Part 15 (1/2)
”Not that card!!!! Say-just hold on a second. Here, now, watch what you're at this time. I can do this cursed thing, mind you, every time. I've done it on father, on mother, and on every one that's ever come round our place. Pick a card. (Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle-flip, bang.) There, that's your card.”
”NO. I AM SORRY. THAT IS NOT MY CARD. But won't you try it again? Please do. Perhaps you are a little excited-I'm afraid I was rather stupid. Won't you go and sit quietly by yourself on the back verandah for half an hour and then try? You have to go home? Oh, I'm so sorry. It must be such an awfully clever little trick. Good night!”
Back to the Bush
I have a friend called Billy, who has the Bush Mania. By trade he is a doctor, but I do not think that he needs to sleep out of doors. In ordinary things his mind appears sound. Over the tops I of his gold-rimmed spectacles, as he bends forward to speak to you, there gleams nothing but amiability and kindliness. Like all the rest of us he is, or was until he forgot it all, an extremely well-educated man.
I am aware of no criminal strain in his blood. Yet Billy is in reality hopelessly unbalanced. He has the Mania of the Open Woods.
Worse than that, he is haunted with the desire to drag his friends with him into the depths of the Bush.
Whenever we meet he starts to talk about it.
Not long ago I met him in the club.
”I wish,” he said, ”you'd let me take you clear away up the Gatineau.”
”Yes, I wish I would, I don't think,” I murmured to myself, but I humoured him and said:
”How do we go, Billy, in a motor-car or by train?”
”No, we paddle.”
”And is it up-stream all the way?”
”Oh, yes,” Billy said enthusiastically.
”And how many days do we paddle all day to get up?”
”Six.”
”Couldn't we do it in less?”
”Yes,” Billy answered, feeling that I was entering into the spirit of the thing, ”if we start each morning just before daylight and paddle hard till moonlight, we could do it in five days and a half.”
”Glorious! and are there portages?”
”Lots of them.”
”And at each of these do I carry two hundred pounds of stuff up a hill on my back?”
”Yes.”
”And will there be a guide, a genuine, dirty-looking Indian guide?”
”Yes.”
”And can I sleep next to him?”
”Oh, yes, if you want to.”
”And when we get to the top, what is there?”