“Well, you couldn’t sell it anyway?” he said in a wistfully, questioning way.
“Couldn’ give no bill o’ sale,” said the man.
“And she won’t go yet then—anyway?”
“Not ’nes she slips her anchor.”
Poor Tom could not drag himself away from the handsome little craft. He vaulted onto the cabin roof and sat with his legs dangling over the cockpit, gazing about at the accessories which spoke so seductively of nautical life; the anchor, the bell, the compass, the brass fog-horn in its canvas cover, the life preservers with Goodfellow printed on them.
Then, like a flash, he ceased his day dreaming and became the practical, alert young fellow that he was. He jumped down off the cabin roof, fully awake to his poverty and the fact that he was wasting this honest man’s time.
“She’s the kind of boat you read about, all right,” he said.
As they rowed shoreward the man gave a little dissertation on boats which Tom later had cause to remember.
“Well, there’s somethin’ about a boat,” he said, “yer fall in love with it. Now nobody ever loved a automobile. I guess that’s why boats is called females in a way of speakin’; named after women and all that. Yer go crazy over a boat. I knowed men, I did, would let their boats rot, ’fore they’d sell ’em. You wouldn’ hear uv nobody doin’ that with a airplane. It’s human natur’, as the feller says.
“You never heered nobody speak affectionate about a automobile, now did yer? Yer heered ’em praise it ’n say it could make the hills ’n all that, but yer never heered nobody speak soft like ’bout one, now did yer? Folks get new autos every year or two, but they stick ter their ole boats.