"
"Thank you, sir," said my Australian friend, "I will do so. And now, sir,"
he continued, "let me say how much I admire your voice. It is, without
exception, the very finest and clearest voice I have ever heard."
"Really," I answered, quite overcome with such unqualified praise, "really
it is very good of you to say so."
"Ah, but I feel it, my dear sir. I have been round the world, from Sydney
to Frisco, across the continent of America" (he called it Amerrker) "to
New York City, then on to England, and to-morrow I shall leave your city
to continue my travels. But in all my experience I have never heard so
grand a voice as your own."
This and a great deal more he said in the same strain, which modesty
forbids me to reproduce.
Now I am not without some knowledge of the world outside the close of
Marchbury Cathedral, and I could not listen to such a "flattering tale"
without having my suspicions aroused. Who and what is this man? thought I.
I looked at him narrowly. At first the thought flashed across me that he
might be a "swell mobsman." But no, his face was too good for that;
besides, no man with that huge frame, that personality so marked and so
easily recognizable, could be a swindler; he could not escape detection a
single hour. I dismissed the ungenerous thought. Perhaps he is rich, as he
says.
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