“I confess that when I came to the great Fair, I wondered if by some odd chance I might see you here, though it would be a remarkable thing indeed. While I think of the oddity of our meeting here, I am struck dumb with amazement,” he says seriously.
“It seems like fate to me,” is what her heart whispers, and the very thought causes the blood to mount over neck and face until Aleck’s eyes are ravished with the fairest picture they ever beheld.
Love comes at no man’s bidding—it cannot be bought with the riches of an Eastern potentate—spontaneously it springs from the heart as the lightning leaps from cloud to cloud. So Aleck Craig, bachelor, realizes, as he looks into the lovely face of Marda’s daughter, that surely he has met his fate, for such a strange meeting could not occur unless the cords of their destiny were bound together.
Dorothy says no more just at present. The wheel is rolling around, the pinnacle passed, and they are descending. Soon they must part. The professor has made several attempts at rising, but Craig shakes him down as easily as he might a schoolboy. The Padarewski of the Ferris wheel is in the hands of a master-voice and the flail-like arms have long since ceased to cause the wildest music ever heard in one of these cars—and truth to tell strange things have happened under their shelter, from a wedding in mid air to the “siss-boom-ah!” of a score of ascending college students, who deemed themselves slighted by the superior attractions of the Midway, and were determined to win notice.
As they near the bottom, Dorothy overcomes her reserve once more.
“You will think it strange that I should come to this place at night, and with only a middle-aged lady for a companion, but I have a reason for it, Mr. Craig. You know who I am now—the daughter of Samson Cereal. We live on the North side. Some time perhaps you may call, and I might feel it my duty to explain. God knows it is no idle whim that brings me here, but a sacred purpose.”
Her voice is low, her manner earnest, almost eloquent. The Canadian is deeply moved—when does a beautiful woman with her soul in her eyes fail to arouse enthusiasm?
“I can well believe that, Miss Dorothy, from the few facts I have learned,” he says, and although her eyebrows are arched in surprise, she makes no remark.
The wheel has ceased to revolve. Craig arises, and allows the professor to regain his feet.
“Are we down?” ejaculates that pious fraud in anxious tones, and upon his wife reassuring him that all is well, he says solemnly, “Thank Heaven for that, and all mercies.”