"Oh, now, my dear," he said gently, as we careened to starboard, "that was a slip. I can't say I would have done it like that."
"Have you ever run a boat in your life?" came back the fierce rejoinder.
"No," said Dillon calmly, "I can't exactly say I have. Still"—he relapsed and enjoyed his cigar.
Just a short time after this, we had the only ugly moment that I had been through in all our rides. A huge Sound steamer was ahead. Dashing close along under her port, we came suddenly out before her and met a tug whose fool of a captain had made a rush to cross her bow. It was one of those sickening instants when you see nothing at all to do. But Eleanore saw. A quick jerk on her lever, a swift spinning of her wheel, and with a leap we were right under the steamer's bow. It missed our stern by a foot as it passed and then we were safe on the other side. She made a low sound, in a moment her face went deathly white, her eyes shut and she nearly let go the wheel. But then, her slight form tightening, slowly opening her eyes she turned toward her father.
"Now?" he asked very softly. And there passed a look between them.
"All right," she breathed, and turned back to her wheel. And for some time very little was said.
But I understood her love for him now. These two were such companions as I had never seen before. And though I myself felt quite out of it all, this did not bother me in the least. For watching her father and feeling the abounding reserve of force deep under his quiet, I told myself that here was a big man, the first really big one I'd ever come close to. And I was so eager to know him and see just what he was like inside, that I had no room for myself or his daughter—because I wanted to write him up. What a weird, curious feeling it is, this passion for writing up people you meet.
On the remainder of the ride, and at supper that night on the porch of their cottage, a little house perched on a rocky point directly overlooking the water, I did my best to draw him out, and Eleanore seemed quite ready to help me. And later, when he went inside to do some work, I went on with the same eagerness, obliterating my own small self, exploring this feeling of hers for him and his dream of a future harbor.
Soon she was doing all the talking, her voice growing lower and more intense as she tried to make me feel all he meant when he said, "It's going to be the first port in the world." She told how up in his tower he made you see the commerce of this whole mighty world of peace converging slowly on this port. She told of the night two years before when he had come home "all shaken and queer" and had said to her huskily, "Eleanore, child, at last it's sure. There's to be a Panama Canal." Of other nights when he didn't come home and at last she went down to his office to fetch him and found him at midnight there with his men, "all working like mad and gay as larks!"
"When it comes to millions of dollars for his work," she said, "he's so very keen that he makes you feel like a little child. But when it's merely a question of dollars for himself to live on, he's a perfect baby. He won't look at a bill, he always turns them over to me. He won't enter a shop, he won't go to a tailor. One ready-made clothing store has his measure and twice a year I order his clothes and then have a fight to get him to wear them. He never knows what he eats except steak. One night when we had been having steak six evenings in succession I tried chicken for a change. At first he didn't know what was wrong. Every now and then he would seem to notice something. 'What's the matter with me?' I could see he was asking. Then all at once he had it. 'My dear,' he said, very coaxingly, 'could we have a nice juicy porterhouse steak for supper to-morrow evening?'"