Mr. Waddy looked at his buildings with satisfaction. They were worth looking at. In them, everything that may be hoisted was hoisted; whatever may be stored was stored. Any man, from any continent or any island, would find there his country’s products.
In front of the buildings were still to be seen sights familiar to Mr. Waddy’s childhood, in other parts of the city. Here were girls pulling furtive pillage from the cotton bale; others making free with samples of everything from leaky boxes; others sounding molasses barrels with a pine taster and fattening on the contents. Mr. Waddy remembered his own childish days when a dripping molasses barrel was to him riches beyond the dreams of avarice; his days of growth, when as clerk, he became himself a Cerberus of barrels; his days of higher dignity when, Ira still, he, from his tall stool, was short with suppliants; and one more period of promotion when the inner counting-house acknowledged his services essential, and when Horace Belden, the ornamental junior partner, became his constant companion and most intimate friend, trusted with unnumbered confidences by the true and trustful Waddy. After that, came India and exile.
The shabby stranger moved on at last, rather content with his granite block, but regretting the old shop of his humbler days. The city was wholly changed. He recognised no building anywhere, but a vista of green trees appearing up a narrow street, he made for this. He came out upon the Common, and a very pretty place he found it, warm with rich shadows and all beflowered with gay little children. Fifteen years before, Mr. Waddy had sometimes done what may still, perhaps, be done by Boston swains and maids. He remembered circuits of the Common, transits of the Common, lingerings in the Common, by bright sunsets of summer, in electric evenings of frosty winters, when Boston eyes grow to keener sparkles, and Boston cheeks gain ruddy bloom; walks twilighted, moonlighted, starlighted—lighted beautifully with all-beaming lights of nature and youth and hope.
As Mr. Waddy, forgetting dinner, was gazing charmedly across the green slopes of this rus-in-urbal scene, remembering—pleasantly, doubtless, though his face did not look pleasant—his youthful strolls there-along, he saw sitting near one of the gates a miserable crouching figure, almost rolled into a ball. By its side was a box of withered cigars, and a placard, “Please buy something of this Chinaman.” As Mr. Waddy looked abstractedly at him, quite certain not to buy, he saw a man of dark complexion approach the cringing figure, stare at him for a moment, jerk him violently by the tail, and then, with howls of joy chiming in melodiously with the other’s howls of anguish, fall to embracing him ecstatically.
Mr. Waddy was much amused to recognise his servant Chin Chin in the embracer.
“What the devil are you doing with that chap?” he demanded, walking up and employing the toe of one of Dan’l’s boots gently to interfere with this affecting scene.
“Hi yah! All same! Boston fashion!” shouted the delighted Chin Chin, recognising his master in spite of his disguise. “S’pose ’em drown. No! All same. Dis my cussem—murder’s brudder’s sum. Hi yah!” and he gave the cigar merchant another tug of the cue, another embrace, and a quantity of guttural gibberish. After this spasm of kinsmanly regard, he explained to Mr. Waddy that Dunstan had taken care of his effects and deposited them with a letter at the Tremont House, intrusting also him, Chin Chin, to the landlord’s care.
Chin Chin, dressed in his neat uniform—Mr. Waddy would not call it a livery—seemed a Nepaulese ambassador, some Bung Jackadawr, on a visit of state, and Mr. Waddy his rough interpreter on savage shores. Some drygoods buyers at the Tremont House door were disposed to grin as the apparent Down East Yankee came up the steps, and to hee-haw when the landlord, recognising Chin Chin and the signature, asked the signer if he would like a private parlour. They grinned and hee-hawed no more when they caught sight of that name of power.
Meantime, Ira had been provided with his apartment. Chin Chin had arrayed him in a summer costume, easy and elegant, and he was dining vigorously, rejoiced to have someone near him again on whom his impatient oaths in Loo Choo and kindred dialects were not thrown away.
Of a large number of letters, he first opened Dunstan’s. It was brief, merely informing him what had been done with the luggage. Mr. Waddy paused, however, over the closing sentences: