“All right, then,” he said moodily. “But I want to tell you I’ve been handling messages between the boss and a Miss Beatrice Baldwin; and he sent her one this morning and got a reply; and—I wished I’d never learned wireless, that’s all.”
“Mr. Chanler is a gentleman,” I said severely.
“A gentleman?” said Pierce gloomily. “I suppose that makes it all right, then, eh? But nevertheless and notwithstanding, I wish I hadn’t learned wireless, just the same. And you don’t even ask me what the message was about,” he continued as I remained silent. “That’s the difference: I’d have asked first crack; you’re a gent. You don’t ask at all.”
“Naturally not,” I replied. “That’s another thing one doesn’t do. I won’t even permit you to tell me what it was.”
“You won’t?”
“Decidedly not.”
“Not even if I tell you——”
“No.”
“All right then,” he said with a comical air of resignation and relief. “I’ve done me jooty. It’s something out of my class; I wanted to pass it up to somebody with a better nut than I’ve got; but if I can’t—all right. I suppose after you ’n’ me ’ve known each other five or six years we’ll be well enough acquainted to talk together like a couple o’ human beings, eh? I know I hadn’t ought to be talking to you like this, Mr. Pitt; you’re a New York highbrow and I’m from back o’ the Yards; but I’ll make you a nice little bet right now, that before this trip is over—if you’re the guy I think you are, Brains—you ’n’ me’ll tear off more’n one little confab behind the boss’s back, and you’ll be darn glad to do it.”
I rose to go.