Lemuel had never imagined a breakfast like that; he wondered at himself for having respected the cuisine of the St. Albans. It seemed to him that he and the person he had been—the farm-boy, the captive of the police, the guest of the Wayfarer's Lodge, the servant of Miss Vane, and the head-waiter at the hotel—could not be the same person. He fell into a strange reverie, while the talk, in which he had shared so little, took a range far beyond him. Then he looked up and found all the others' eyes upon him, and heard Bellingham saying, “I fancy Mr. Barker can tell us something about that,” and at Lemuel's mystified stare he added, “About the amount of smoke at a fire that a man could fight through. Mr. Seyton was speaking of the train that was caught in the forest fires down in Maine the other day. How was it with you at the St. Albans?”
Lemuel blushed. It was clear that Mr. Bellingham had been reading that ridiculous newspaper version of his exploit. “There was hardly any smoke at all where I was. It didn't seem to have got into the upper entries much.”
“That's just what I was saying!” triumphed Bellingham. “If a man has anything to do, he can get on. That's the way with the firemen. It's the rat-in-a-trap idea that paralyses. Do you remember your sensations at all, when you were coming through the fire? Those things are very curious sometimes,” Bellingham suggested.
“There was no fire where I was,” said Lemuel stoutly, but helpless to make a more comprehensive disclaimer.
“I imagine you wouldn't notice that, any more than the smoke,” said Bellingham, with a look of satisfaction in his hero for his other guests. “It's a sort of ecstasy. Do you remember that fellow of Bret Harte's, in How Christmas came to Simpson's Bar, who gets a shot in his leg, or something, when he's riding to get the sick boy a Christmas present, and doesn't know it till he drops off his horse in a faint when he gets back?” He jumped actively up from the table, and found the book on his shelf. “There!” He fumbled for his glasses without finding them. “Will you be kind enough to read the passage, Mr. Barker? I think I've found the page. It's marked.” He sat down again, and the others waited.
Lemuel read, as he needs must, and he did his best.
“Ah, that's very nice. Glad you didn't dramatise it; the drama ought to be in the words, not the reader. I like your quiet way.”
“Harte seems to have been about the last of the story-tellers to give us the great, simple heroes,” said Seyton.
When the others were gone, and Lemuel, who had been afraid to go first, rose to take himself away, Bellingham shook his hand cordially and said, “I hope you weren't bored? The fact is, I rather promised myself a tête-à-tête with you, and I told Mr. Sewell so; but I fell in with Seyton and Meredith yesterday—you can't help falling in with one when you fall in with the other; they're inseparable when Seyton's in town and I couldn't resist the temptation to ask them.”
“Oh no, I wasn't bored at all,” said Lemuel.