The butler’s sense of humor was not acute, but it was with considerable difficulty that he restrained his smiles during the next half hour. A more appreciative observer would have noticed and enjoyed the subtler points. Stephen’s glare of disgust at his uncle when the latter tucked his napkin in the opening of his waistcoat; Caroline’s embarrassment when the captain complimented the soup, declaring that it was almost as good as one of Abbie’s chowders; the visitor’s obvious uneasiness at being waited upon attentively, and the like. These Edwards missed, but he could not help appreciating Captain Elisha’s conversation.
Caroline said little during dinner. Her brother glowered at his plate and was silent. But the captain talked and talked.
“Maybe you think I didn’t have a time findin’ your new lodgin’s,” he said. “I come over on the cars, somethin’ I don’t usually do when there’s anything afloat to carry me. But I had an errand or two to do in Boston, so I stopped over night at the hotel there and got the nine o’clock train. I landed here in New York all shipshape and on time, and started in to hunt you up.”
“How did you get our address?” asked his niece. “Mr. Graves couldn’t have given it to you, for we only decided on this apartment a few days ago.”
“Ho! ho!” chuckled Captain Elisha, rolling in his chair, like a ship in a cross sea. “Ho! ho! You remind me of Abbie, Caroline. That’s what she said. ‘I never heard of such a crazy cruise,’ she says. ‘Startin’ off to visit folks when you haven’t the least idea where they live!’ ‘Oh, yes, I have,’ I says, ‘I know where they live; they live in New York.’ Well, you ought to have seen her face. Abbie’s a good woman—none better—but she generally don’t notice a joke until she trips over it. I get consider’ble fun out of Abbie, take her by the large. ‘New York!’ she says. ‘Did anybody ever hear the beat of that? Do you cal’late New York’s like South Denboro, where everybody knows everybody else? What are you plannin’ to do? run up the fust man, woman or child you meet and ask ’em to tell you where ’Bijah Warren lives? Or are you goin’ to trot from Dan to Beersheby, trustin’ to meet your nephew and niece on the way? I never in my born days!’
“Well,” went on the captain, “I told her that the last suggestion weren’t such a bad one, but there was one little objection to it. Considerin’ that I hadn’t ever laid eyes on Steve and that I hadn’t seen you since you was a baby, the chances was against my recognizin’ you if we did meet. Ho, ho, ho! Finally I hinted that I might look in the directory, and she got more reconciled to my startin’. Honest, I do believe she’d have insisted on takin’ me by the hand and leadin’ me to you, if I hadn’t told her that.
“The captain talked and talked.”
“So I did look in the directory and got the number on Fifth Avenue where you used to be. I asked a policeman the nighest way to get there, and he said take a bus. Last time I was in New York I rode in one of those Fifth Avenue omnibuses, and I never got such a jouncin’ in my life. The pavement then was round cobble stones, like some of the roads in Nantucket. I remember I tried to ask a feller that set next to me somethin’ or other, and I swan to man I couldn’t get nothin’ out of my mouth but rattles. ‘Metropolitan Museum,’ sounded like puttin’ in a ton of coal. I thought I was comin’ apart, or my works was out of order, or somethin’, but when the feller tried to answer he rattled just as bad, so I realized ’twas the reg’lar disease and felt some better. I never shall forget a fleshy woman—somethin’ like that Mrs. Dunn friend of yours, Caroline—that set opposite me. It give me the crawls to look at her, her chins shook around so. Ho! ho! she had no less’n three of ’em, and they all shook different ways. Ho! ho! ho! If I’d been in the habit of wearin’ false hair or teeth or anything that wa’n’t growed to or buttoned on me I’d never have risked a trip in one of those omnibuses.
“So when the police officer prescribed one for me this v’yage, I was some dubious. I’m older’n I was ten year ago, and I wa’n’t sure that I’d hold together. I cal’lated walkin’ was better for my health. So I found Fifth Avenue and started to walk. And the farther I walked the heavier that blessed satchel of mine got. It weighed maybe ten or twelve pounds at the corner of 42nd Street, but when I got as far as the open square where the gilt woman is hurryin’ to keep from bein’ run over by Gen’ral Sherman on horseback—that statue, you know—I wouldn’t have let that blessed bag go for less’n two ton, if I was sellin’ it by weight. So I leaned up against an electric light pole to rest and sort of get my bearin’s. Then I noticed what I’d ought to have seen afore, that the street wa’n’t paved with cobbles, as it used to be, but was smooth as a stretch of state road down home. So I figgered that a bus was a safe risk, after all. I waited ten minutes or more for one to come, and finally I asked a woman who was in tow of an astrakhan-trimmed dog at the end of a chain, if the omnibuses had stopped runnin’. When I fust see the dog leadin’ her I thought she was blind, but I guess she was deef and dumb instead. Anyhow, all she said was ‘Ugh!’ not very enthusiastic, at that, and went along. Ho! ho! So then I asked a man, and he pointed to a bus right in front of me. You see, I was lookin’ for the horses, same as they used to be, and this was an automobile.