"No," he said, "I guess I don't. Here's a pass that'll give you the run of the dock."
"Make it two," said Abner, "and fix it so my friend and I can stick around for quite a while."
"You're a pretty good liar," I told him as we went downstairs.
"Oh, hell," he answered modestly. "Let's go out on the porch and get cool."
We went out on the open end of the pier and sat down on a wooden beam which Abner called a bulkhead.
"If we don't begin calling things names," he remarked, "we'll never get to feeling we're here. Let's just sit and feel for a while."
"I've begun," I replied.
We sat in the shade of two wooden piles with the glare of a midsummer sun all around us. The East River had been like a crowded creek compared to this wide expanse of water slapping and gleaming out there in the sun with smoke shadows chasing over it all. There was the rough odor of smoke in the air from craft of all kinds as they skurried about. The high black bow of a Cunarder loomed at the end of the dock next ours. Far across the river the stout German liners lay at their berths—and they did not look like sea hogs. What a change had come over the harbor since I had met that motorboat. How all the hogs had waddled away, and the very smoke and the oil on the waves had taken on deep, vivid hues—as I had seen through Eleanore's eyes. "What a strange wonderful purple," her low voice seemed to murmur at my side.
"She's going away from here," said Ab. I started: