—­You mean friends, I suppose,—­he answered.—­I have correspondents, but I have no friends except this spider.  I live alone, except when I go to my subsection meetings; I get a box of insects now and then, and send a few beetles to coleopterists in other entomological districts; but science is exacting, and a man that wants to leave his record has not much time for friendship.  There is no great chance either for making friends among naturalists.  People that are at work on different things do not care a great deal for each other’s specialties, and people that work on the same thing are always afraid lest one should get ahead of the other, or steal some of his ideas before he has made them public.  There are none too many people you can trust in your laboratory.  I thought I had a friend once, but he watched me at work and stole the discovery of a new species from me, and, what is more, had it named after himself.  Since that time I have liked spiders better than men.  They are hungry and savage, but at any rate they spin their own webs out of their own insides.  I like very well to talk with gentlemen that play with my branch of entomology; I do not doubt it amused you, and if you want to see anything I can show you, I shall have no scruple in letting you see it.  I have never had any complaint to make of amatoors.

—­Upon my honor,—­I would hold my right hand up and take my Bible-oath, if it was not busy with the pen at this moment,—­I do not believe the Scarabee had the least idea in the world of the satire on the student of the Order of Things implied in his invitation to the “amatoor.”  As for the Master, he stood fire perfectly, as he always does; but the idea that he, who had worked a considerable part of several seasons at examining and preparing insects, who believed himself to have given a new tabanus to the catalogue of native diptera, the idea that he was playing with science, and might be trusted anywhere as a harmless amateur, from whom no expert could possibly fear any anticipation of his unpublished discoveries, went beyond anything set down in that book of his which contained so much of the strainings of his wisdom.

The poor little Scarabee began fidgeting round about this time, and uttering some half-audible words, apologetical, partly, and involving an allusion to refreshments.  As he spoke, he opened a small cupboard, and as he did so out bolted an uninvited tenant of the same, long in person, sable in hue, and swift of movement, on seeing which the Scarabee simply said, without emotion, blatta, but I, forgetting what was due to good manners, exclaimed cockroach!

We could not make up our minds to tax the Scarabee’s hospitality, already levied upon by the voracious articulate.  So we both alleged a state of utter repletion, and did not solve the mystery of the contents of the cupboard,—­not too luxurious, it may be conjectured, and yet kindly offered, so that we felt there was a moist filament of the social instinct running like a nerve through that exsiccated and almost anhydrous organism.