“Want anything?” he asked.
“Just loafing round.” Drake rolled a cigarette slowly, clumsily. “Smoke?”
“Yes.”
The wireless man reached for pouch and papers, twisted with swift fingers, struck a match and was exhaling smoke, almost before Drake himself had lighted up.
“You’ve been in the States?” Drake asked. “Learned to make a gasper there, didn’t you?”
“And you’re from the old country, calling a cig that?”
“A good country to come from—and the faster the coming the better,” Drake drawled. “Old country’s not—healthy.”
“For some.”
The wireless man bent over his complicated machinery, as it became alive. Drake looked on, wonder in his eyes, almost a childish wonder.
“But that’s marvelous,” said he. “Words coming out of the air.”