“Do my eyes deceive me—can I believe the evidence of my vision? Is it Aleck Craig, or his double?” says the party addressed, slowly putting out his hand to meet that proffered him.
The clasp of the muscular Canadian comes direct from the heart, and Wycherley shows signs of sudden devotion—although no muezzin chants the aden, or call to prayer, from the minaret of the Mohammedan mosque near by, he makes a move as though about to drop to his knees.
“Mercy, you Canadian bear. Now I know you are Aleck. No other man has a grip like that. Keep it, I beg, for your fellow-athletes. I believe you’ve crushed the bones in my hand. I’ll beware of you next time. Now what brings you here—how long do you stay—what business are you in?”
He rattles these sentences off in a dramatic way, for having once been a Thespian, a wandering “barn-stormer,” Claude Alan Wycherley could not even ask a waiter for a little more hash without throwing into the simple request an oratorical effect so picturesque, that the poor devil would be apt to drop the plate in his sudden trepidation.
“Of course I’m doing the Fair, and, as you know my failing with regard to studying human nature, you can understand this quaint Midway has strong attractions for me,” answers the Canadian.
“So they all say! Everyone comes here to study human nature,” laughs the ex-actor, waving his pipe around—they have stepped outside and are on the edge of the multitude thronging the Plaisance—“but I give you the benefit of the doubt, my boy. Yes, I do remember your penchant of old. Nor have I forgotten that I owe my life to the champion of the Montreal Snowshoe Club.”
“Nonsense! Don’t bring up that thing again.”
“Of course it was a trifling matter to you, my boy, but to me it meant all the difference between life and death. I was lost; I should have frozen, for my snowshoes were broken. You came and saved me, God bless you, Craig.”
“What are you doing here?” asks the other, as he shows a desire to change the subject, and glancing meaningly at the fez Wycherley wears.
The latter chuckles; his disposition seems to be a genial one.