“Yes, it’s my wife. A strong bellus she has, sir: good lungs; and the little shavers has ’em, too.” He pointed to the babies on the deck. “Sea-faring men needs good lungs, you know, sir. But my lads don’t seem to take much to salt water, sir. They prefers canals. They gets sick on the Hollandsch Diep. Can’t make sailor-men o’ them, sir.”
“Sailor-men!” I retorted. “What about that cruiser’s forecastle talk you were giving me, and marrying and settling down? Were you joking with me, skipper? Isn’t love in a barge all it’s cracked up to be?”
“No, sir; yes, sir,” he said, answering both my questions at once but pulling a very sober face. “A man what is a man owes it to hisself to marry and settle down. But a lad, now! that’s another question, sir. I tell you, sir, confidential-like, I’m going to name the next lad after Sir David Beatty!”
“Whew!” I whistled. “And if the lad is a girl?”
“I’ll name her ‘Rule Brittania,’ sir--if my wife agrees.... Coming, coming, my dear; coming,” he called. “Good day, sir; thank you, sir.”
“You-all are in charge of the Relief Commission, suh? I am Mistah Solslog, of Alabama. I’m lookin’ for my sistah.”
The tense blue eyes of my fellow-countryman stared at me searchingly, and I at him. He wore a rubber collar and a false shirt front of a style which afforded popular subjects for caricature twenty-five years ago. His salt-and-pepper suit was cheap, horribly cheap, thin, cotton, summer weight, but immaculate. His hat--an old, well-brushed Stetson--was in his hand. He had no luggage. In the cold winter light of my office in Antwerp his slight, lean features looked prematurely aged, but neither age nor hardship had changed the characteristically even Southern drawl.
“Sit down, Mr. Solslog,” I said. “We’re feeding eleven hundred thousand Belgians here, and clothing and giving work, too, but an American citizen certainly has a claim.”
His face reddened. “Thank you, suh, but it ain’t that sort of help I reequiah, Preehaps you did not understand me. I’m a-lookin’ for my sistah.”
“She was in Maubeuge when the war broke out.” He pronounced it Maw-booge. “She was a governess, suh. I read in the _Atlanta Constitution_ that war was declared. That was on a Sunday. I quit my job in the lumberyard an’ come straight over here on the old _Saint Paul_, and I ain’t found her--not yet.”