Tom drew the blanket from over his head, folded it as neatly as he might, laid it across his arm and, bareheaded and bedraggled, crossed the porch, opened the door and went in.
He found himself in a great, luxuriously furnished hall. At the back a wide staircase ascended. In the center a huge fireplace held a pile of blazing logs. Beyond it, half obscured by palms in tubs, a scarlet-coated orchestra was playing. To his right was a long counter behind which two immaculate clerks moved. About the fireplace and spreading across the big exchange were seated many persons. They had been talking very industriously until the door opened. But for some reason at Tom’s advent the conversation lessened and lessened until, as he walked across the shining oak floor, there was an impressive silence. The two clerks stopped their work and gazed at him in amused surprise. Tom, aware of the effect he was causing but caring not at all, stopped at the desk, stuck his hands in his pockets and addressed the nearest clerk in the calmest manner possible.
“I would like to see the manager, if you please,” said Tom.
“‘I would like to see the manager, if you please.’”
CHAPTER XIX—NARRATES A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE
The fog held close until just before sunset, although there were times when the three on the Vagabond could make out the shore quite distinctly and thereby gained a very fair notion of where they lay. When the mist finally disappeared inland they found their notion to be correct. The launch lay some hundred yards from shore to the east of the river’s mouth. Just how they had managed to reach the position it was hard to say, although Nelson’s idea was that they had become both actually and metaphorically turned around when the launch had gone aground and had subsequently, instead of running upstream, crossed it diagonally and passed out toward the east.
It was a long day. The Vagabond rolled sleepily from side to side in the slow swells and seemed very bored and weary. The boys played cards for a while after luncheon, but, as Dan remarked, there wasn’t a decent game that three could play. So they threw down the cards in disgust and went to writing letters. But, somehow, inspiration didn’t come very well, and finally Nelson gave up the attempt in despair and went out to the engine room and “fiddled with the engine”; the expression is Dan’s. Nelson could always manage to spend an hour or so quite contentedly with wrenches and pliers, oil cans and emery cloth and a nice big bunch of cotton waste. Just what he accomplished this afternoon I can’t say; but he killed fully an hour.