Miss Burton pondered. And then the slow smile came again.
"Well, if you really want lodgings clean and decent for a single man I suppose I must try and help you," she said graciously. "But I'm afraid I shan't be much use. They are not quite in my line."
"No, lady."
"Still, Fore Street is full of them. That's the second turn to the left and then the first on the right, and then the first on the right again."
"Yes, lady."
"You might try No. 5—or No. 7—or No. 9—but Fore Street's full of them."
Miss Burton was really trying to be helpful, and the young seaman was very grateful to her, but Klondyke would have known at once that "she was talking out of the back of her neck."
Armed with this valuable information, the young man got off his high stool at last, raised his fur cap once more, with a little of the unconscious grace of its original owner, said, "So long, lady," collected his bundle and went out by the side door. And in the meantime, the bar-lady, who had marked every detail of his going, hardly knew whether to laugh or to shed tears. This was the queerest being she had ever seen in her life.
The Sailor managed to find Fore Street after taking several wrong turnings and asking his way three times. And then his difficulties really began.
Fore Street was very narrow, very long, very gloomy, very dirty. In each of these qualities it seemed well able to compare with any street he had seen in Frisco, in Sydney, in Liverpool, or even in Port Said. But it didn't discourage him. After all he had never been used to anything else.