“Well, what does that entitle me to?”
“I tole you I feex you up. Ha! Ha! I know it; you are a gentleman; you want a nice leetle trip on Europe. Sure. I feex you right up. I send you off on a nice easy cattleboat where you won’t have to work much hardly any. Right away it goes. Ten dollars pleas-s-s-s.”
“But when does the boat start? Where does it start from?” Mr. Wrenn was a bit confused. He had never met a man who grimaced so politely and so rapidly.
“Next Tuesday I send you right off.”
Mr. Wrenn regretfully exchanged ten dollars for a card informing Trubiggs, Atlantic Avenue, Boston, that Mr. “Ren” was to be “ship 1st poss. catel boat right away and charge my acct. fee paid Baraieff.” Brightly declaring “I geef you a fine ship,” M. Baraieff added, on the margin of the card, in copper-plate script, “Best ship, easy work.” He caroled, “Come early next Tuesday morning, “and bowed out Mr. Wrenn like a Parisian shopkeeper. The row of waiting servant-girls curtsied as though they were a hedge swayed by the wind, while Mr. Wrenn self-consciously hurried to get past them.
He was too excited to worry over the patient and quiet suffering with which Mrs. Zapp heard the announcement that he was going. That Theresa laughed at him for a cattleman, while Goaty, in the kitchen, audibly observed that “nobody but a Yankee would travel in a pig-pen, “merely increased his joy in moving his belongings to a storage warehouse.
Tuesday morning, clad in a sweater-jacket, tennis-shoes, an old felt hat, a khaki shirt and corduroys, carrying a suit-case packed to bursting with clothes and Baedekers, with one hundred and fifty dollars in express-company drafts craftily concealed, he dashed down to Baraieff’s hole. Though it was only eight-thirty, he was afraid he was going to be late.
Till 2 P.M. he sat waiting, then was sent to the Joy Steamship Line wharf with a ticket to Boston and a letter to Trubiggs’s shipping-office: “Give bearer Ren as per inclosed receet one trip England catel boat charge my acct. SYLVESTRE BARAIEFF, N. Y.”
Standing on the hurricane-deck of the Joy Line boat, with his suit-case guardedly beside him, he crooned to himself tuneless chants with the refrain, “Free, free, out to sea. Free, free, that’s me!” He had persuaded himself that there was practically no danger of the boat’s sinking or catching fire. Anyway, he just wasn’t going to be scared. As the steamer trudged up East River he watched the late afternoon sun brighten the Manhattan factories and make soft the stretches of Westchester fields. (Of course, he “thrilled.”)
He had no state-room, but was entitled to a place in a twelve-berth room in the hold. Here large farmers without their shoes were grumpily talking all at once, so he returned to the deck; and the rest of the night, while the other passengers snored, he sat modestly on a canvas stool, unblinkingly gloating over a sea-fabric of frosty blue that was shot through with golden threads when they passed lighthouses or ships. At dawn he was weary, peppery-eyed, but he viewed the flooding light with approval.