"Thanks, I wouldn't mind one more of those lemonades."
Once more the porter came, and I ventured a second bottle of Bass.
"I'll be discreet in Deep Harbor," I apologized, "although I won't promise to give up Bass entirely. It's a link with home—almost a ceremony, you know."
"Oh, that's all right, Ted. I guess I've got you sized up all right. Go ahead and be your own boss. As long as you deliver the goods, that's all I ask. Do it in your own way."
The drinks arrived. "Bring a box of chocolate peppermints," he commanded the porter. "Good heavens—he's going to add that to his lemonade and cigars!" I thought. "What is that man's interior made of?"
"So you have already sized me up?" I asked as he munched a chocolate between alternate sips and puffs.
"Sure! I got you pretty straight down in the office in New York the day we signed the papers. I did think you might jump the track once in a while, though. And when you blew on to the train in that third act make-up, I thought perhaps you'd been out for a final fling at Broadway. But you're all right. Have some chocolate?"
"No, thanks. I am curious, though, to have my fortune told. Will I make good, do you think?"
"Ted, I'm going to be straight with you. I don't know. You may get folks sore at you, the way you always seem to be laughing inside you at the people who don't talk or think the way you do. You don't know it all yet, and you've got no patience with folks who don't belong to your gang. You haven't knocked around enough in real life to learn that there's several ways of getting there besides your way. You've lived abroad and picked up a lot of things I don't know anything about and never will, and you're a little stuck on your cargo. But I'm not so sure it's worth as much as you think in the open market—not in the manufacturing business in Deep Harbor. Still, a couple of years on the treadmill may work wonders."
"A couple of years!" I gasped.