“No. Made friends with Sicilian luggerman. Slept in his lugger.” He showed his brow and cheeks speckled with mosquito-bites. “Ate little hard-tack and coffee with him this morning. Don’t want much.” He offered the dollar with a quarter added. Richling declined the bonus.
“But why not?”
“Oh, I just couldn’t do it,” laughed Richling; “that’s all.”
“Well,” said the Italian, “lend me that dollar one day more, I return you dollar and half in its place to-morrow.”
The lender had to laugh again. “You can’t find an odd barrel of damaged apples every day.”
“No. No apples to-day. But there’s regiment soldiers at lower landing; whole steam-boat load; going to sail this evenin’ to Florida. They’ll eat whole barrel hard-boil’ eggs.”—And they did. When they sailed, the Italian’s pocket was stuffed with small silver.
Richling received his dollar and fifty cents. As he did so, “I would give, if I had it, a hundred dollars for half your art,” he said, laughing unevenly. He was beaten, surpassed, humbled. Still he said, “Come, don’t you want this again? You needn’t pay me for the use of it.”
But the Italian refused. He had outgrown his patron. A week afterward Richling saw him at the Picayune Tier, superintending the unloading of a small schooner-load of bananas. He had bought the cargo, and was reselling to small fruiterers.
“Make fifty dolla’ to-day,” said the Italian, marking his tally-board with a piece of chalk.
Richling clapped him joyfully on the shoulder, but turned around with inward distress and hurried away. He had not found work.