The Journal of a Disappointed Man

On the rocks was a pretty flapper in a pink sunbonnet--also prawning in company of S----, the artist, who has sent her picture to the Royal Academy. They saw I was a naturalist, so my services were secured to pronounce my judgment on a "fish" she had caught. It was a Squid, "an odd little beast," in truth, as she said. "The same class of animal," I volunteered, "as the Cuttlefish and Octopus." "Does it sting?" "Oh, no!" "Well, it ought to with a face like that." She laughed merrily, and the bearded but youthful artist laughed too. "I don't know anything about these things," he said hopelessly. "Nor I," said the naturalist modestly. "I study fish." This was puzzling. "Fish?" What was a Squid then? ... The artist would stop now and then and raise his glasses at a passing ship, and Maud's face occasionally disappeared in the pink sunbonnet as she stooped over a pool to examine a seaweed or crab. She's a dear--and she gave me the Squid. What a merry little cuss! September 1. Went with Uncle to see a Wesleyan minister whose fame as a microscopist, according to Uncle, made it worth my while to visit him. As I expected, he was just a silly old man, a diatomaniac fond of pretty-pretty slides and not a scientific man at all. He lectures Bands of Hope on the Butterfly's Life History and hates his next-door neighbour, who is also a microscopist and incidentally a scientific man, because he interests himself in "parasites and those beastly things."