till all the water-front wanted to know “what in thunder that man was after, anyhow.”  He prowled into the Mutual Insurance rooms, and demanded explanations of the mysterious remarks chalked up on the blackboard day by day; and that brought down upon him secretaries of every Fisherman’s Widow and Orphan Aid Society within the city limits.  They begged shamelessly, each man anxious to beat the other institution’s record, and Cheyne tugged at his beard and handed them all over to Mrs. Cheyne.

She was resting in a boarding-house near Eastern Point—­a strange establishment, managed, apparently, by the boarders, where the table-cloths were red-and-white-checkered and the population, who seemed to have known one another intimately for years, rose up at midnight to make Welsh rarebits if it felt hungry.  On the second morning of her stay Mrs. Cheyne put away her diamond solitaires before she came down to breakfast.

“They’re most delightful people,” she confided to her husband; “so friendly and simple, too, though they are all Boston, nearly.”

“That isn’t simpleness, Mama,” he said, looking across the boulders behind the apple-trees where the hammocks were slung.  “It’s the other thing, that what I haven’t got.”

“It can’t be,” said Mrs. Cheyne quietly.  “There isn’t a woman here owns a dress that cost a hundred dollars.  Why, we—­”

“I know it, dear.  We have—­of course we have.  I guess it’s only the style they wear East.  Are you having a good time?”

“I don’t see very much of Harvey; he’s always with you; but I ain’t near as nervous as I was.”

“I haven’t had such a good time since Willie died.  I never rightly understood that I had a son before this.  Harve’s got to be a great boy.  ’Anything I can fetch you, dear?  ’Cushion under your head?  Well, we’ll go down to the wharf again and look around.”

Harvey was his father’s shadow in those days, and the two strolled along side by side, Cheyne using the grades as an excuse for laying his hand on the boy’s square shoulder.  It was then that Harvey noticed and admired what had never struck him before—­his father’s curious power of getting at the heart of new matters as learned from men in the street.

“How d’you make ’em tell you everything without opening your head?” demanded the son, as they came out of a rigger’s loft.

“I’ve dealt with quite a few men in my time, Harve, and one sizes ’em up somehow, I guess.  I know something about myself, too.”  Then, after a pause, as they sat down on a wharf-edge:  “Men can ’most always tell when a man has handled things for himself, and then they treat him as one of themselves.”

“Same as they treat me down at Wouverman’s wharf.  I’m one of the crowd now.  Disko has told every one I’ve earned my pay.”  Harvey spread out his hands and rubbed the palms together.  “They’re all soft again,” he said dolefully.

“Keep ’em that way for the next few years, while you’re getting your education.  You can harden ’em up after.”