A feeling that school was intolerable crept over young Mr. Lupton. He longed to be with his father at the Coast Guard Station on the beach where, in the fortunate event of a shipwreck, he might alone and single-handed save life.
None of these thoughts seemed to fill the mind of Guy Vanton, who was talking desultorily about San Francisco and Telegraph Hill and the Presidio and the Mission; Paris, boating on the Seine, and streets with meaningless French names. The two boys parted in front of the Vanton house, guarded by tall evergreens, a ship stranded in a forest of Christmas trees. To and fro on the veranda, walking with short steps and heavy tread, paced Captain Vanton, a mysterious Santa Claus wearing enormous sidewhiskers.
X
The way in which Richard Hand senior came to go to Keturah Smiley for money was this: The affairs of the Blue Port Bivalve Company, though generally prosperous, required, at certain seasons, ready money. And despite his $20,000, now considerably grown, Richard Hand could not always put his fingers on it. He had little use for banks. He paid doctor’s bills for babies at about eight per cent., equipped young married couples at as high as sixteen per cent.—for had they not the rest of their lives to pay it off in?—and buried people at an average rate of twelve per cent. This was good business.
He had got all Blue Port under his thumb except Keturah Smiley. It irked him to see walking along Main Street the tall, stiff figure of the only woman who had ever turned him down on a business proposition. He would go over, speculatively, the character, disposition, and probable fortune of his lost sister-in-law.
She owned a good deal of land. Richard Hand did not love land, but this was good land, in one large tract, reaching from the South Country Road to the bay. The larger part was high ground, partly wooded. Through the centre of it flowed Hawkins Creek. Summer cottages, the creek being dredged as a boat basin, or, with a spur of track, a factory site?
When he saw Keturah Smiley he explained, with a good deal of tiresome detail, the affairs of the Blue Port Bivalve Company.
“I won’t put a cent in it,” Keturah told him.
“I don’t ask you to. I don’t ask you to,” Mr. Hand explained, soothingly. “I know how women feel about such things. ’Tirely right, too, ’tirely right. But it’s a good company and in good shape. Only we need money in hand to lease more oyster beds to p’vide for expanding business. Just $5,000 would set us right.”
“Five thousand shucks! I wouldn’t trust you with five cents!”