Then in the fatherly fashion which almost every man she met adopted toward her, he held out his hand to Dorothy C. and led her back over the pier and around to the broad field where numbers of men were salting and piling the haddock and cod they had caught. The fish were piled in circles or wheel-like heaps, after they were sufficiently dried; and the fresher ones were spread upon long frames to “cure.” It was a great industry in that locality and one so interesting to Dorothy that she wanted to linger and watch the toilers despite the decidedly “fishy” odor which filled the air.
But Joel said that he must leave them then and, after pointing with his whip to a grassy plain beyond the fishing-grounds, advised:
“Best step right over to the Battery, Sissy, now you’re so nigh it. I’ve learned in my life that things don’t happen twice alike. Maybe you won’t be just here again in such terr’ble agreeable company—” and he playfully touched Melvin on the shoulder—“and best improve it. And, Sissy, strikes me you’re real likely. Sort of a common sense sort of little creetur without so many airs as some the girl-towerists put on. If so be ’t you stop a spell in Digby just tip me the wink and I’ll haul you with any load I happen to have on my ‘Mobile.’ Or, if so be we never meet again on earth, be sure, little Sissy, ’t you meet me in Heaven. Good-by, till then.”
Off he went and left Dorothy standing looking after him with something very like tears in her brown eyes. Such a quaint figure he looked in his long blue smock, his worn hat pushed to the back of his head, his sandy beard sweeping his breast; jogging beside his beloved team, doing his duty simply as he found it “in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him.”
“He’s a very religious man, Joel Snackenberg, and never loses a chance to ‘pass the word.’ My mother sets great store by him and I must write her about our meeting him. Shall we go to the Battery or back to the hotel? Your friends don’t—aren’t anywhere in sight, so I suppose they’ve gone there,” remarked Melvin.
“Then we ought. Indeed, I feel afraid we’ve stayed too long; and yet I can’t be sorry, since we’ve met that dear old man.”
Melvin had promptly recovered his “glibness” upon the departure of the teamster; and though he looked at her in some surprise he answered:
“I don’t believe many girls would call him ‘dear.’ I shouldn’t have thought of doing so myself. That Molly wouldn’t, I know; but you have a way of making folks—folks forget themselves and show their best sides to you, so I guess. Anyhow, I never talked so much to any girl before, and you’re the only one in all that crowd I don’t feel shy of. Even that boy—Hmm.”
“Thank you. That’s the nicest thing I ever had said to me. And don’t you think that life—just the mere living—is perfectly grand? All the time meeting new people and finding out new, beautiful things about them? Like Mr. Snackenberg asking me to meet him in Heaven. It was certainly an odd thing to say, it startled me, but it was beautiful—beautiful. Now—do you know the road home?”
“Sure. We’ll be there in five minutes.”