“This reminded him that we were hungry, and we went to a restaurant under a tent, where, after taking stock of the wealth that yet remained of gran’ther’s hoard, he ordered the most expensive things on the bill of fare.”

Professor Mallory suddenly laughed out again.  “Perhaps in heaven, but certainly not until then, shall I ever taste anything so ambrosial as that fried chicken and coffee ice-cream!  I have not lived in vain that I have such a memory back of me!”

This time the younger man laughed with the narrator, settling back in his chair as the professor went on: 

“After lunch we rode on the merry-go-round, both of us, gran’ther clinging desperately with his one hand to his red camel’s wooden hump, and crying out shrilly to me to be sure and not lose his cane.  The merry-go-round had just come in at that time, and gran’ther had never experienced it before.  After the first giddy flight we retired to a lemonade-stand to exchange impressions, and finding that we both alike had fallen completely under the spell of the new sensation, gran’ther said that we ’sh’d keep on a-ridin’ till we’d had enough!  King Solomon couldn’t tell when we’d ever git a chance again!’ So we returned to the charge, and rode and rode and rode, through blinding clouds of happy excitement, so it seems to me now, such as I was never to know again.  The sweat was pouring off from us, and we had tried all the different animals on the machine before we could tear ourselves away to follow the crowd to the race-track.

“We took reserved seats, which cost a quarter apiece, instead of the unshaded ten-cent benches, and gran’ther began at once to pour out to me a flood of horse-talk and knowing race-track aphorisms, which finally made a young fellow sitting next to us laugh superciliously.  Gran’ther turned on him heatedly.

“‘I bet-che fifty cents I pick the winner in the next race!’ he said sportily, “‘Done!’ said the other, still laughing.

“Gran’ther picked a big black mare, who came in almost last, but he did not flinch.  As he paid over the half-dollar he said:  ’Everybody’s likely to make mistakes about some things; King Solomon was a fool in the head about women-folks!  I bet-che a dollar I pick the winner in this race!’ and ‘Done!’ said the disagreeable young man, still laughing.  I gasped, for I knew we had only eighty-seven cents left, but gran’ther shot me a command to silence out of the corner of his eyes, and announced that he bet on the sorrel gelding.

“If I live to be a hundred and break the bank at Monte Carlo three times a week,” said Mallory, shaking his head reminiscently, “I could not know a tenth part of the frantic excitement of that race or of the mad triumph when our horse won.  Gran’ther cast his hat upon the ground, screaming like a steam-calliope with exultation as the sorrel swept past the judges’ stand ahead of all the others, and I jumped up and down in an agony of delight which was almost more than my little body could hold.