Without much ceremony or disappearance into a tiring-room, Mr. Waddy doffed his wet clothes and donned the toggery of the widow’s eldest son. His cigar-case, well filled with cheroots, had fortunately escaped with his coat. He lighted his first, and sat waiting patiently while Mrs. Hawkins displayed his wet raiment before her cooking stove and turned the articles judiciously to toast on either side. Let us observe him as he sits.
He is rather young for a nabob. Many of the nabobs are lymphatic and wheezy, as well as old, and that without reference to the place of their nabobery, whether Canton, Threadneedle, or Wall Street. Mr. Waddy was none of these—he was alert, athletic, and thirty-seven. It is a grand thing to have had one’s full experience and having chased all flying destinies through the bush, to have caught one and hold it safely in the hand, while the catcher is still young and strong enough to handle and tame the captive. Mr. Waddy looked strong and active enough to catch and tame anything. But some things are tamed only with delicacy and tenderness. Was he destitute of these? At this moment, there was no exhibition of any trait beyond nonchalant patience, such as men who have had to deal with Asiatics or Spanish Americans, necessarily acquire. As the last film of his smoke-puff exhales from his lips, they close under the yellow-brown moustache into an expression of firmness, and perhaps of pride. It was easy to see that firm might become stern, and pride might harshen bitterly, if treachery should betray generosity and repel candour.
Tossing his cheroot-end into the stove, he allows an interregnum for reverie. He leans his head upon his hand; his thick brown hair half hides the keen sparkle of his grey eyes; the lines of his mouth soften. He is thinking probably of welcomes from old friends, of pilgrimages to old shrines. Suddenly he throws down his hand; the proud expression closes again about his lips, his face hardens, hardens——
“Brown man, what makes you look so ugly and black?” says Sammy, loquitur. “Ma, I know he wants to kill me for wettin’ his clothes,” and Sammy wept boo! hoo!
“Don’t cry, my boy,” said Mr. Waddy, and putting his hand into a pocket he thought his own, he drew out not the expected purse containing the presentable shilling, but a strip of pigtail tobacco. “Am I brown? I am the Ancient Mariner. I have been where the sun bakes men as brown as that loaf of gingerbread. Here are two shillings out of my vest pocket. Keep one yourself and buy that loaf from your mother with the other. My mother used to bake gingerbread and my father sold it, years ago, when I was white, not ginger-coloured.”
So Ira and Sammy came to terms of peace and good will and munched together.
“I kind er guess your things is dry now, capting,” said Mrs. Hawkins. “I’ll jest put the flatiron to that air shirt and make it as slick as a slide. Salt water don’t take sterch or them collars would stan’ right up.”
While Mr. Waddy was recovering his habiliments, Isaiah Hawkins, the widow’s eldest son, came in. He owned a small coaster and was to sail that afternoon for Portland. He came to get his traps.
“Can you take a passenger?” inquired Mr. Waddy, after the usual preliminary greetings.
“Wal, capting,” replied Hawkins, with much deliberation, “I dunno as I could, an’ I dunno as I couldn’t. What kind a feller is this ere passenger? Kin he eat pork an’ fish?”