Old Perrault was born in Paris, and, in God’s goodness, hoped yet to die there.  And Baldwin had been in Paris, more than once in his cruising youth, and could converse of Paris; and to converse of Paris, in such loving language, was it not to win one’s heart?

Old Perrault had never dissembled his regard for the sailor.  A pity he viewed life so carelessly, the brave-hearted Baldwin.  So excellent in many respects, if he had but a little ambition for himself!  If he but hearkened a little for the world’s opinion.  But such a man!  Sometimes old Perrault wished that his motherless Claire would disregard all his wordly homilies, fall in love with the rugged Baldwin, and marry him.

Baldwin himself maintained no such exalted hopes.  A fine husband he’d make after his riotous years!  But he had a friend, recently detailed to the yard, and warmly recommended by the boson’s mate, this friend Harty, chief wireless operator, soon came to be the most regular of all the Saturday night attendants at old Perrault’s store.  It was on Saturday nights that the unmarried foreman on the breakwater job came up to see old Perrault.  If you stood well with the old fellow, like as not he would ask you to the house of a Sunday afternoon, and then you could sit around and rest your eyes on the lovely Claire while she played the piano.

One might think that old Perrault, who so casually picked his company, was a careless sort of parent; but not so, as witness his questioning of Baldwin, when it began to dawn on him that this wireless operator was becoming a distinguished member of the Sunday afternoon parties; and the boson’s mate, who revered old Perrault, but who also thought a lot of his friend Harty, spoke judiciously.

“He’s all right,” he replied to old Perrault, “all right.  Yes, I know he used to drink an’ was generally wild once; but he’s over that.  Oh, sure, all over that now.”

It was beginning to look like Harty for Perrault’s son-in-law, when Bowen came along.  Bowen was the expert who came to overhaul the wireless plant in the yard.  An easy-going, but wide-awake sort, Bowen, who seemed to have been everywhere and who could talk of where he had been, talk without end, and always with the intimate little touches which you never found in the guidebooks.  He captured old Perrault at the first assault.  Old Perrault from behind his counter happening to catch a stray word, listened, looked up, and, noting the animated features, hastily signalled the new-comer to come out of the crowd.  One minute later he had put the vital question:  Had Mr. Bowen ever been to Paris?

To Paris!  Bowen started to touch the end of a finger for every time he had been to Paris.  Old Perrault could not wait for him to finish.  “And the Champs Elysees, Mister Bowen, you have been there?”

“The Champs Elysees?  If I had a dollar, M’sieu Perrault—­”

“Eh?” The old man wanted to hear him say that “M’sieu” in just that way again—­“if you had one dollar, Mister Bowen?”