“Is it? Well, no, they didn’t tell me that,” admitted the visitor, “or I’d not started so late. You see, I come up on a schooner. This here lake boatin’ ain’t in my line. I’m deep-water, I am.”
“So I should s’pose,” said Mr. Parlow. “How’d you git up here, anyway?”
“The war,” said the visitor. “The war done it. Couldn’t git a good berth in any deep-water bottom. So I thought I’d try fresh-water sailin’. And now they tell me this here lake’ll be froze up solid and all the traffic stopped all winter long.”
“Likely to be,” admitted Mr. Parlow.
“Don’t it beat all?” murmured the sailor. “And me up in this cold country—and full of rheumatiz. I tell you, matey, I been workin’ as quartermaster’s mate on the old Cross and Crescent Line, a-scootin’ ’cross to Naples from N’York—there and back—goin’ on ten year. I ain’t goin’ to like it up here in this here cold, northern, snowbound country, I don’t believe.”
“What did you leave your boat for?” asked the carpenter curiously.
“What boat? This here lake schooner? I told you.”
“No. The other.”
“Oh, she was sunk. There’s things happenin’ over to the other side of the ocean, mate,” said the injured man earnestly, “that you wouldn’t believe—no, sir! The Cross and Crescent Line’s give up business till after the war’s over, I reckon.”
“You’d better not encourage him to talk any more, father,” interposed Miss Amanda, coming into the room again. “The best thing he can do for himself is to sleep for a while.”