She proved it by taking us in to board, with no dunnage for her to hold as security.

“Oh, they’re good lads, I’m sure,” vouched our sailor-friend, speaking of us as if we had been forecastle mates of his for twenty voyages on end ... the way of the sea!

Now Mother Conarty was not stupid.  She was a great-bodied, jolly Irishwoman, but she possessed razor-keen, hazel eyes that narrowed on us a bit when she first saw us.  But the woman in her soon hushed her passing suspicions.  For Hoppner was a frank-faced, handsome lad, with wide shoulders and a small waist like a girl’s.  It was Hoppner’s good looks took her in.  She gave us a room together.

* * * * *

There was a blowsy cheeked bar-maid, Mother Conarty’s daughter.  She knew well how to handle with a few sharp, ironic remarks anyone who tried to “get fresh” with her ... and if she couldn’t, there were plenty of husky sailormen about, hearty in their admiration for the resolute, clean girl, and ready with mauling fists.

* * * * *

“Mother Conarty’s proud o’ that kid o’ hers, she is.”

“And well she may be!”

* * * * *

“I’ve been thinkin’ over you b’yes, an’ as ye hain’t no dunnage wit’ ye, I’m thinkin’ ye’ll be workin’ fer yer board an’ room.”

“We’re willing enough, mother,” I responded, with a sinking of the heart, while Hoppner grimaced to me, behind her back.

We scrubbed out rooms, and the stairs, the bar, behind the bar, the rooms back and front, where the sailors drank.  We earned our board and room ... for a few days.

* * * * *

At the Green Emerald I met my first case of delirium tremens.  And it was a townsman who had ’em, not a sailor.  The townsman was well-dressed and well-behaved—­at first ... but there lurked a wild stare in his eye that was almost a glaze ... and he hung on the bar and drank and drank and drank.  It apparently had no effect on him, the liquor that he took.

“Say, but you’re a tough one,” complimented Molly.

But it began in the afternoon.  He picked up a stray dog from the floor and began kissing it.  And the dog slavered back, returning his affection.  Then he dropped the dog and began picking blue monkeys off the wall ... wee things, he explained to us ... that he could hold between thumb and forefinger ... only there were so many of them ... multitudes of them ... that they rather distressed him ... they carried the man away in an ambulance.

* * * * *

Hoppner and I tired of the ceaseless scrubbing.  One day we simply walked out of the Green Emerald and never showed up again.  Hoppner stayed on in town.

I found that the Valkyrie had run up from Sydney to coal at Newcastle, for the West Coast.  I thought that in this case a little knowledge was not a dangerous thing, but a good thing, as long as I confined that knowledge to myself.  I knew that the Valkyrie was there.  It was not necessary that the officers of the boat should know I was there ... which I wasn’t, for I turned south, my swag on my back, and made Sydney again.