He had no state-room, but was entitled to a place in a twelve-berth room in the hold. Here large farmers without their shoes were grumpily talking all at once, so he returned to the deck; and the rest of the night, while the other passengers snored, he sat modestly on a canvas stool, unblinkingly gloating over a sea-fabric of frosty blue that was shot through with golden threads when they passed lighthouses or ships. At dawn he was weary, peppery-eyed, but he viewed the flooding light with approval.
The front part of the shipping-office on Atlantic Avenue was a glass-inclosed room littered with chairs, piles of circulars, old pictures of Cunarders, older calendars, and directories to be ranked as antiques. In the midst of these remains a red-headed Yankee of forty, smoking a Pittsburg stogie, sat tilted back in a kitchen chair, reading the Boston _American_. Mr. Wrenn delivered M. Baraieff’s letter and stood waiting, holding his suit-case, ready to skip out and go aboard a cattle-boat immediately.
The shipping-agent glanced through the letter, then snapped:
“Bryff’s crazy. Always sends ’em too early. Wrenn, you ought to come to me first. What j’yuh go to that Jew first for? Here he goes and sends you a day late—or couple days too early. ’F you’d got here last night I could ’ve sent you off this morning on a Dominion Line boat. All I got now is a Leyland boat that starts from Portland Saturday. Le’s see; this is Wednesday. Thursday, Friday—you’ll have to wait three days. Now you want me to fix you up, don’t you? I might not be able to get you off till a week from now, but you’d like to get off on a good boat Saturday instead, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, I’ll try to fix it. You can see for yourself; boats ain’t leaving every minute just to please Bryff. And it’s the busy season. Bunches of rah-rah boys wanting to cross, and Canadians wanting to get back to England, and Jews beating it to Poland—to sling bombs at the Czar, I guess. And lemme tell you, them Jews is all right. They’re willing to pay for a man’s time and trouble in getting ’em fixed up, and so—”
With dignity Mr. William Wrenn stated, “Of course I’ll be glad to—uh—make it worth your while.”
“I _thought_ you was a gentleman. Hey, Al! _Al!_” An underfed boy with few teeth, dusty and grown out of his trousers, appeared. “Clear off a chair for the gentleman. Stick that valise on top my desk…. Sit down, Mr. Wrenn. You see, it’s like this: I’ll tell you in confidence, you understand. This letter from Bryff ain’t worth the paper it’s written on. He ain’t got any right to be sending out men for cattle-boats. Me, I’m running that. I deal direct with all the Boston and Portland lines. If you don’t believe it just go out in the back room and ask any of the cattlemen out there.”