“Then a good consul like your junior partner will loom up among so many poor ones.”
Barnabas was inwardly disturbed by this move from David, but he philosophically argued that “the boy was young and ’t wouldn’t harm him to salt down awhile.”
“Dave,” he counseled in farewell, “I hope you’ll come to love some good gal. Every man 183 orter hev a hearth of his own. This stretchin’ yer feet afore other folks’ firesides is unnateral and lonesome. Thar’s no place so snug and safe fer a man as his own home, with a good wife to keep it. But I want you tew make me a promise, Dave. When I see the time’s ripe fer pickin’ in politics, will you come back?”
“I will, Uncle Barnabas,” promised David solemnly.
The heartiest approval came from Joe.
“That’s right, Dave, see all you can of the world instead of settling down in a pasture lot at Lafferton.” 184
CHAPTER II
Gilbert, complacent and affable, returned to Washington accompanied by David. A month later the newly made consul sailed from New York for South America. He landed at a South American seaport that had a fine harbor snugly guarded by jutting cliffs skirting the base of a hill barren and severe in aspect.
As he walked down the narrow, foreign streets thronged with a strange people, and saw the structures with their meaningless signs, he began to feel a wave of homesickness. Then, looking up, he felt that little inner thrill that comes from seeing one’s flag in a foreign land.
“And that is why I am here,” he thought, “to keep that flag flying.”