Manuel, faithful son of the Church, appropriated all
the blessings showered on her for her charity.
“That letta me out,” said he. “I
have now ver’ good absolutions for six months”;
and he strolled forth to get a handkerchief for the
girl of the hour and to break the hearts of all the
others.
Salters went West for a season with Penn, and left
no address behind. He had a dread that these
millionary people, with wasteful private cars, might
take undue interest in his companion. It was
better to visit inland relatives till the coast was
clear. “Never you be adopted by rich folk,
Penn,” he said in the cars, “or I’ll
take ‘n’ break this checker-board over
your head. Ef you forgit your name agin—which
is Pratt—you remember you belong with Salters
Troop, an’ set down right where you are till
I come fer you. Don’t go taggin’
araound after them whose eyes bung out with fatness,
accordin’ to Scripcher.”
But it was otherwise with the ‘We’re Here’s’
silent cook, for he came up, his kit in a handkerchief,
and boarded the “Constance.” Pay
was no particular object, and he did not in the least
care where he slept. His business, as revealed
to him in dreams, was to follow Harvey for the rest
of his days. They tried argument and, at last,
persuasion; but there is a difference between one Cape
Breton and two Alabama negroes, and the matter was
referred to Cheyne by the cook and porter. The
millionaire only laughed. He presumed Harvey
might need a body-servant some day or other, and was
sure that one volunteer was worth five hirelings.
Let the man stay, therefore; even though he called
himself MacDonald and swore in Gaelic. The car
could go back to Boston, where, if he were still of
the same mind, they would take him West.
With the “Constance,” which in his heart
of hearts he loathed, departed the last remnant of
Cheyne’s millionairedom, and he gave himself
up to an energetic idleness. This Gloucester was
a new town in a new land, and he purposed to “take
it in,” as of old he had taken in all the cities
from Snohomish to San Diego of that world whence he
hailed. They made money along the crooked street
which was half wharf and half ship’s store:
as a leading professional he wished to learn how the
noble game was played. Men said that four out
of every five fish-balls served at New England’s
Sunday breakfast came from Gloucester, and overwhelmed
him with figures in proof—statistics of
boats, gear, wharf-frontage, capital invested, salting,
packing, factories, insurance, wages, repairs, and
profits. He talked with the owners of the large
fleets whose skippers were little more than hired men,
and whose crews were almost all Swedes or Portuguese.
Then he conferred with Disko, one of the few who owned
their craft, and compared notes in his vast head.
He coiled himself away on chain-cables in marine junk-shops,
asking questions with cheerful, unslaked Western curiosity,
