“Search me,” says Buck. “It’s the way they all do it. Seems to me it’s the start. If you’re American-born you start selling newspapers, if you’re only a blistered alien you land without a cent in your pocket, whereas we’d got a few dollars, but there’s no going back.”
We left it at that and got into ’Frisco next day and went to the lodgings we had in Tallis Street. We’d always lived small considering that we could have cut a bigger dash if we’d chosen, but the fact of the matter is, living big for the likes of us would have meant soaking in bars and all the trimmings that go with that. It’s God’s truth that a plain sailor man who isn’t what the damn fools who run the world call a “gentleman” is clean out of it in the big towns—unless he’s a millionaire. So, not being able to sit on the top of the pyramid, we just sat on the sand waiting for some big strike, and stuck to our rooms in Tallis Street in a house kept by a Mrs. Murphy.
Well, as I was saying, we went to our lodgings, and a couple of days after, old Pat O’Brien, hearing we were back, called on us. Pat, though he was near eighty, was an early bird, and though he was worth two millions he always footed it about the town; he was the spit and image of Mr. Jiggs in the comic papers, and as we were sitting at breakfast in he came with a cigar butt stuck in the corner of his mouth.
“Lord love me,” says Pat. “Nine o’clock and you at breakfast. No,” he says, “I won’t have no coffee, a glass of hot water is all I take till one o’clock in the day, and then I have a porterhouse-steak and a pint of claret, and that’s why I have all my teeth though I’m close on eighty—and how’s the old Greyhound been doing this trip?”
I’ve told you before how Buck got the Greyhound out of Pat at our first go off, and he made it a habit always to call on us when we were in from a trip to ask after her. He didn’t care a dump about her, he just wanted to pick up Island news that might be useful to him in his business—but we never pretended we knew that.
“Doing fine,” says Buck.
Then Pat sits down and borrows a match to light his cigar stump, and in half an hour he’d got to know all he wanted; then, when we’d given him a cigar to get rid of him, off he goes stumping down the stairs, and a minute after, the window being open owing to the hot weather, we heard him talking to Micky Murphy, the landlady’s little boy, who was playing in the street. Couldn’t hear what he was saying at first till a bit of a breeze came in and we heard him say to the child: “So Micky is your name,” he says. “Well, come along, and bring your play toy with you and I’ll buy you some candy.”
I stuck my head out of the window, and there was the old chap and the child hand-in-hand going off down the street towards the candy shop at the corner.
“Well,” I says, “Buck, we’ve misjudged him; he’s got a heart somewhere and he’s not as mean as he advertises himself.”
Buck was as much taken aback as myself. You see, we’d had a lot of dealings with the old man and he’d always forgot his purse if a tram fare was to be paid, and I’ve seen him pick up a match in the street to light his cigar, which he was always letting go out to save tobacco—and there he was going off to buy a child candy.