Crump gazed after him. “There’s a man oughter be glad he’s alive to-day. But no, he must try and keep up with men like Sam Leary that gets fat on excitement. Where’s that card o’ Sam’s he give me? H’m-m—Élite Hotel, Canal Street. And twenty-five dollars, eh? He must be cal’latin’ to come home in a automobile. Well, after all, I dunno but he’s entitled to automobiles at that.”
On Georges Shoals
OH, but Dannie Keating was the happy man that night! Under the light of the winter stars he drew her to him, and, with her head all but resting on his shoulder and his arm about her waist, they came down the shady side of the street together, and cared no more for the whistling wind than for whatever curious eyes might, from behind drawn blinds, be peeping. “If anybody’s rubbering, they’re all sore,” said Dannie when she protested, and again broke the night air with—he simply couldn’t help it—
“O sweetheart mine, I love thee,
And in all the sky above—see!
No heart like thine, no love like mine—
O sweetheart, but I love thee!”
Oh, but the blood was running riot within him. “Don’t I love you, Katie? Don’t I? And don’t you? And don’t we both?” and in the shadow of the steps of her home he drew her yet closer to him and kissed her—kissed her—a thousand times he kissed her before she could draw a free breath again.
“And in the morning, Katie, I’ll be putting out. You won’t see me, it’ll be so early. And it’ll be the last trip in that old packet, though maybe I oughtn’t say that of her that’s earned a good bit of money for me—earned enough to pay for the new one, Katie—the new one that’ll be ready for me the next trip in. And then, Katie dear, we’ll see—as good as anything of her length and beam out the port. And have you picked a name for her yet? Yes? The Dannie Keating, indeed! No, no, I’ve a ten times better one—and you’d never guess, I’ll bet. And she’ll be a vessel! Every cent that you saved for me, dear, went into her.”