He was sitting away back in the corner of the room, by his favourite window, tipped back in his chair, with one heel hooked over a rung, the other leg playing loose in space, sadly reading the "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" which he considers the greatest book in the world – next to Robert Burns's poems.
Fergus has always been good for me. He is all facts, like roast beef, or asparagus, or a wheel in a rut. It is almost impossible to idealize Fergus: he has freckles and red hair on his hands. When Fergus first came to Hempfield, one of our good old Yankee citizens, who had never seen much of foreigners and therefore considered them all immoral, said he never had liked Frenchmen.
Whenever I am soaring aloft, as I think I am too likely to do, I have to be very firm in the wings, else the sight of Fergus MacGregor, with his red hair, his scorched face, and his angular wiry frame, will bring me straight down to earth. He brought me down the first morning I laid eyes on him. As I stood there in the printing-office, looking about me, Fergus glanced up from the "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and said:
"Wull?"
I can't tell you what worlds of solid reality were packed into that single word. At once all my imaginings came tumbling about me. What, after all, had I come for? Why was I in this absurd printing-office? What wild-goose chase was I on? I should really be at home planting potatoes. Potatoes, cows, corn, cash – surely there were no other realities in life! For an instant the visions of the fields died within me, and I felt sick and weak. You will understand – if you understand.
I thought, as I stood there stupidly, that this was indeed the man who would say "Fudge!" to all the world.
I groped in a wandering mind for some adequate way of escape, and it occurred to me presently that I could order a thousand envelopes, with my name printed in the corner, and bring him to terms.
No, I'd order"Wull?" said Fergus.
If it had not been for this second "Wull?" I might have gone back to my immemorial existence and never have brought my new vision to the hard test of life, never have known Anthy, never have felt the glory of a new earth.
But with that second "Wull?" which was even more devastating than the first, I felt something electric, warm, strong, stinging through me. I had a curious sense of high happiness, and before I knew it I was saying:
"After all, men
I laugh still when I remember how Fergus MacGregor looked at me. For a long moment he said nothing as eloquently as ever I heard it said. I began to feel the humour of the situation (humour is the fellow that always waits just around the corner until the danger is past), but I said in all seriousness:
"I'm looking for the man who wrote an editorial last week headed 'Fudge. ' He doesn't appear to approve of flying machines. "
Fergus had not stirred by so much as the fraction of an inch. He looked at me for another instant and then paid me, if I had known it, a most surprising compliment. He smiled. His face slowly cracked open – I can express it no other way – and remained cracked for the space of two seconds, and returned to its usual condition. Fergus's smile is one of the wonders of nature.