But why, Hildegarde wondered, why did he talk to financiers, when he might talk to her?
“Them innercents think that about the McKeown,” said a grizzled man across Cheviot’s shoulder, “only jest becuz they ain’t never seen the Dingley workin’.”
“You got the Dingley?” Cheviot asked; just as though it mattered.
“No good goin’ to Nome ’nless y’ have got the Dingley.” And while Cheviot lingered to hear just why it was the Dingley could “lick creation,” Hildegarde leaned against the stanchion, watching him with that interest the better-born American woman commonly feels in seeing something of what she has less opportunity for than any member of her sex in Europe, viz., the way her men folk bear themselves with men. She had the sense that again the American enjoys in its quiddity, of making acquaintance with a new creature, while observing her old friend in this new light. Cheviot was not only at his ease with these people, he put them at ease with him. They were content to reveal themselves, even eager before the task. Was it because he looked “a likely customer,” or did men commonly turn to him? Now Mr. Isaiah Joslin and his sour-dough friend were pushing in between Hildegarde and the group where Cheviot had been buttonholed. Joslin was scoffing at the Dingley as well as the McKeown. “Yes, sir!”—he demanded Cheviot’s attention by striking his fist in his palm under that gentleman’s nose—“I’ll do more with a plain rocker that any feller can make for himself out of a store box and three sticks, than all these cheechalkers and their new-fangled machines.”
“Maybe that’s so,” said a broad, squat Ohioan, the man Hildegarde had noticed before, going about the ship with a tiny bottle, a little square of sheet copper, and a deal of talk. “Maybe that’s right. But you old sour-doughs lost a terrible lot o’ leaf and flour gold whenever you didn’t use amalgam plates in your rockers.”
“’Tain’t so easy gittin’ plates.”
“’Tis now!” said the Ohioan, producing, as it were, automatically, his little square of copper and his bottle of fluid.
“Quicksilver, isn’t it?” Hildegarde came nearer Cheviot to ask.
“Quacksilver, I guess,” but still he followed the discussion about the McKeown “process” as though Hildegarde had been a hundred miles away.
“Now, you just time me,” the Ohioan was challenging Cheviot. “I can silver-plate this copper in twenty seconds by the watch.” And he did it. The only person there who was not a witness to the triumph was the girl whose clear eyes seemed to follow the process with a look of flattering interest. Should she, after all, tell Louis, not how glad, but just that she was glad of his coming? Hadn’t he earned that much? Not that he seemed to care greatly about acknowledgments from her. He seemed to have forgotten her existence already, and they hadn’t been together twenty minutes. All the simpler, then!