This, if you like it, is romance! Bound for 'Frisco with a cargo of iron! Think of it! The risk, the peril, the enormous fortune at stake! His sister's hairpins! What a world, what a City of Beautiful Nonsense, if one could only believe like this!
John spread out his short story on his knee, looked at the first lines of it, then closed it with disgust. What was the good of writing stories, when such adventures as these were afoot? Perhaps the little hunchback felt that too. What was the good of painting with red paint on a smooth canvas when God had painted those tulips on the rough brown earth? Why had not he got a sister who would hazard her hairpins in his keeping, so that he might join in the stern business of life and carry cargoes of iron to far-off parts?
He sat idly watching the good ship start for 'Frisco. One push of the thin bamboo pole and it was off--out upon the tossing of the waves. A breath of Spring air blew into its sails, filled them--with the scent of the tulips, perhaps--and bore it off upon its voyage, while the anxious master, with hands shading his eyes, watched it as it dipped over the horizon of all possible interference.
Where was it going to come to shore? The voyage lasted fully five minutes and, at the last moment, a trade wind seizing it--surely it must be a trade wind which seizes a vessel with a cargo such as this--it was born direct for the shore near where John was sitting.
The captain came hurrying along the beach to receive it and, from a seat under the elm trees, a girl came toward him.
"Do you think it's brought them safely?" she asked.
He looked up with a touch of manly pride.
"The Albatross has never heaved her cargo overboard yet," he said with a ringing voice.
So this was the sister. From that wonderful head of hair of hers had come the cargo of the good ship Albatross. She turned that head away to hide a smile of amusement. She looked in John's direction. Their eyes met.
It was the lady of the heavy fur coat who had prayed to St. Joseph in the Sardinia Street chapel.