Hildegarde found the clerk who had seemed to know Mrs. Blumpitty. “Have you heard what boat she’s going by?”
“No,” said the clerk, “but she’ll go by the best, I bet.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, she’s one o’ the few that knows the ropes. She was there last year.” And he was called away.
She might know Hildegarde’s father!
Early the next day the girl reappeared at Baumgarten’s. No, she wasn’t going to give her order just yet. She was waiting to see Mrs. Blumpitty. So the Baumgarten Brother turned from her to advise a customer against taking saccharine instead of sugar. “You’ll come to hate the taste even in tea and coffee, and, as for eating it sprinkled on anything, you’ll find you simply can’t.” A group of people were hotly discussing vegetables, and whether to take them desiccated or “jest as they are.” The new ones “not in yet,” the Baumgarten Brother admitted; “and the old ones sure to sprout,” said some one else. A Klondiker gave his views: “Take ’em dried. Lot less freight on the boat. Lot easier packed about afterwards.” A babel of voices rose: “Tasteless,” “No good left in ’em,” “No feeding power.” Another voice: “Who cares about how easy it is to take somethin’ that’s no good?” “People go on about evaporated food jest as if it was the Klondike and the Chilcoot Pass all over ag’in. ’Tain’t. Nome’s a different proposition.” The Baumgarten Brother was instructed to put down half the order in dried and half in fresh. Then a detachment went away to see opened and to taste a new brand of canned cooked sausages. People stood about with pickles and shavings of “chipped beef” and cheese samples in their hands, nibbling and looking thoughtful. Others ate butter off the end of a penknife, and said, “It ain’t no better ’n margarine, an’ costs more.” When for two hours and ten minutes Hildegarde had stood there against the low columnar wall of piled tomato cans (a kind of basaltic formation, showing singularly regular “fracture” and wide range of color-stain), the clerk of yesterday gave her a stool to perch on in the corner. Many of the crowding faces were grown already familiar. There was the fresh-complexioned giant. He came in with a pleasant towering briskness, and stood talking to one of the Baumgartens. As Hildegarde watched him, she told herself she was glad that man was going on “her” ship. Then reflecting, “Why, I’m staring at him now!” she turned away her eyes, and there suddenly was Mrs. Blumpitty, with a thick-set, dun-colored husband—his face a grayish-yellow, his hair a yellow-gray, his eyes yellow, with pale gray irises.
Hildegarde descended from the high stool and made her way to the couple. “Is it true you were at Nome last summer?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Blumpitty drew closer to the dun-colored husband, as if more than ever mistrustful of the tall young lady.
But Hildegarde took no notice of that. “I wonder,” she said, “if you met a Mr. Mar up there?”