"One evening then—when my father came home and sat down by my bedside—it came over me all of a sudden—the wonderful quiet strength in his hand, in the look of his eyes.
"'Where have you been?' I asked him.
"'Down on the harbor,' he told me. Since eight in the morning he'd been in a launch exploring it all. I shut my eyes—my wretched eyelids quivering—and I made him describe the whole day's trip while I tried to see it all in my mind. Soon I was feeling deliciously quiet. 'I'm going down there too,' I thought.
"By the next evening I had the idea for this boat. When I told him he was delighted, and we both grew excited over the plans—which he drew by my bed, I made him draw dozens. At last it was built and lay at its dock, and I packed all I needed into a trunk and we came down in a taxi. It was a lovely May afternoon and we had a beautiful ride up the Hudson. And from then on through the Summer I hardly went ashore at all, I knew if I did it would spoil it all.
"Every night we slept on board in those two cozy little bunks. I learned to cook here. Soon I was able to run the boat and even to help my father a little. I knew just enough about his work to go places for him and save his time. I'd forgotten I ever had any nerves, for I felt I belonged to something now that got way down to the roots of things. Do you see what I mean? This harbor isn't like a hotel, or an evening gown or Weber and Fields. I love pretty gowns, and my father and I wouldn't miss Weber and Fields for worlds. But they're all on top, this is down at the bottom, it's one of those deep places that seem to make the world go 'round. It's right where the ocean bumps into the land. You can get your roots here, you can feel you are real.
"You see what my father is doing is to take this whole harbor and study it hard—not just the water, the shipping and docks, for when he says 'the port of New York' he means all the railroads too—and he's studying how they all come in and why it is that everything has become so frightfully snarled. A lot of big shipping men are behind him, and he's to draw up a plan for it all which they're going to give to the city to use, to make this port what it's got to be, the very first in the ocean world. It's one of those slow tremendous pieces of work, it will take years to carry it out and hundreds of millions of dollars. My father thinks there's hardly a chance that he'll ever live to see it all done. I know he will, I'm sure he will, he's the kind of a man who keeps himself young. But whether he really sees it or not, or gets any credit, he doesn't care.
"That's the kind of a person my father is," Eleanore added softly.
"My father wants to meet you," she told me toward the end of June, at one of those times when she let the boat drift while we had long absorbing talks. "He has read that thing you wrote about the German sea hog, and he thinks it's awfully well done."
"That's good of him," I said gruffly.