“I’d like that chap,” said Raft, “he beats the lot of them.”
“And you shall have him,” said she.
He laughed.
“Much good he’d be to a chap like me. Where’d I keep him?”
Her eyes softened as she looked at the bird and from the bird to the man. Where, indeed, could he keep him? He who had no home—nothing. Then it was that Money seemed to her what it really is, a god, beautiful and benign.
It had often seemed to her as a demon, but Raft, who unconsciously had cast ridicule on her world, was now, unconsciously, shewing her the great truth she had never seen before, the truth that Money is more beautiful than Apollo, more etherial than Psyche, more powerful than Jove.
“You will soon have somewhere to keep him,” said she, “we will get him to-morrow. Come on. I want now to find the place where the fishing boats put in. I saw it the last time I was here in Marseilles, years ago, but I am not sure of the direction.”
She asked a man who was passing and he pointed the way; it was a long distance, but it seemed short, so full was her mind with the plan she had formulated before leaving the hotel. She talked as she went. Talked just as though they were on the Kerguelen beach hunting for a cave.
“We will find a place to put the parrot. I want a great big boat, not a yacht. I’ve had enough of those. I want a good sea boat and the fisher-boats I have seen here seemed to me good, and the men are the right sort of men. I am going to buy one—or hire one—well, we shall see. I want you to help to get it ready for us. How good the smell of this place is,” she paused to sniff the tar-sea scents brought by the afternoon wind. It was like the smell of Freedom.
Then they came on to the fisher wharf and right into the arms of Captain Jean Bontemps.