mere passing moment in the enormous flux of the ages—­the whole world teeming once more with the animal and human life which will spring from this tiny root.  You have seen a prairie fire where the flames have swept every trace of grass or plant from the surface of the earth and left only a blackened waste.  You would think that it must be forever desert.  Yet the roots of growth have been left behind, and when you pass the place a few years hence you can no longer tell where the black scars used to be.  Here in this tiny creature are the roots of growth of the animal world, and by its inherent development, and evolution, it will surely in time remove every trace of this incomparable crisis in which we are now involved.”

“Dooced interestin’!” said Lord John, lounging across and looking through the microscope.  “Funny little chap to hang number one among the family portraits.  Got a fine big shirt-stud on him!”

“The dark object is his nucleus,” said Challenger with the air of a nurse teaching letters to a baby.

“Well, we needn’t feel lonely,” said Lord John laughing.  “There’s somebody livin’ besides us on the earth.”