“Well, I've got a family to support and I wanted to make some money, of course, but I thought it was about time to have less relics, germs, curiosities, microbes, and general knickknacks left in ice-boxes after the ice had melted. So I went out of the frozen museum business, mister.” His voice softened suddenly. “We lost a little girl a year ago last summer. Typhoid!”
“I lost a little girl—a friend,” said Farr, patting the shoulder. “It's this way with me—What is your name?”
“Freeland Nowell.”
“Mr. Nowell, I have poked more or less fun in my life at men who claimed to have missions. Perhaps that was because those men drew my attention by advertising their missions loudly—and, therefore, I concluded that all men with licenses to cure this and fix that and regulate the other were fooling themselves or else were bluffs. But all of a sudden I have waked up to something. I believe that any human being who isn't doing a little something on the side to help somebody else in this life is mighty miserable. I believe that the average sort of folks are doing it—keeping it quiet, in most cases, perhaps. I thought I had a mission and I stood up in your city government and advertised it and made considerable of an ass of myself.”
“Well, it was all right one way you look at it,” said Nowell, with the caution of the honest citizen. “But, of course, you got the stigmy put onto you of being a crank and a disturber and you don't get nowhere! It ain't gab and holler that does it! If talk sets folks to thinking—that's all right, so far as it goes. But a lot of these chaps set their mouths to going and let their hands lay crossed in their laps and then wonder why the world doesn't get better because they have asked it to be good.”
It was sagacity from the humble observer.
“Mr. Nowell, I don't want to be quite as lonesome in this world as I have been,” said Farr, with earnestness. “It's an awful feeling, that! A man can be lonely for a time and crowd down the hankering to be in the march of honest men where he can touch elbows and be a part of things. I see you look at me! That's right—it's queer stuff to be talking to you.” He pondered for a moment and went on. “Queer thing, eh, for a fellow to wake up all of a sudden—a fellow of my stamp—and want to do some real good in the world? Well, it surprises me, and it would surprise you a whole lot more if you knew me better. We won't try to analyze the feeling. I've given up trying to do it.” He paused and his brown eyes surveyed the blinking iceman with a quizzical appeal in them. “That's a pretty long preface, Mr. Nowell. It ought to lead up to some very important request. But it doesn't. I simply want a job on your ice-cart. It will give me the best opportunity I know of to go into homes and tell mothers to boil the water which comes out of those dirty taps; after I unscrew the faucets I won't have to argue much. I told Colonel Dodd in his office to look out for me! That may have been bluster. I am a nobody. But I'm on his trail, and there is one thing I can do to start with! I can help save the lives of a few children. That's all! I'll be following my new motto. Will you give me the job?”
“I sure will,” declared Nowell, heartily. “If I don't know when a man is talking rock-bottom to me, then it's my own fault. When do you want to go to work?”
“Now.”
Nowell gave the new man's garments a disparaging side glance.