Covell laughed. “From Chicago. Chicago is my home port. That is the proper seafaring way to put it, isn’t it, Captain Townsend?... But the last time I saw you, Griffin, was in New York. What are you doing in Harniss, Massachusetts?”
Bob shook his head. “Harniss, or next door to it, is where I belong,” he answered. “This is my home port. But I—well, it is the last port I ever expected to find you in.”
Foster Townsend interrupted. “Here, here!” he ordered. “Come up into the wind a minute, you two. Seymour, I didn’t know you and this boy had ever met before. What is this all about, anyway?”
Covell explained. He was quite at ease now. “Griffin and I are old friends,” he said. “We were fellow students at what we used to call the ‘Art Abattoir’ in New York. That is, he was a real student and I was—well, what can you honestly say I was, Griffin? Say it for me, will you? I am ashamed to try.”
The laugh which accompanied the speech was infectious. Foster Townsend laughed, too, and so did Esther. Bob also attempted a laugh, but it was not a huge success.
“I guess you were as much of a student as I was,” he said, rather awkwardly. “But what I can’t understand is why you are here—in Harniss.”
“And in this house” was the thought in his mind, although he did not utter it. Esther answered the unspoken question.
“Seymour is visiting us,” she put in. “He is that son of Uncle Foster’s old friend, the one I wrote you about. Don’t you remember I said we were expecting a visitor?”
Bob did remember it, although it had made little impression when he read her letter. If she had told him that visitor’s name he would have remembered. He remembered many things about Seymour Covell.
“I am an invalid, Griffin,” Covell himself explained cheerfully. “You may not think it to look at me, but I am. I am down here for my health and my health and I are having a grand old time of it so far, thanks to the captain—and Esther. I believe the idea is that eventually Captain Townsend is to put me to work somewhere at something or other, but just now I am an invalid, strong enough only to enjoy life and sing in light opera. Esther is responsible for the opera part of it. On her head be it. She knows most of our audience personally, provided we have an audience—and I don’t, so I shall be the most care-free sailor that ever spliced the main brace. Is ‘splicing the main brace’ correct, Captain Townsend?”