“Uh-huh, I guess that’s the word. It ain’t got a thing to do with them.” He paused. “Maybe that’s why they don’t like it,” he concluded.
“Philosopher!” said Stacey. “Analyzing the female heart. You’ll be writing for the magazines next.”
“Sure!” Burnham grinned, then frowned. “All the same, I don’t get onto it very well myself,” he continued. “Now you’d think that I ought to be feeling all upset with gratitude to you, the way Gerty is, and worried about you wasting so much of your time and money. Well, I don’t feel that way at all. Damned if I do! I just feel friendly and pleasant and—natural-like. And of course some day I’m going to pay you back the money you spent on the nurse ’n’ doctor, but it don’t seem important, somehow, like it does to Gerty. If it was something you cared about, Captain, I’d get up now, the way I am, and work all day to get it for you, but Christ! you don’t care a damn for money!”
“Oh, shut up, Burnham!” said Stacey, laughing. “How you do run on!” Nevertheless, the man’s words were pleasant to him, and reënforced his own strangely peaceful mood.
“Seems sort of noisy out-doors to-day,” Burnham remarked suddenly. “What’s the row, I wonder?”
And, indeed, through the window a dull and sullen murmur, that was like a deep note held steadily in an organ, did enter and penetrate the room.
“Oh,” replied Stacey quickly, “I don’t know! It’s a noisy city.”
Burnham lay silent for a long time. Then he turned his eyes slowly to Stacey. And in them and in his voice when he spoke again was apparent a timidity which his huge bulk and rough unshaven face made somehow touching.
“Captain,” he said hesitantly, “there was something I wanted to say to you, only I don’t know if I’ve got the nerve. We boys was always kind of scared of you, you know,—oh, not because you was a captain!—fat lot of respect we had for captains as captains!—but just because—oh, I dunno! And it’s kind of hard to say anything to you that’s kind of personal, as you might say. All the same, I’ll take a chance.” He rushed on with his words to get it over. “What I want to say is that some of us know all about that attack that—didn’t come off.” He paused apprehensively, but with a sigh of relief.
However, Stacey was as friendly as before. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I know you do. You let that out Wednesday in a lot of wild talk you were spouting.”