“Wireless?” she asked quickly.

“No wireless on the island.  No.  This way you’ll just have to trust me for.”

“I’ll trust you for anything you say you can do.”

“But I don’t say I can.  I say only that I’ll try.”

“That’s enough for me.  Ready!  Now, brace yourself.  I’m coming down.”

“Wh—­why—­wait!  Can’t you send it down?”

“No.  Besides, you know you want to see me.  No use pretending, after last time.  Remember your verse now, and I’ll come slowly.”

Solemnly he began:—­

“Scarab, tarantula, neurop—­”
“‘Doodle-bug,’” she prompted severely.
“—­doodle-bug, flea,”—­

he concluded obediently.

“Scarab, tarantula, doodle-bug, flea. 
Scarab, tarantula, doodle—­”

“Oof!  I—­I—­didn’t think you’d be here so soon!”

He scrambled to his feet, hardly less palpitating than on the occasion of their first encounter.

“Hopeless!” she mourned.  “Incurable!  Wanted:  a miracle of St. Vitus.  Do stop nibbling your hat, and sit down.”

“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?”