“Ah?” returned the customer, obviously a little dismayed; and he looked about in a helpless way, yet almost hopefully, too, as though half anticipating, out of the very abundance of his optimism, that he might discover displayed somewhere goods which would welcomely disprove the clerk’s assertion.
III
“What’s wanted?” asked Mr. Whitley with crisp, rising inflection. He had come up and was standing beside Jerome, his hands on his hips, looking more than ever like an intellectual colossus.
“Why, I’ll explain a little more about it,” replied the customer, turning from Jerome to the old man. “My name’s Xenophon Curry—you may have heard of me. Here’s my card—here’s two of ’em.” And he drew forth a wallet from the pocket of a vast expanse of black and white checked woolen vest and took from it two generous bits of pasteboard, which he handed across with a little bustling gesture. “You see, I’ve rented a schooner called the Skipping Goone—nice name, kind of, isn’t it? As I was just explaining to your young man here, I don’t know just how to go about it to get a crew and so forth, and I suppose—good Lord, yes!” he laughed, “first of all there will have to be a captain! Well, it will come right somehow. I always manage to blunder through. I guess it must be part of my luck!”
Both Jerome and Mr. Whitley were absorbed in the customer’s card, and the latter finally observed: “I see you head an opery troupe!”
“Yes,” replied Xenophon Curry, drawing in deeply and expanding his ribs exactly the way his singers always did when they were going to attack a high note. “We’ve just closed a triumphant tour of the States, and now,” he added, with a little fling of his head which can only be described as magnificent, “we’re going to keep right on—west! That’s where the schooner comes in, do you see? I wouldn’t say—no, I wouldn’t say but we might go clear round the world! It’s a wonderful thought, in a way, isn’t it?”
The mouths across the counter were dropped in astonishment; but Mr. Whitley, being so ancient a pupil in the school of life, possessed rather more ballast to withstand the puff of unexpected gales than did his clerk. He recovered first, and made a very smart remark indeed to the effect that he wouldn’t so much mind going along himself if there were as many pretty chorus girls as some shows carried. He winked naughtily. And of course this remark was but the forerunner of one of his bursting, infectious laughs, which, once released, ran along quite placidly. Laughter never seemed to discomfit the junior partner in the slightest degree.
When he had sobered sufficiently, Mr. Whitley began an inventory of commission houses. “There’s Silvio’s over the way, and Chiappa’s in Mission street—couldn’t go far wrong. Your steward, when you find one, will know where to get the best prices.”
“How about Gambini’s?” asked Jerome.
“Oh, there’s no end of ’em,” remarked the old man opulently. For it was, in truth, a neighborhood abounding in lures for the marketing steward. Chicken feathers were forever wafting on the whiff of limes and pineapples, and when it rained, mouldy oranges sped down on the muddy breast of gutter streams.