Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/329

 "Let us keep to dogs, then," I answered. "Meantime, if you listen to me, you'll soon be in deep water, when we've both lost the taste for adventure. This current will take us over the dam in about seven minutes, I should judge."

She fell to the oars again with a dreaming face, in which Lansdale and the other were so well blended that it was indeed the face of visions that had long been coming to me.

"You remind me again of the wild gentleman," I said, after a long look at her, a look which she was good enough to let me see that she observed.

"Et ego in Arcadia vixi—and I, too, was netted in my native jungle."

I saw that she, too, essayed the feat of being both light and serious without letting the seam show.

"I mean about pictures," I explained. "The gentlemanly curator of the side-show always says of the wild man thoughtfully, 'I believe he has a few photographs for sale.' He is always right—the wild man does have them, though I should not care to say that they're worth the money; that depends upon one's tastes, of course—by the way, Miss Lansdale, I have long had a picture of you."

"Has mother—"

"No—long before I became a fellow-slave with Clem—long before there was a juvenile mother or even a Clem in Little Arcady."

"May I ask how you got it?"

"Certainly you may! I don't know."