"You see," he explained, looking from one to another, with his engaging candor, "I can't do anything but just wait and see if he's coming back again, at any rate, not for a spell."
The worthies going to their work, the interview ended. At least, Mr. Goodsir went to his work, though within a few minutes Mr. Honeybun was back in Tom's room again.
"Say, kid; don't you let them three hundred bucks out'n yer own 'and. I can't stop now; but when I blow in to eat at noon I'll tell yer what I'd do with 'em, if you was me. Keep 'em buttoned up in yer inside pocket; and don't 'ang round in this old hut any more'n you can help till I come back and git you. Yer never knows who's on the same floor with yer; but out in the street yer'll be safe."
Out in the street he kept to the more populous thoroughfares, coasting the line of docks especially. He liked them. On the façades of the low buildings he could read names which distilled romance into syllables—New Orleans, Savannah, Galveston, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma. He had always been fond of geography. It opened up the world. It told of countries and cities he would one day visit, and which in the meantime he could dream about. Over the low roofs of the dock buildings he could see the tops of funnels. Here and there was the long black flank of a steamer at its pier. There were flags flying from one masthead or another, while exotic seafaring types slipped in and out amid the crush of vehicles, or dodged the freight train aimlessly shunting up and down. The movement and color, the rumble of deep sound, the confused world-wide purpose of it all, the knowledge that he himself was so insignificant a figure that no robber or murderer would suspect that he had all that money buttoned against his breast, dulled his mind to his desolation.
He tried to keep moving so as to make it seem to a suspicious populace that he was an errand boy; but now and then the sense of his loneliness smote him to a standstill. He would wonder where he was going, and what he was going for, as he wondered the same thing about the steamer on the Hudson. Like her, he seemed to be afloat. She, of course, had her destination; but he had nothing in the world to tie up to. He seemed to have heard of a ship that was always sailing—sailing—sailing—sailing—with never a port to have come out of, and never a port in view,
The Church of the Sea!
He read the words on the corner of a big white building where Jane Street flows toward the docks. He read them again. He read them because he liked their suggestions—immensity, solitude, danger perhaps, and God!
"THAT'S A TERR'BLE BIG WAD FOR A BOY LIKE YOU TO WEAR"