"Yes, truly. Doctor Metcalf, let me introduce my husband, Mr. Wildey."
They shook hands on my shoulder—but I didn't mind a little thing like that.
"On your honeymoon, eh?" chuckled the Doctor, amiably. The other big man grew red to his hair, and the lady's black ringlets danced up and down.
"Now, now, Doctor," chided she, shaking a finger at him,—she was at least fifty,—"no teasing. No steamer serenades, you know. I was on an Alaskan steamer once, and they pinned red satin hearts all over a bride's stateroom door. Just fancy getting up some morning and finding my stateroom door covered with red satin hearts!"
"I can smell mackerel," said a shrill tenor behind me; and alas! so could I. If there be anything that I like the smell of less than a mackerel, it is an Esquimau hut only.
Somebody sniffed delightedly.
"Fried, too," said a happy voice. "Can't you squeeze down closer to the stairway?"
Almost at once the big man behind me was tipped forward into the big man in front of me—and, as a mere incident in passing, of course, into me as well. We all went tipping and bobbing and clutching toward the stairway.
Life does not hold many half-hours so rich and so full as the one that followed. As a revelation of the baser side of human nature, it was precious.
My friend was tall; and once, far down the saloon, I caught a glimpse of her handsome, well-carried head as the mob parted for an instant. The expression on her face was like that on the face of the Princess de Lamballe when Lorado Taft has finished with her.