“Of course you can hear it—I was just going to send for you. Johnnie, here’s a young man that’s going to take us to the South Pole to convert the heathen there, and provide ’em with homes and firesides. Mr. ——,” he glanced at my card, which he had kept in his hand all this time—“Mr. Nicholas Chase, my daughter, Miss Edith Gale, sometimes, by her daddy, called Johnnie, for short.”
Miss Gale held out her hand cordially. I took it with no feeling of hesitation that I can now recall. And it seemed to me that I would be willing to go right on holding a hand like that and let the South Pole discover itself, or remain lost through all eternity.
“I have been telling Mr. Chase,” Chauncey Gale began, when we were seated, “of our missionary-real-estate combine; how I provide outcast humanity with homes and firesides in this world, and how you look out for a home without too much fireside in it in the next; and how all the territory in this world seems to be pretty well covered in our line. Now he’s found for us, or is going to find, he says, a new world where we can do business on a big scale. Is that correct, Mr. Chase?”
I looked at Miss Gale, upon whose face there was an expression, half-aggrieved, half-mystified. For one thing, it was evident that, like myself, she could not be quite certain whether her father was altogether, or only partly, in jest. She beamed graciously on me, however, which was enough.
“Why, how fine that is,” she assented. “We have been wishing for some new thing to do, and some new where to go, but we never dreamed of a new world. If you can take us to one we will reward you—even to the half of our kingdom.”
“Poor trade,” said Gale. “Whole world for half a kingdom. Try again.”
“Oh, well, he shall have”—she hesitated, seeking a way out, then in frank confusion—“he shall name his reward, as they do in the story-books.”
I joined in the laugh. But my heart had grown strangely warm, and my pulses were set to a new measure. I had never fully believed in love at first sight till that moment.
“Tell us your scheme again, Chase,” commanded Gale.
The familiar form of his address stimulated me. I felt that I had known this robust man since the beginning of all things.