they learn about germs, and how t' take out your appendix, and 'Is
marriage a failure?' and all that."

"Ye dumbfounder me, Mike Flannery," said Mrs. Muldoon. "Ye should have
been one of them professors yourself, what with all the knowledge ye
have. And ye think 't would be a good thing t' let th' little Frinchmin
come and take a room?"

"'T would be an honour to shake him by th' hand," said Mike Flannery,
and so the professor was admitted to the board and lodging of Mrs.
Muldoon.

The name of the professor who, after a short and unfruitful season at
Coney Island, took lodging with Mrs. Muldoon, was Jocolino. He had shown
his educated fleas in all the provinces of France, and in Paris itself,
but he made a mistake when he brought them to America.

The professor was a small man, and not talkative. He was, if anything,
inclined to be silently moody, for luck was against him. He put his
baggage in the small bedroom that Mrs. Muldoon allotted to him, and much
of the time he spent in New York. He had fellow countrymen there, and he
was trying to raise a loan, with which to buy a canvas booth in which to
show his educated insects. He received the friendly advances of Flannery
and the other boarders rather coldly. He refused to discuss his
specialty, or show Mike the toe of the left hind foot of a flea through
a telescope. When he remained at home after dinner he did not sit with
the other boarders on the porch, but walked up and down the walk,
smoking innumerable cigarettes, and thinking, and waving his hands in
mute conversations with himself.