The beefy face, white mutton chop whiskers and bald head were as indelibly imprinted on my memory as the sunburn line that fenced his fiery face.
And _this_ was the frump's father, and it was for him she was scheming to make a home!
Instead, I lay down up in my room, wondering what Jenkins would think when he saw Foxy Grandpa a guest with me under this roof, and wondering also what I ought to do, or if I should do anything. I came to the conclusion finally that I wouldn't say anything for the present, for I had about all the complications I could carry.
Presently I went down to the living-room, where they were all assembled, and my heart leaped as I thought I detected a brightening in Frances' face as I entered.
Billings was waving the frump away with his fat hand. "Take it away," he said. "I hate bugs."
"But, Jacky," said the frump pleadingly, "I think it's a _phusiotus gloriosa_."
"I don't care if it's a giraffe," said Billings rudely.
But the professor was already across the room to the rescue.
"Ha! not a _gloriosa_," he said animatedly, as he snooped over the little greenish thing in the frump's hand. "Observe the shortened _prothorax_ and _mesothorax_ and--"
"And _metathorax_," chimed in the frump, her head close to his. "Hence--"
"It is a _phanaeus carnifex_," said the professor positively.
By Jove, it looked to me like what we used to call a dung beetle!
And then the two cranks went out in the sun with butterfly nets, and Frances and I drifted out to our pavilion overlooking the broad sweep of the Tappan Zee. As yet, her father had said nothing to me, but I knew that the blow might fall any moment. Only the arrival of the frump's father had so far saved me. And though I had gone right ahead violating his jolly injunction about Frances, I kept a sort of parole with him by avoiding any discussion of things that I knew would have interested my darling the most--that is, our love and our future. Later we took a drive through Sleepy Hollow and the Pocantico Hills. But though we grew better and better acquainted every minute, I couldn't help feeling devilish disappointed, for never once did she ever call me "Dicky." I wondered moodily whether her brother had told her yet of his plans for me.