He made Marley go with him to the McBriar House and then to Con’s Corner, and, in every place where men stopped him and shook Marley’s hand and asked him how he was getting along, Powell took the responsibility of replying promptly:
“Look at him; how does he seem to be getting along?”
Powell found a delight that must have been keener than Marley’s in Marley’s fidelity to Chicago, expressed quite in the boastful frankness of the citizens of that city when abroad, though to Marley it seemed that he was putting it on them by doing so. He found them all, however, in a spirit of loyalty to Macochee that might easily have become combative.
“Well, little old Macochee’s good enough for us, eh, Wade?” they would say.
Marley would not let them be ahead of him in praise of Macochee, and Powell himself softened enough to admit that old Ohio was a pretty good place to have come from.
When they suddenly encountered Carman in the street, Marley flushed with confusion, first for himself and then vicariously for Powell. But there was no escape from a situation that no doubt exaggerated itself to his sensitiveness, and he was soon allowing Carman to hold his hand in his right palm while with the other Carman solicitously held Marley’s left elbow, and transfixed him with that left eye which still refused to react to light and shade.
“Well, how are you?” asked Carman. “How are you, anyway?”
“Oh, I’m all right.”
“Guess you’re glad now I didn’t give you that job, eh?”
Marley could not look at Powell, but he hastened to say: