“There’s a use for old men after all, if they just know something,” he said mysteriously to Billy that evening, and had seemed so cheered that he could even speak of potato-planting without bitterness.
Billy went into the hotel’s telephone booth and sent the message, spelling out each word laboriously, since the girl operator at the other end was not used to taking code messages and seemed much annoyed at the lack of meaning.
“I can’t waste my time sending such nonsense,” was her first tart comment, and it required much persuasion to make her believe that all was as it should be.
When he had finished with Captain Saulsby’s message, he proceeded to send another on his own account. It was a cablegram to his father, asking if he would give his consent, should Billy wish to enlist in the Navy.
“If there is going to be a real war I might want to go in by and by,” he reflected. “It will take two months to get a letter answered, so I may as well ask this way. I’m afraid he won’t say yes. If I were eighteen I wouldn’t have to ask him. But once it is done I know he and mother wouldn’t object.”
It took some little time to get this dispatch off, as he had first to go up to his room to look up the address. His father had left his mother in Lima and had gone up to some little mining town in the Andes, where the Spanish names were of the most unpronounceable kind. The operator’s short temper was quite exhausted when at last she had got it all.
“When you think up anything new, let me know,” was her acid farewell as she rang off.
Captain Saulsby had grown tired of waiting and had walked back to his cottage. Billy found him at the foot of the garden, staring out to sea through the binoculars that had been one of the trophies of their adventure at the mill.
“Nice glasses that German fellow left us,” the old sailor remarked as he lowered them to change the focus. Then he added more slowly, “I shouldn’t wonder if he would be coming back for them one of these days.”
“Why, how can you think that?” cried Billy astonished.