I smiled at the thought of the discomforted travelling man and wondered if my own luck or my own tact would succeed any better, for I was already convinced that Harbor Jim was a man worth knowing.
"Suppose we go and meet Mrs. Harbor Jim," I said to Bob when the tobacco had been purchased and his pipe was doing right.
"If you say so, but meetin' her ain't the same as meetin' him. She's all right, but she's jes' learning from Jim, she says so herself," answered Bob.
Their home was in a little town a few miles out from St. John's and it was kind of Bob to go out with me. After a walk of about an hour we stood looking down upon a little fishing village with great, brown-stained rocks protecting it a little from the sea.
"This is his town," said Bob, "can you find his house?"
But they looked alike to me; for all were small rectangular affairs, flat-roofed, shingled and painted white. Jim's house was evidently no different from his neighbor's.
"I guess I'll have to tell you," Bob chuckled, as we went down a lane and saw two rather dirty children at play in front of a house where a woman was bending over a tub of clothes.
"Hello, Bob, did Jim go out?" the woman called, as soon as she recognized Bob.
"Yes, he went out a couple of hours ago. Here's a man who wants to meet Mrs. Harbor Jim."
She wiped her hands on her wet apron, pushed the hair back from the baby's face as she passed her and beckoned us to follow her into the house. Extending her hand she said: