My first evening of freedom we spent at the theater. We bought the best seats in the house, and we dressed for the occasion—being in the position of having nothing to wear between shabby everyday wear and evening clothes.
“It is by way of celebration,” Mac said, as he put a dab of shoe-blacking over a hole in his sock; “you having been restored to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That’s the game, Leslie—the pursuit of happiness.”
I was busy with a dress tie that I had washed and dried by pasting it on a mirror, an old trick of mine when funds ran low. I was trying to enter into Mac’s festive humor, but I had not reacted yet from the horrors of the past few months.
“Happiness!” I said scornfully. “Do you call this happiness?”
He put up the blacking, and, coming to me, stood eyeing me in the mirror as I arranged my necktie.
“Don’t be bitter,” he said. “Happiness was my word. The Good Man was good to you when he made you. That ought to be a source of satisfaction. And as for the girl—”
“What girl?”
“If she could only see you now. Why in thunder didn’t you take those clothes on board? I wanted you to. Couldn’t a captain wear a dress suit on special occasions?”
“Mac,” I said gravely, “if you will think a moment, you will remember that the only special occasions on the Ella, after I took charge, were funerals. Have you sat through seven days of horrors without realizing that?”
Mac had once gone to Europe on a liner, and, having exhausted his funds, returned on a cattle-boat.