And when Chunk really enthuses it’s got to be a mighty cold proposition that don’t thaw some. Ten to one, too, if this had been a nice, easy talkin’, gentle old party, willin’ to tell all he knew in the first five minutes, Chunk wouldn’t have bothered with him; but, because he don’t show any gratitude, mushy or otherwise, and acts like he had a permanent, ingrowin’ grouch, Chunk is right there with the persistence. He drags out of him that he’s Cap’n Todd Spiller, hailin’ originally from Castine, Maine, and that the name of his old tub is the Queen of the Seas. He says his chief business is clammin’; but he does a little fishin’ and freightin’ on the side. He don’t work much, though, because it don’t take a lot to keep him.
“But you have a wife somewhere ashore, I suppose,” suggests Chunk, “a dear old soul who waits anxiously for you to come back?”
“Bah!” grunts Cap’n Spiller, knockin’ the heel out of his corncob vicious. “I ain’t got any use for women.”
“I see,” says Chunk, gazin’ up sentimental at the moon. “A blighted romance of youth; some fair, fickle maid who fled with another and left you alone?”
“No such luck,” says Spiller. “My trouble was havin’ too many to once. Drat ’em!”
And you’d most thought Chunk would have let it go at that; but not him! He only tackles Spiller along another line. “What I want to know, Captain,” says he, “is where you learned to play the accordion so well.”
“Never learned ’tall,” growls Spiller. “Just picked it up from a Portugee that tried to knife me afterwards.”
“You don’t say!” says Chunk. “But there’s the musician’s soul in you. You love it, don’t you? You use it to express your deep, unsatisfied longings?”
“Guess so,” says the Captain. “I allus plays most when my dyspepshy is worst. It’s kind of a relief.”
“Um-m-m—ah!” says Chunk. “Many geniuses are that way. You must come into town, though, and let me take you to hear some real, bang up, classical music.”