"We?" said Emerson. "I told you I would take you as far as Seattle. I can't stand for your 'work.' I think you had better stop here, don't you?"
"Perhaps it is for the best," Fraser observed, carelessly. "Time alone can tell." He bade them good-night and disappeared to snatch a few hours' sleep, but upon their arrival at the dock on the following morning, without waiting for an invitation he bundled himself into their carriage and rode to the hotel, registering immediately beneath them. They soon lost sight of him, however, for their next move was in the direction of a clothier's, where they were outfitted from sole to crown. The garments they stood up in showed whence they had come; yet the strangeness of their apparel excited little comment, for Seattle is the gateway to the great North Country, and hither the Northmen foregather, going and coming. But to them the city was very strange and exciting. The noises deafened them, the odors of civilization now tantalized, now offended their nostrils; the crowding streams of humanity confused them, fresh from their long sojourn in the silences and solitudes. Every clatter and crash, every brazen clang of gong, caused George to start; he watched his chance and took street-crossings as if pursued.
"If one of them bells rings behind me," he declared, "I'll jump through a plate-glass window." When his roving eyes first lighted upon a fruit stand he bolted for it and filled his pockets with tomatoes.
"I've dreamed about these things for four years," he declared, "and I can't stand it any longer." He bit into one voraciously, and thereafter followed his companion about munching tomatoes at every step, refilling his pockets as his supply diminished. To show his willingness for any sacrifice, he volunteered to wear a dress suit if Emerson would buy it for him, and it required considerable argument to convince him that the garb was unnecessary.
"You better train me up before we get East," he warned, "or I'll make your swell friends sore and spoil the deal. I could wear it on the cars and get easy in it."
"My dear fellow, it takes more than a week to 'get easy' in a dress suit." Boyd smiled, amused at his earnestness, for the big fellow was merely a boy out on a wonderful vacation.
"Well, if there is a Down-East manicure woman in Seattle, show her to me and I'll practice on her," he insisted. "She can halter-break me, at least."
"Yes, it might not hurt to get that off your hands," Emerson acknowledged, at which the clothier's clerk, who had noted the condition of the fisherman's huge paws, snickered audibly.
It was a labor of several hours to fit Big George's bulky frame, and when the two returned to the hotel Emerson found the representative of an afternoon newspaper anxiously awaiting him at the desk.
"We noticed your arrival from the North," began the reporter, "and Mr.
Athens sent me down to get a story."