“He wasn’t any more use for a Baptis’ minister when Pap had done with him,” said Jude. “That’s his books—Pap’s. There’s dead loads more in the spare bunk in there.”
Ratcliffe looked at the books. Old man Tyler’s mentality interested him almost as much as the history of the Tyler family,—“Ben Hur,” Paine’s “Age of Reason” and “Rights of Man,” Browne’s “Popular Mechanics,” “The Mechanism of the Watch,” “Martin Chuzzlewit,” and some moderns, including an American edition of “Jude the Obscure.”
“Some of those came off a wreck he had the pickin’s of,” said Tyler, “a thousand-tonner that went ashore off Cat Island.”
“That was before Jude was born,” said Ratcliffe.
“Lord! how do you know that?” said Jude.
Ratcliffe laughed and pointed to the book. “It’s the name on that book,” said he. “I didn’t know: I just guessed.”
“I reckon you’re right,” said Tyler, opening a locker and fetching out cups and saucers and plates and dumping them on the table. “Not that it matters much where it come from, but you’ve got eyes in your head, that’s sure. Say, you’ll stay to breakfast, now you’re aboard?”
“I’d like to,” said Ratcliffe, “but I ought to be getting back: they won’t know what’s become of me. And besides I’m in these.”
“That’s easy fixed,” said Tyler. “Jude, tumble up and take the boat over to the hooker and say the gentleman is stayin’ to breakfast an’ll be back directly after. I’ll fix him for clothes.”
Jude vanished, and Tyler, going into the after-cabin, rousted out an old white drill suit of “Pap’s” and a pair of No. 9 canvas shoes.