My work, as my father saw it now, was to write "strong, practical articles" presenting the respective merits of free ships, ship subsidies and discriminating tariffs to build up our mercantile marine.
But I was growing tired these days of my father's idea, his miracle and his endless talk of the past. On walks along the waterfront he would treat it all like a graveyard. But while he pointed out the tombs I felt the swift approach of Spring. It was March, and in a crude way of its own the harbor was expressing the season—in warm, salty breezes, the odor of fish and the smell of tar on the bottoms of boats being overhauled for the Summer. Our Italian dockers sang at their work, and one day the dock was a bright-hued mass of strawberries and early Spring flowers landed by a boat from the South. Everywhere things seemed starting—starting like myself.
I had given up my warehouse job, and free at last from that tedious desk to which I once thought I was tied for years, with two sketches sold and ideas for others, so many others, rising daily in my mind, I went about watching the life of the port. Poor Dad. He was old. Could I help being young?
Without exactly meaning to, I drew away from my father to Sue. We felt ourselves vividly young in that house. We quarreled intensely over her friends and were pleased with ourselves in the process. We had long talks about ourselves. Sue let me talk to her by the hour about my work and my ideas, while she sat and thought about her own.
"If you're planning to write up the harbor," she said sleepily late one night, "you ought to cruise around a bit in Eleanore Dillon's motor boat."
I looked at her in astonishment.
"Does that girl run a motor boat?"
"Her father's." Sue yawned and gave me a curious smile. "I'll see if I can't arrange it," she said. And about a week later she told me, "Eleanore's coming to take us out to-night."
Some of Sue's friends came to supper that evening and later we all went down to the dock. There was no moon but the stars were out and the night was still, the slip was dark and empty. Suddenly with a rush and a swirl a motor boat rounded the end of the pier, turned sharply in and came shooting toward us. A boiling of water, she seemed to rear back, then drifted unconcernedly in to the bottom of the ladder.
In the small circle of light down there I saw Eleanore Dillon smiling up. She sat at her wheel, a trim figure in white—a white Jersey, something red at her throat and a soft white hat crushed a bit to one side. Beneath it the breeze played tricks with her hair.