“At any rate, you can come up to my boarding-place with me for the night and we’ll talk it all over,” he said, in a very kind way. “If you had only made yourself known a few minutes ago I could have introduced you to Manager Anson C. Doughty. But to-morrow will do as well.”
I did not dare to offer comment. I wondered what there was about Anson C. Doughty to keep my hatred of him so stirred.
“He takes my recommendations as to my helpers,” said Vose. “There is one thing a diver has to be sure about—that’s picking his helpers. We’ll talk it over, I say. If I find there’s considerable of Ben Sidney in you, I reckon we can make a go of it. Have you a hankering to learn the business, itself?”
I blossomed under the warmth of this kindness, I was full of words by that time. I hadn’t opened my mouth to talk for two days. I told him about my evenings in that tavern, my poring over his curios, my ambitions, my dreams and hopes after hearing the stories his brother had to tell me.
When he had finished dressing he clapped me on the shoulder.
“Oh, I calculate you’re going to do,” he told me. “Don’t get your expectations too high. I have given up all the deep work—too old. Five or six years steady at deep work finishes a man. I have nursed myself along. Wharf work—fifteen to thirty feet—that’s my limit these days. But I like your spirit, son. Can’t find boys in the city like that! I should say that you’ve got the real hankering. Cigarettes, ever?”
“No, sir! No tobacco.”
“No cider jamborees? No express packages from the city?”
“No, Mr. Vose.”
“Good! I reckon I’ll keep the old town of Levant on the map in the diving line. I know the game, my boy. And I know how to teach it to the right kind of a pupil.”