“Oh, ho! So you’re treasure-hunters, are you, you and your brother? But is this Mr. Pott on board?”
“No, he’s in the hospital back in Bellemere,” explained Sue. “He’s a sailor and he fell off a horse.”
“A sailor has no business on a horse,” said the big man. “But I guess I’d better not be keeping you down here talking. Your folks may be looking for you, thinking you are lost.”
“Yes, please, I wish you’d take me upstairs,” Sue said. “I don’t think I could find my way myself. I came down a lot of stairs. I forgot—I should have gone up.”
“Yes, down in the stoke hold is no place for little girls,” said the man.
He was close to Sue now, and she could see the thick, black dust on his hands and face. He looked like the coal men who put the winter’s supply of “black diamonds” in the Brown cellar, so Sue asked:
“Do you work in a coal bin?”
“Pretty nearly,” the man answered. “I’m what they call a coal-passer. I bring the coal from the bins, or holds, to the furnace room, a wheelbarrow load at a time. I guess I’m pretty black,” he concluded.
“Yes,” said Sue, simply but honestly, “you are black, but I don’t mind that—it will wash off. You’re big too, aren’t you?”
“Hum! I’m glad you aren’t afraid of me,” laughed the man. “But sometimes I think the coal dust will never wash off after my day’s work. It would be too bad if I had to stay black, wouldn’t it—especially when there’s so much of me?”