"Shall we have a sign painted?" he laughed.
CHAPTER XIV THE CORNER-STONE THAT ALEC FOUND
Now that Alec and Jim got all the shells from all the shippers, their pile grew with unbelievable rapidity. Although the number of shells had increased so greatly, yet big Jim Hawley was almost always able to handle the entire day's harvest himself. The powerful little motor shot his boat from point to point with great speed; and the sailor himself was so strong and powerful that he could shovel the shells out of his boat while most other men would have been thinking about it. Thus it happened that Alec seldom had to help his partner, when the Bertha B made fast for the day.
But Alec was not one to waste his time. Whenever Jim did not need him, Alec hustled up to the shipper's office and helped with the clerical work. To his delight, Captain Rumford finally procured a typewriter, the rubber stamps, and some other office equipment suggested by Alec. With the aid of these and the assistance Alec was able to give him, Captain Rumford now easily performed the office work that had previously been such a burden to him. When Sailor Hawley saw the situation, and realised that Alec had a good chance for promotion if he could be regular with the office work, he told Alec that the shell collections had fallen off so much he would not need any help during the remainder of the season. Perhaps he told the truth.
Alec, at any rate, now felt free to give Captain Rumford his time every afternoon. Usually the skipper was able to set Alec ashore by half-past three o'clock. In the two hours that remained before Captain Rumford drove home, the captain dictated answers to all his letters, Alec taking the dictation direct on his typewriter. He had to do this, as he had never studied stenography. Often, now, he wished he had. But he had never foreseen the need of it. His deficiency taught him a good lesson, however.
"It just goes to show that you never can tell what will come useful," said Alec. "I'll worry along all right without stenography, I suppose, but you can just bet that in this oyster game I'm going to know everything I possibly can pick up that has the slightest bearing on the business. I'm not going to wake up after I'm a shipper and find that there is something about my business that I don't know."
As the winter wore on, work declined at the oyster piers and men were laid off. Many beds had long ago been dredged clean of their oysters. Boat after boat was made fast for the season. The fleet dwindled almost daily in numbers. Then there came periods of very rough weather, when all the boats remained at their piers. Those days Alec spent wholly in the office. So his pay continued without interruption. Better still it increased. As a deck-hand he had been getting $17.50 a week. The shipper increased his stipend to $20 a week.
But better even than the increase in pay was the opportunity that came to visit the captain's home. For often at the week-end Alec was now asked to accompany the shipper home. Usually he merely spent the evening there, returning to Bivalve by trolley. But once in a while he was asked to spend Sunday with the Rumfords. Elsa, of course, hailed his visits with delight. And it was not long before Mrs. Rumford was almost as glad to see Alec as her daughter was. About the only welcome Alec ever got from the head of the house was the statement the latter made, when he ushered the lad in at the door, "Well, mother, here's this Alec Cunningham again. He pestered me so to bring him along that I hadn't the heart to refuse."