"And yet Collins can't ride worth a cuss," contributed Moriarty confidentially. "He's just dropped to this fellow's style. Boss wanted to see him on our Satan, but Collins knew a thundering sight better."
A slight, loose-built lad, with a spur trailing at his right heel, advanced from the group.
"Would you mind lettin' me take the feather-edge off o' this feller?" he asked modestly. "If he slings me, you can git on-to him while he's warm, an' no harm done. I'd like to try that saddle," he added, by way of excuse. "Minds me o' one I got shook, five months ago, with a redheaded galoot I'd bin treatin' like a brother, on account of him bein' fly-blowed, an' the both of us travellin' the same road. Best shape saddle I ever had a leg over, that was. Will I have a try?"
"Not worth while, Jack," I replied. "He might prop a little, certainly; but it's only playfulness." So I swung into the deep seat of the stolen saddle, and lightly touched the lotus-loving Memphian with both spurs.
First, a reeling, dancing, uncertain panorama of buildings, fences, and spectators; then a mechanical response to the surging, jerking, concussive saddle, and a guarded strain on the dragging reins. Also a tranquil cognisance of favourable comment, exchanged by competent judges— no excitement, no admiration, remember; not a trace of new-chum interest, but a certain dignified and judicious approbation, honourable alike to critic and artist. Fools admire, but men of wit approve.
"You see, it's—only playfulness—I remarked indifferently; the words being punctuated by necessity, rather than by choice. Magnificent, but—not war. There's not a-shadow of vice in his com-position. As the poet says:—
This is mere—madness,
And thus awhile the—fit will work—on him.
Anon as patient as the female—dove,
When that her—golden couplets have dis—closed,
His silence will—sit drooping.
There you are!" And Cleopatra stood still; slightly panting, it is true, but with lamb-like guilelessness in his madonna face.
Then, as the toilers of the station slowly dispersed to see about getting up an appetite for supper, Moriarty advanced, and laid both hands on Cleopatra's mane.
"Collins!" he exclaimed; "I'm better pleased than if I had won ten bob. What do you think?—that verse you quoted from Shakespear brought the question to my mind like a shot of a gun; the very question I wanted to ask you a couple of hours ago. I know it's been asked before; in fact, I met with it in an English magazine, where the writer uses the very words you quoted just now. I thought perhaps you had never met with the question, and it might interest you—Was Hamlet mad?"