“Well,” says I, “I don’t know anything more to say—unless I lump things, and just say I’m from the world.”
“Ah,” says he, brightening up, “now that’s something like! What world?”
Peters, he had me, that time. I looked at him, puzzled, he looked at me, worried. Then he burst out—
“Come, come, what world?”
Says I, “Why, the world, of course.”
“The world!” he says. “H’m! there’s billions of them! . . . Next!”
That meant for me to stand aside. I done so, and a sky-blue man with seven heads and only one leg hopped into my place. I took a walk. It just occurred to me, then, that all the myriads I had seen swarming to that gate, up to this time, were just like that creature. I tried to run across somebody I was acquainted with, but they were out of acquaintances of mine just then. So I thought the thing all over and finally sidled back there pretty meek and feeling rather stumped, as you may say.
“Well?” said the head clerk.
“Well, sir,” I says, pretty humble, “I don’t seem to make out which world it is I’m from. But you may know it from this—it’s the one the Saviour saved.”
He bent his head at the Name. Then he says, gently—